CHANGER ALERT

[RWSmith]

The west coast of Florida ( Tampa, St. Pete. area) is having problems with a pair of white males driving a white luxury import car. They are inserting a "card" into changers at unattended laundries. This card tricks the machine into dumping all of it's quarters. One multi-store owner lost over $7000.00 last weekend. If you live in this area please be on the look-out and report any suspicious activity to the police.I will post more details as I get them.

[Howard]

Can someone explain how this can work. I thought the acceptor just reads the bill and if it matches a pattern in memory it will dispense that many quarters. How can a pattern that is not in memory cause the machine to dump the entire hopper?

[Jefflange]

A little more info would be helpful. What brand of machine was this? Can we protect ourselves?

[RWSmith]

Jeff from what I understand it is happening to changers that use cash co or coin co validators. The first information I recieved was that it was some type of "card" used to dump the quarters. I have also heard that it was caused by "stringing". There have been more laundries hit the past couple of days. My recomendation is to call your distributor, manufacturer, or service tech. If you are unattended and live in the Tampa area I would turn off the large bills. There are also some other options that your tech should be able to help you with.
If you have any information Det. Charles Mehr of the Pinnellis County Sheriffs Dept. is in charge of the case his # is 727.582.6130
Howard I don't no how they are doing this but there is a web site that I will e mail to you and Jeff.

[Jefflange]

Thanks, please send me the website.

[RWSmith]

Jeff your mailbox is full. My e mail address is washman3@earthlink.net

[RWSmith]

I have just received some more information on the bad guys who have been spotted on the east coast of Florida. This link has more info. http://forum.autocareforum.com/forum.src?Action=Posts&Subject+3767&Topic=24&SubjS tart=

CLA will mail out an alert ASAP

[Laundry_Mike]

A couple days ago when cleaning my changers, one took a Citra Card and payed out $10. What's up with that? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif I think I'm going to call the manufacturer of that validator.

[Jefflange]

What type of validator or machine?

[RWSmith]

I have heard from my changer guy that both coin co and cash co are being strung.

[Laundry_Mike]

It was a Rowe RBA (their cheap unit) not the BC validator. The BCs are awesome.

[Michael@ CLA]

I just got off the phone with a member who owns a store in Milton , FL. He told me 2 males hit his changers on June 28th. Milton is near Pensacola, FL. He believes the 2 men were driving a late model white Jeep with black fender flares. Anyone who may have information can contact officer Carmona at 850-983-5420 or call me at the CLA offices @630-963-5547

[homchz]

Though I do not know the specifics I can imagine since bill validators all seem to work on the premise of light sources and reflectors, all you would need is a card than create a light pattern of a bill. Or a light pattern that could disrupt the entire machine. Very old bill acceptors in soda/candy machines had a similar effect with water. You could stream water into the acceptor and the water would mess up the photo eyes so bad that it would free vend.

Lights and mirrors, almost like a magic trick

This is where the info on these products come from, people like this:
http://www.jackpotters.com/

[Michael@ CLA]

Today I heard from a member in Wisconsin. Yesterday Oshkosh police apprehended a man who was causing the changers to empty all the contents of a hopper in the changer. Not a very sophisticated technique but actually pretty simple. I don't want to post how it was done here, but if anyone is interested email me.