https://www.nofreelunch.co.uk/blog/salim-kara-lrt-scam/ Skip to content No Free Lunch - Tinstaafl No Free Lunch Menu Close * Home * Meaning * Origin * Blog How Salim Kara stole $2 million in coins with a magnet and a car antenna Over 13 years, one man stole $2.3 million in fares from Edmonton LTR one coin at a time using a car antenna and magnet. Salim Kara Edmonton coin scam [943c5] Author tinstaafl December 20, 2022 Maintaining public transit ticket machines is crucial to keeping cities moving but not a job that would normally generate headlines. That is unless you're Salim Kara, who for 13 years used a car antenna and magnet to pilfer $ 2.3 million of fares from Edmonton's LTR, one coin at a time. Finally caught in 1994, Salim's salami-slicing style scam had netted him 37 tonnes of small change and minor celebrity status. Here's the fascinating story of Salim Kara's coin scam in full. Originally from Uganda but of East Indian descent, Salim Kara fled Idi Amin's regime in 1972 for England, eventually migrating to Canada and settling in Edmonton, the capital of the province of Alberta. Magnet fishing for coins In 1981, Kara was hired on a $ 38k-a-year salary to maintain and fix the 68 ticket machines of Edmonton's LRT - light rail transit system. From the get-go, it seems Salim wasn't satisfied with being paid $17.66 per hour, so began supplementing his pay by pilfering a portion of the fares. As Kara only maintained the machine function, he didn't have direct access to the cash box where the coins were collected after customers had fed them to purchase LRT tickets. Working alone and at night, he developed a simple yet ingenious method for fishing those coins out. He removed the face plate from the ticket machines, which as a repairman would raise no suspicion, then rigged a car antenna with a magnetic tip, like a make-shift fishing rod. Coin-by-coin, Kara hooked his catch out of the ticketing machine cash box into a shaving bag, which acted as his keep net. Banking his heavy booty Salami-slicing scams focus on stealing tiny amounts of money in the hope that the size of the theft makes it unnoticeable. Coin clipping, the removal of small slithers of silver or gold coins, is the original salami-slicing scam, dating back to Roman times, but ended around the 17th century as coin designs became more sophisticated and eventually of no intrinsic value. The digital age opened up a new era of salami-slicing opportunities, the best of which we've summarised in a separate article on computer crimes, but it is unusual for modern salami-slicing type scams to focus on coins. Cash is king where organised criminals are concerned, given its untraceable nature, but their preference is for high-value bank notes. Salim Kara was no King Pin; just a petty criminal with a unique gift and the patience to play the long game, quietly siphoning coins day by day over more than a decade and creating a convincing cover story to enable him to launder the proceeds. Kara told his bank that he ran a successful machine-vending business. News reports estimated that he stole an average of $3k a week over 13 years, but Kara's scheme received a boost in 1987 when Canada introduced the $1 loonie, almost doubling his weekly take. Like an urban pirate, soon Kara was lugging $900 home daily in loot and around $5k a week. Such was the scale of coins that Kara accumulated that his bank allowed him to drag his booty through the back door and even considered expanding their vault to accommodate the volume of coinage Kara was regularly hauling in. Edmonton Journal, December 2010 Kara's coin-powered property empire Over time the proceeds from Salim Kara's scam began to pile up, so he began investing, including a house in Victoria and two other houses in Edmonton. He also sunk $ 1 million into a term deposit but could crucially keep his distance from these visible signs of wealth. Perhaps one of the main reasons why Kara could maintain his grift so long was being smart enough to keep a low profile locally, helped by the image he presented driving a dilapidated 1977 Chevrolet Malibu. Sooner or later, the temptation to spend became too much and maybe thinking he would never get caught in 1992, Kara decided to trade up from his modest $136,000 home to something much more fitting of a vending-machine millionaire. His mountain of coins financed the building of a $ 1 million house in an exclusive area of Edmonton with five bedrooms, five bathrooms, an indoor jacuzzi, a steam room, an indoor fountain and a garage for four cars with a built-in car wash. If asked about the source of his funds, Kara claimed to have sold properties in England and made various claims to be employed in investment banking or owning a computer repair business. Salim Kara's Coin Scam in numbers * $2,327,890 - total amount stolen * 13 years - how long he maintained the salami-slicing scam * 37 tonnes - estimated total weight of stolen coins * 2 million - the number of passenger fares Kara's crime equated to * 