Guy steals $460K from employer — all in quarters!

This idea sounds familiar. Didn’t they do this in Superman III with pennies? 

A public works inspector  in New Jersey pocketed himself a small fortune over 25 months before his arrest last year. Thomas Rica stole $460,000 from his employer, all in quarters, which comes out to about 1.8 million individual quarters.

Now that we know the exact count, what’s the weight on a score like that? NorthJersey.com explains:

Collectively, his take weighed 11.25 tons, according to the U.S. Mint. That’s the equivalent of three elephants, a single 84-passenger bus or nine Honda Civics. But Rica didn’t deposit it all at once; he cashed in the loose change over time at several bank branches using coin machines to avoid detection, authorities said.

Officials on Wednesday said that the coins were taken “slowly, steadily, and by the fistful” from a room in Village Hall. The quarters were collected from Ridgewood’s parking meters. Eventually, Rica got greedy, and would go back into the storage room three or four times in one day.

As is always the case, Rica made a decent salary, over $86,000 a year. He claims the quarters were used to pay the “usual bills” and one serious, serious addiction to those toy machines at the super market.

Ex-Ridgewood inspector admits to stealing $460,000 in quarters from village [North Jersey]