Mint Employee Steals Error Coins

way too funny

No one said I thought every coin was inspected before it left the building but, as you pointed out, the Mint:




So, in that sense, every coin does move through some fashion of inspection process. A square block can't go in a round hole and the most egregious errors should be filtered out through cursory inspection (sorry, I've been using inspection here liberally to include such things as mentioned above).

Also, since it's doubtful that the guard sorted through every coin looking for missing edge lettering I assume that there has to be a bin someplace that with the rejects (before the waffling can commence)and that points to the fact that if the mint can sort out something as minor as missing letters it should be able to figure out that a coin isn't the right shape.

As I said though, I assume 99.9% of errors leave the mint via the natural way, however, as this case proves--not all do and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that some of the more glaring mistakes follow similar paths.

Amazing that he could smuggle coins out. The mint uses a lot of checks, balances and security. He figured out how to scam the system.....that's surprizing.

They should make an Oceans 14 movie and have it take place at the Philly Mint.

A little more detail: http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/ec...m-new-jersey

"Prosecutors say Gray then smuggled the error coins out of the Mint where he shipped them to a coin distributor in California from a Rio Grande post office or the FedEx location in Egg Harbor Township. Gray admitted to receiving approximately $2.4 million for the coins, which he later deposited into his Police and Fire Federal Credit Union account. He also failed to report or under-reported his tax liability from the sale of the coins for tax years 2007 and 2009, which amounted to nearly $801,651."

It worked for Al Capone

The coins were more than likely not smuggled out by the worker himself through standard building exits. There was a case in the 1970s(?) of a couple Mint workers who were creating errors then sneaking them out in the oil pans of forklifts at the Mint. They recovered their stolen property when the forklifts were sent out for servicing

However, as I stated earlier, the VAST MAJORITY of error coins(>99%) have left the Mints through perfectly legal means. The Fed ships massive quantities of coins to armored carrier companies(Loomis, Brinks, Garda, etc) for further distribution to banks and businesses. Those carriers have sorting rooms where they count, roll, and separate out duds. Prior to the QC changes, some carrier employees would gather errors and replace them with like coinage so the accounting would equal out. The employees would then sell the errors to coin dealers. There were no laws or regulations prohibiting this practice per say, but part of the new QC measures was the reworking of the carrier contracts to specifically state that all errors MUST be returned to the Mint under penalty of contract cancellation. That has enormously cut down the number of errors released into the wild and is one of the reasons why 21st century errors can be incredibly pricey compared to the same error dated a decade or two earlier.

Or the checks against smuggling a raw diamond out of a deBeers-owned mine.

Okay, just so I'm clear: Gray was clever enough to recognize the value of error coins, collect them, smuggle them out of the mint, find a fence,and actually collect the money. Then he went to his local credit union and made deposits .... What was he telling people? That he was working overtime? He probably would have gotten away with it if he spread them around more and then used the money to buy other coins.