Breaking Vegas History channel

Tuesday nights Breaking Vegas was on counterfeiting slot tokens with and EDM and a big press. First ten minutes have the metal part. It should repeat later in the week. Karl

Reply to
Karl Vorwerk
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I saw it. It was interesting. First thing he learned was that the form was only part of the problem. He needed to get an exact duplicate of the material as well.

If you caught the trailer, they noted that they don't know how many of his "dupes" are still in circulation. The mint that makes the real tokens couldn't even tell which ones were fake for sure.

The only way they figured out that someone was counterfeiting tokens was that they were way over inventory on tokens. During the monthly audits to determine how many had been lost or damaged they instead came $24,000 over. Big red flag.

JW

Reply to
jw

Would they take you into a back room and crush body parts if they suspected you were minting your own tokens?

Reply to
ATP*

I liked the part of him becoming an advisor to the US Mint while he was in jail. Pretty good show...

Reply to
Rick

One can fabricate a pretty realistic immitation of a parking lot token with only a turret lathe. Fits the local hospital 'five bucks to part here' machine. So I've been told.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

I thought it was interesting that they showed him cutting the dies with the EDM, but didn't say anything about he drove the EDM. I.e., how he measured/scanned the "real" token to get the digital representation. Maybe the EDM has a built-in scanner, for copying parts. Anybody know?

Bob

Reply to
Bob Engelhardt

I also heard somewhere that a Belgian 5 Franc piece is the same size as a US quarter, but is only worth about 8 cents. So I've been told. I also have heard that parking meters have little windows where you can see the last two coins put in. Not mentioning this for any reason, nope.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

Wasn't that the famous CT turnpike toll scam?

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

I don't know, it's just something I noticed afer I returned from a trip to Belgium as an exchange student.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

The one I heard was New York, in which you put a subway tolken in a box to pass through the turnstyle. The coin went in, but didn't drop until the rider went through. So the scumballs figgured out that you could run up behind the guy in the turnstyle, and *suck* the coin out of the slot.

Yechh !

Reply to
Scott Moore

Karl

Isn't a Belgian 5 Franc piece worth nothing as they have been using the Euro for several years now? Martin

Reply to
Martin Whybrow

At one point the CT turnpike issued tokens worth something like fifty cents or so. Turned out that some foreign coin was an exact match and they began turning up in large numbers in the collection buckets.

Eventually they realized they were only making enough money to pay for staffing the toll plazas, and maintainting them. So they finally got smart and tore them out, and stopped collecting the tolls. They were only supposed to be "until the highway is paid for" but of course the tolls lingered on for decades after that.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

"Income tax in Canada is only a temporary measure to cover wartime expenses" Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

Change "Canada" to "the USA", and the statement is just as "true"...

Reply to
Don Bruder

jim rozen wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@drn.newsguy.com:

As I remember it the real driving force behind getting rid of the tolls in CT. was a horrible crash and fire at a toll plaza (Stratford maybe?). I don't remember the details clearly but it involved a big rig whose driver fell asleep and plowed into the cars waiting to pay the toll full tilt. Something like twelve people were killed including a bunch of little kids that were in a station wagon.

Reply to
D Murphy

No. One way trip to the desert.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Yep ! Same thing here in Auz

Reply to
Tom Miller

Stamford? I recall that being the last straw, somebody finally woke up and said, 'enough.'

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Dunno. Was the mid 1980's when I "noticed" it.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

Sounds fair enough.

Reply to
ATP*

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