When you think of the company Brink’s, you probably imagine their employees protecting money from bank robbers, bad guys, and other ne’er-do-wells. But according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one former Brink’s Company employee is on the other side of the equation, after allegedly stealing almost $200,000 worth of quarters while on the job.
According to the Department of Justice, the 49-year-old man from Alabama is accused of taking the coins while he was working as a money processing manager in 2014.
“What [the suspect] may have thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist,” FBI Special Agent Roger C. Stanton said in the DOJ’s news release.
According to an FBI investigation, the man had replaced the coins with beads in ballistic bags that belong to the Federal Reserve Coin Inventory. An audit in 2014 showed that four bags contained beads and only $1,000 in quarters — with the coins placed so they were visible through a window in the neck of each bag.
All told, he’s accused of stealing $196,000 in quarters from the company’s facility in Birmgingham, AL, or about 784,000 coins.
He’s agreed to plead guilty and repay Brink’s, which already paid the the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the coins’ owner, back for the incident.
“This defendant may have thought he had quite a haul but now he carries a heavier load,” U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said in the news release. “He must repay the money and face a federal sentence.”
The maximum penalty for bank theft is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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