Hopefully It Wasn't All in Pennies...

A Coinstar employee has been accused of stealing nearly half a million dollars from the company's coin-counting machines in three states. 39-year-old Michael R. Burns was arrested yesterday and is expected to be charged with first-degree theft.

Burns, who was trained to fix the Coinstar machines and worked in the company's manufacturing department, used his knowledge of the coin kiosks to break into them while he was off-duty. Because Burns would wear a company shirt and obviously knew what he was doing, people assumed he was servicing the machines, rather than fleecing them. His clever scheme came to an end when a Lynwood Albertsons discovered over $17,000 missing from their Coinstar kiosk. The store's security camera showed Burns servicing the machine, and the police were hot on his trail.

Burns took his Coinstar scam regional, flying down to California the weekend of April 26th, where he stole $250,000 from various machines. Burns made a quick stop in Oregon, where he relieved local Coinstar kiosks of over $50,000. Even with paper money, those would be pretty hefty heists, and we imagine the loot would be even more cumbersome in coins. Inquiring minds want to know: before being caught, did he try to deposit the change at his local bank or buy high-end items with it? We imagine someone saying, "Let me just count out this $60,000 in change" for a new car would send up a few red flags.

Coinstar photo courtesy of Flickr Contributor DC Dan