[HN Gopher] The 'pay phone bandit' who baffled the FBI in the '80s
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The 'pay phone bandit' who baffled the FBI in the '80s
Author : gmays
Score : 149 points
Date : 2024-06-29 03:19 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mentalfloss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mentalfloss.com)
| jonhohle wrote:
| Now I want to see how long it takes Lock Picking Lawyer. Someone
| mail him a pay phone with a bottle of booze in the coin box!
| Animats wrote:
| About two minutes.[1]
|
| It's a disk detainer lock, which requires specialized tools,
| and it unlocks counterclockwise, which is unusual.
|
| The tool: [2]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQxVG-Munqw
|
| [2] https://www.sparrowslockpicks.com/products/sparrows-disc-
| pic...
| Animats wrote:
| Correction: that's the lock on the GTE clone of the Western
| Electric payphone. The actual Western Electric version used
| an unusual lever lock. The later variant, the 30C, is claimed
| to have never been picked.
|
| That's a really good lock design. It's simple, robust, and
| immune to standard picking techniques.
|
| But there is a vulnerability. The blocking wedge, which is
| only supposed to move along one axis, has some mechanical
| slop. See [2]. So it's possible to get some feedback on which
| levers are blocking bolt movement. It's still a huge pain to
| pick.
|
| [1] https://www.mattblaze.org/photos/misc/wecolock/
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXLhCvUgDYQ
| Algemarin wrote:
| Here's the America's Most Wanted segment about the guy, James
| Clark, from 1988:
|
| https://youtu.be/e56gA8NBXuQ?t=1204
| xp84 wrote:
| The details about this guy at the end were hilarious.
| Apparently he always stays at Motel 6 and eats at 7-11. Totally
| living it up on Ma Bell's dime, I see!
| thedrexster wrote:
| Ma Bell's _quarters_, you mean. :)
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Only for the kids. Where do you think "dropping a dime on
| someone" came from?
| macintux wrote:
| I vaguely recall visiting Boston c1990 and discovering
| pay phone calls there were still 10C/, while they had
| been 25C/ in Indiana as long as I could remember. I'd be
| curious when and where the last ten-cent phone call was
| made.
| n1b0m wrote:
| Shame about the sound quality
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Though it's hard to imagine today, there was once a time when
| making a telephone call meant going home, asking to use someone's
| phone, or plunking a quarter into a freestanding pay phone
|
| Pfffft, what about the classic: "You have a collect call from
| PICKMEUPATBILL'S" ?
| Algemarin wrote:
| ah yes, passed around countless txtfilez in the '90s...
|
| http://cd.textfiles.com/hackersencyc/PHREAK/GENERAL/CALLATT....
| http://cd.textfiles.com/hackersencyc/PHREAK/GENERAL/CCF.TXT
| lagniappe wrote:
| Can't forget about his uncle Bobwehadababy Itsaboy
| pimlottc wrote:
| The classic Geico commmercial:
|
| https://youtu.be/9JxhTnWrKYs?si=imqYkQjwxpATH1VH
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Was expecting more _phreaking_ from this story
| imglorp wrote:
| I don't think you could get cash from a payphone by phreaking,
| back in the day. At most you could get back the coins you put
| in. After each call, the coins dropped into the lock box.
| Phreaking was more about sending tones to the CO.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| of course not, phreaking/boxing etc was about avoiding the
| cash altogether! Just a note that seeing a title about pay
| phone antics I expected/hoped for more of a hacking angle.
| Good throwback story nonetheless!
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sometime in the 80s we happened across a payphone that was
| spitting out quarters from the change return, partially jamming
| the return door in the process. Until then I always assumed that
| change was held in some kind of side compartment so the same
| coins inserted could be returned but either someone went crazy
| jamming it up with quarters earlier or there was a way for the
| payphone to make change.
|
| Wonder if the guy ever thought about running a video arcade or
| laundromat. It would have been a great way to cover up his source
| of so many quarters and convert some of them into paper currency
| in the process.
| edgineer wrote:
| Maybe someone put gum/something to block return coins. Then as
| people used the machine, the return coins built up. Usually the
| thief would return days later and remove the gum, along with
| the coins behind it.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Based on what others have said about how the coin mechanism
| works, this seems like the most likely explanation. Now it
| has me wondering if it was my brother who set it up. The
| payphone was outside a bar in an area I'd never been to
| before and I can't remember why we ended up there that day.
| Perhaps he was jamming up phones and then returning later to
| collect to proceeds. He was always getting into such small
| time schemes before he got mostly straightened out in the
| military.
| jim_lawless wrote:
| I'd read a story a while back about a phone company employee
| who serviced payphones. He would periodically shut off power to
| payphones on his route, causing them to trap whatever coins the
| callers would insert. He'd return at a later time, turning the
| power back on. The coin return would then empty and he'd get
| the coins.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > He would periodically shut off power to payphones on his
| route
|
| Pay phones do not require an external source of power to
| operate the line or the internal phone mechanisms.
|
| > causing them to trap whatever coins the callers would
| insert
|
| It's been a while, but my recollection is that if the coin
| relay loses power it should return the coins to the user
| immediately. This is why the Green Box and shorting diodes
| would work.
|
| > He'd return at a later time, turning the power back on. The
| coin return would then empty and he'd get the coins.