150km - the approximate length of Kara's haul laid end-to-end; six times the length of the entire Edmonton LTR network * $2,959 - the average amount stolen per week All good things come to an end Kara was effectively stealing 20% of LRT fares over the 13-year period; one in five coins that were fed into the machines by the paying public ended up in his shaving bag, amounting to around 2 million customer journeys. It seems inconceivable that he wasn't caught sooner. The failure to catch him, despite discrepancies between fares and cash raised in two audits, was put down to a belief that the errors were software glitches and, after his arrest, led to a significant amount of internal finger-pointing. There were suspicions and even video-taped evidence of Kara acting very strangely a year before he was finally caught, but inadequate processes for whistleblowing meant that it took another year for the alarm to be finally raised. In 1993, with the red flags mounting up, the city authorities hired private investigators to observe Kara, which finally caught him in the act. In March 1994, he sliced off the final piece of this very lucrative salami. Two years later, aged 44, Kara was sentenced to four years in jail. Given the unique nature of his crime, the trial attracted plenty of public attention packing out the courthouse, but Kara's infamy spread further when his attempts to avoid attention outside the courts backfired. He was rumbled dressing up in disguise worthy of Inspector Clouseau - complete with dark glasses, woolly beanie and trenchcoat - which only heightened interest in him. Salim Kara Edmonton coin scamSalim Kara outside court doing his Inspector Clouseau impression 'There are about 600,000 people living in the city. You have stolen from every citizen, man, woman and child approximately $4 each.' Associate Chief Justice, A.H. Wachowich commented ahead of passing down the sentence. As Kara repaid the proceeds of his scam to cover the city's insurers, he was released after 16 months. Given the fascinating nature of the crime, the length of time it was maintained and the lifestyle it financed, there were rumours of a book deal, but to date, that hasn't materialised. Before his sentencing in March 1996, Kara made an enigmatic statement in court, promising at some point to share his side of this fascinating tale "Remember, every coin has two sides" --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources Associated Press, March 26th, 1996 The Edmonton Journal ,Sep 28, 1994; March 26, 1996; June 4, 1996; December 27th, 2010 No Free Lunch There is no such thing as a free lunch, but if you're hungry to find out why, we're here to help. You can learn the meaning and origin of the no free lunch concept, as well as the broader philosophy behind the idea that nothing can ever be regarded as free. We look at our relationship with money and truth, examining all of the supposed shortcuts, life hacks and get-rich-quick schemes. Published December 20, 2022By tinstaafl Categorised as Deception, Money Tagged alchemy, salami slicing, scams Post navigation Previous post How Victorian sewer hunters scavenged treasure from beneath London Next post What is crypto unit bias? Popular Posts * What is currency debasement? * What Squirrels & Cicadas can teach us about time preference * The crypto custody conundrum - How to secure a Seed * What are the origins of money? * What is a post scarcity society? Blog Archive Blog Archive [Select Month ] Search Search... [ ] [Search] * Deception Deception is one of the main means of selling propositions that, in reality, are just too good to be true. There is no such thing as a free lunch. * Discovery Discovery is the key to human progress and value creation; new technology, new ideas and even new planets. * Money Money is central to our never-ending search for a free lunch because it is a proxy for our most precious resources - time and energy. * Risk Learn the role that risk, and our understanding of it, plays in the most common failures of our decision-making processes. * Society Social structures are the means by which humans organise and cooperate, but inequality, poverty and environmental degradation suggest they might need a rethink. * Work Work is the way we generate value. We exchange our time for money, but is that historical arrangement in need of change? * About Us * Resources * Contact No Free Lunch - Tinstaafl Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress. Manage Cookie Consent To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions. Functional [ ] Functional Always active The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. Preferences [ ] Preferences The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user. Statistics [ ] Statistics The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you. Marketing [ ] Marketing The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes Accept Deny View preferences Save preferences View preferences {title} {title} {title} Manage consent