[crazygringo]

> In Amsterdam a lot of the officials that collected the coins actually took a lot for themselves even.

Considering the fact that the machine counts the coins it receives, and a value of coins gets deposited in a bank, this seems like the easiest fraud in the world to catch.

If that went on for a long time, that is some horrifically incompetent oversight.

Edit: I'm suddenly realizing this was probably about the pre-digital coin-operated parking meters. Which makes me wonder how could you prevent widespread skimming? Unless they had tamper-proof "odometers" inside that you had to record the value of each time you emptied them?

[dotancohen]

  > Considering the fact that the machine counts the coins it receives

It doesn't. The added hardware for that would be redundant if you could trust the coin collectors. Remember, these were completely mechanical devices.

[anticensor]

Yes, they had mechanical odometers in them.

[wkat4242]

They did but the values were registered by the same people that emptied them.

Eventually it was very hard to find who tampered with the books but eventually they were caught, which is how we know about it.