|
| It's interesting how people will try to turn stories of petty
| theft into clever achievements.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > that change was held in some kind of side compartment so the
| same coins inserted could be returned
|
| That's exactly how it works.
|
| > or there was a way for the payphone to make change.
|
| It was controlled by a relay. If the CO pulled the relay to
| bill the call, the coins would divert into storage, otherwise
| the coins would fall into the return. If the signal was weak or
| was intentionally blocked then the coins would always fall into
| the return. It's possible that users just didn't notice the
| coins falling into the wrong slot.
|
| See the History section here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_box_(phreaking)
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| >By one estimate, he hit phones in 30 of them,
|
| Wouldn't they know exactly how many states he did this in since
| he was the only one that knew how to do it?
| toast0 wrote:
| Probably not all instances of non-violent coin (and coin box)
| theft were recorded or assigned to him. Some instances could
| have been theft by employees or the coin box was inadverdently
| not returned, or needed replacement but a replacement wasn't
| available.
|
| Post AT&T breakup means the phone companies were less
| centralized and organized, presumably, than if this had
| happened in the 1970s.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| On a related note, I remember in the 80s, coin fed parking meters
| in Berkeley were systematically cut off. I never knew if it was
| simple thievery, or some anarchy protest.
| user3939382 wrote:
| It was Cool Hand Luke
| liendolucas wrote:
| I love these stories to be shared here on HN. There was one also
| submitted some time ago about a cyclist who wouldn't make it into
| the olympics (or something like that) and started to rob banks
| and used his cyclist skills to escape. If I recalled correctly
| this was in the 80' or 90' and he used to give away the stolen
| money. Shame I don't have link.
| orzig wrote:
| One of the best uses of Perplexity.ai! Pasted your text
|
| https://www.bicycling.com/news/a26081001/cyclist-turned-bank...
| pimlottc wrote:
| You can just Google for "cyclist who robbed banks", AI isn't
| really necessary for this.
| redeux wrote:
| You can just use Gopher, you don't need Google for this.
|
| I'm being flippant, obviously but my point is that every
| now and then a new technology comes along that supplants
| and older one because it offers a meaningful improvement
| over the last. AI search vs traditional web search is
| definitely one of those.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's just as easy or easier to google "cyclist who robbed
| banks."
| redeux wrote:
| You're not thinking through the whole experience. The
| search itself is just as easy, sure. You can type the
| same query into both systems. The difference is in the
| results. Traditional web search will then return a set of
| links which may or may not answer you query, it's up you
| you to parse them and figure out if they have the content
| you need or if you need to rephrase your query and try
| again. AI on the other hand will parse the results for
| you and return the answer to your prompt directly. That's
| a meaningful improvement.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| If it is not 100% based in reality then no, it isn't.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > AI on the other hand will parse the results for you and
| return the answer to your prompt directly.
|
| Yep! And that's going to save you _one whole step_ when
| you're posting meaningless follow ups in forums filled
| with technical users who would have had no problem
| getting the information themselves.
|
| > That's a meaningful improvement.
|
| It's a marginal improvement to the least meaningful
| activity that occurs on a daily basis. So, it's totally
| worth the trillions that have been invested in it. :|
| thfuran wrote:
| Even if that's true, the example definitely isn't proof
| of that given that the old technology seems to handle the
| problem just fine.
| revscat wrote:
| If they each give the correct answer in the same number
| of steps then there's no reason to prefer one over the
| other.
| KMag wrote:
| My multiple experiences with ChatGPT hallucination, even
| at minimum temperature, leaves me preferring a web search
| answer. Just last week, jq hallucinated three different
| jq syntaxes that failed to parse.
|
| That being said, I had been using web search for several
| years looking for the Get Smart episode I had seen as a
| kid in the 1980s where the enemy agent explains that he
| can't give up his suicide ring because "That's how it
| works, if I take it off, my wife will kill me." Google
| Bard found the episode on the first try.
|
| So, I tend to fall back to LLMs only when search engines
| fail me.
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| _Mental inertia_ is the phrase I use for preferring the
| one you learned first
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Hilarious career path: social work > Catholic priesthood >
| underwater welding > robbing banks
| aaronharnly wrote:
| That story seems to be a brief summary, which points to a
| fuller article here: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-
| Magazine/February-2019/Bi...
| liendolucas wrote:
| Found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29037860
| (excellent article).
| VariableStar wrote:
| Not condoning his actions, but "a thinker and doer" is certainly
| a fitting eulogy, and not a bad one to have in ones grave.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Seems like the hardest part would be getting rid of all the
| coins. I'm not surprised he got caught, given two appearances on
| America's Most Wanted, and his tendency to pay for hotel rooms
| with rolls of quarters.
|
| As another comment noted, perhaps he should have opened a
| laundromat or video arcade to launder the stolen money.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Should have taken them to a bank, converted to cash and then
| done what you said.
| alrighty wrote:
| I wonder why the method was to take the box rather than replacing
| it after emptying it. Would that have made the crime harder to
| detect?
| spdif899 wrote:
| Yeah it seems like the same heist but leaving a random handful
| of coins behind in the box would have been much more difficult
| to detect
| Pixelbrick wrote:
| Inspiration for Bruce Sterling's short 'Jim & Irene!'
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