> 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.
I can't picture how his rig worked, the article would have benefitted by anything visual help :/
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.
He removed the face plate from the ticket
machines, which as a repairman would raise no
suspicion
His job would have included duties like resetting the machine if it locked up, removing jams for receipts and ticket printers, loading new thermal paper and cardstock for printed receipts and tickets, etc. Things you would expect someone dressed in company maintenance attire to be doing.
Ultimately what I think happened is that, behind the faceplate, the opening for the coin box is larger than the coin slot on the faceplate, possibly for tolerance reasons to ensure that a coin passing through the faceplate always lands into the coin box. This gap was enough to get an antenna down into with a magnet attached to the end.
It sounds like the cash boxes had an open slot he could just fish coins out of with a magnetic tipped car antenna. You can get things like that ready-made these days for fishing things out of tight spots.
Probably nothing else to do other than listen to the radio. Dude probably kept the machines in tip-top shape because it made them more money that way while reducing the total amount of work required.
Somewhere in my toolbox I have one of those "antennas" -- it's basically just that, a telescoping steel rod, likely the exact same thing as an old portable radio antenna, tipped with a magnet. Mine isn't a fancy neodymium magnet either, it's one of the old graphite-coloured ones. Its intended use is for fishing out dropped nuts and bolts when working in tight quarters.
It'll be fake and he just broke in, maybe legally it was better to not have 'broke' anything but this was how he started it all.
Do the napkin math -
1. There was no AliExpress to get amazing magnets from, and there were no amazing magnets.
Average of $3k / week
$3000 / 6 days working / 8 hours = $62.5 per hour
Personally I get rid of lower coins into machines. So lets say 4 coins to get $1. He's pulling out 200 coins a hour? And doing his job. And no one sees him pulling up and down 4 time a minute for hours on end?
-------------------------------
Segway -
On the evening of Sept. 29 1994, Constable Ken Chatel, a member of the RCMP Customs and Excise Section in Edmonton leaned back in his chair to catch the six o'clock news.
One of the items that evening covered a police search of the home of Salim Kara, a city transit employee who was charged with stealing in excess of $2 million dollars from Light Rail Transit coffers.
As the camera panned the interior of the opulent residence on Osborne Crescent, several objects caught Chatel's eye and made him lean forward with renewed interest.
The camera revealed two zebra skins on the walls and a threefoot carved tusk in a display cabinet. Depending upon the species of animal each item represented, it was possible that they were protected by international legislation.
Didn't need Ali back then - you could get a lotta stuff in the hardware/hobby stores that still existed when I was a kid (long after the 80s).
Dick Smith was the kiwi one, then they kind of stopped doing hardware/electronic parts at all, then went online only. Not sure if they're even still around, now.
Hobby stores are closing all over the place, but only bc they've been replaced by online/Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc.
I can't picture how his rig worked, the article would have benefitted by anything visual help :/