Austria clears German who imported damaged euros from China
Zoins
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While searching for articles, I came across this which is actually pretty funny.
Old cars and washing machines sent to China for destruction are full of Euro coins which the Chinese don't need and sold to a German man for scrap metal prices. He then proceeded to import them back to Europe cash them in CoinStar-like machines in Austria.
The courts said he did nothing wrong because the coins were genuine coins!
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Interesting, and they were actually real... I wonder how much scrutiny they got besides "they weren't rejected by the bank machine"
Collector, occasional seller
The machines in Austria must be much more forgiving than a typical Coinstar machine in the US!
Must be!
Regarding use of the machine, this is a quote from his lawyer:
The decision seems plausible and logical. The coins were real, no crime. Cheers, RickO
Thousands of dollars (Euros) in recycled coins coming from China. I'm sure there's no problem there.
This reminded me of a story I saw 3 or 4 years ago about coins returning to the U.S. from China and being exchanged by the Mint at face value from their damaged coin redemption program. Millions of dollars of coins have been redeemed. The coins were said to have been found in cars sent to China to be recycled.
A few anomalies were finally uncovered. The amount of cash redeemed in one year amounted to $900 per car. Someone at the mint finally noticed that there was an unusually large number of half dollars. What? Don't we all still carry a few half dollars in our pockets? It turns out the number of half dollars redeemed by the mint is greater than all the half dollars ever minted.
Funny story. If you find humor in the U.S. being duped by the Chinese in another business deal.
Here is a link. There are several more:
https://chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015-04/02/content_20014109.htm
At least the Austrian court properly decided the case. The coins were genuine and there was no intent to deceive.
Now the example that @coinhack posted is alarming. This happened back in 2015 - when are we going to figure out that the Chinese Communists are not our friends? Thanks for posting that - yet another example of the Chinese giving us the shaft. Time for the mint to get smart.
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