OC: A drinks vendor in Cologne, Germany was recently tried and convicted to ten months in prison for modifying a bottle recycling machine and cheating the swindling several tens of thousands of euros from the national recycling system.
Bottle-recycling machines in Germany are fairly straightforward – a person inserts one or more bottles into the machine and they receive a receipt for a few euro-cents, or euros, depending on the number of bottles recycled. But in a case presented in front of a Cologne court last week, one recycling machine ended up paying a whopping €44,362.75 ($47,000) without recycling a single bottle. It turns out that an unnamed local drinks vendor managed to modify one such recycling machine located in the basement of his shop so that he could earn a lot more than the usual spare change. Evidence presented during the trial showed that the 37-year-old defendant had installed a magnet sensor and a kind of wooden tunnel into the machine, which allowed him to insert the bottle into the mechanism, receive his receipt and then retrieve the bottle without it actually getting shredded inside.
Where smart and stupid intersect…Should be studied…Because we are all on that lever. But not criminal in nature.
The ironic thing is now he will be treated like a dick recycling machine in prison.
Half the world gets up every day just to try and figure out how to screw the other half outta its money.
Reminds me of something I learned a long time ago – if criminals would apply themselves to honest work as much as they do to crime – they’d be rich and not in jail.
shouldn’t have gotten greedy
Of course it was his own ego that busted him. He couldn’t keep the crime to himself. He was stupid enough to brag about how smart he thought he was.
Dadof4,
Agreed. As my dad (or was it my mom?) taught me, “the only way to keep a secret between two people is if one of them is dead”.
I once refunded some accumulated empties, around $30 worth; what a lousy task. If I ever needed that money, I’d begrudgingly do it again.
To repeat the refunding process involved 177,451 times, is in and of itself, doing time.
Never mentioned was how long it took him to pocket $47,000. How didn’t any one not notice the cashbox getting emptied without any bottles?
We used to use masking tape and a pull-top to cheat a coin-op dryer…oi vey! Such a gangsta.
I used to cheat machines like crazy as a kid.
I was a clever little bastard.
The machine designers got wiser, along with the advent of video, put an end to my crime spree.
I used to collect bottles and aluminum.
It was fun, we walked everywhere looking for strays.
The punch-out slug from an electrical conduit box was enough like a quarter to operate most machines back in the 60s. And get real change for your .10 coke.
Or so I heard. cough
Sounds to me like he was definitely “recycling” that bottle.
😉
Or the old tyme pay phones, insert a nickel and slam the receiver on it at the same time. Dial tone and nickel returned.
Dad4, there was a tool & die company where we would find slugs to use as quarters and dimes.
They were legal tender as far as I knew… 🙂
He’s like the guy who robbed the Armored Car (some years back) and got $40,000 worth of nickels. All the dude’s dreams came to a crashing end. He was so upset he didn’t even take the nickels – just walked off sulking and cussing.
Poor sap. If your big score is penny-ante, stay outta the game – the Clintons, Schumers, Reids, Ryans, McConnells, Soroses, Buffets, and the rest of the Big-Time Thieves and Murderers are gonna eat you alive. Jail’s for this dummy, not for the likes of Angela Merkel – the REAL CRIMINAL.
izlamo delenda est …