A Palm Beach, Florida gentleman robbed his “friend” of a rare coin collection and dropped much of it into a Coinstar machine for just the face value in bills. According to the Palm Beach Post, Shane Anthony Mele, 40, confessed to robbing Michael Johnson’s office of many items totaling $350,000 in value, including around 100,000 coins, “some worth just a little and some extremely valuable.” From the Palm Beach Post:
(Mele) told investigators he took some coins to South Florida Coins & Jewelry in Lake Worth, where he said he got about $4,000. The store’s owner, George Hornberg, told The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday the total actually was $2,330.
Mele told police he dumped the rest of the collectibles in “Coin Star” machines at area grocery stores. People often trade large stashes of loose coins for store credit, minus a fee of as much as 11.9 percent.
That means if he dropped in the 33 presidential coins, valued at $1,000 each, he got about $29.30.
image: “Presidential $1 Coin Program” by Bill Koslosky, MD
