Bus fare coins ran the risk of landing into the wrong hands at every turn of their journeys - from the moment they were dropped into the fare boxes until they were officially recorded in the company revenue account. And coins of $1, $2 and $5 denominations were naturally facing a more hazardous ride than their 20-cent and 50-cent peers.
This case was turned into a television drama entitled "Dark Side of the Coin" in 1989. Please click to watch the episode (in Cantonese only).
Each day around midnight when the last fare-earning trip was completed, the driver would habitually turn off the light in the bus compartment and head back to one of the designated depots. On the journey back, a crooked driver would steer the bus to a sequestered spot to pick up an accomplice. With a replica key, the accomplice would open the coin box and take out the storage compartment (otherwise known as the vault). Half of the coins would be emptied before the vault was put back and locked. Another member of the gang, who was trailing behind in a taxi, would then dash off with the coins and the pilferer. The driver concerned either had been bribed beforehand or himself a member of the gang. The replica key to the coin box was bought for about $8,000 a piece from those in control of the master key.
The cash counting office (known as the “coin room”) in the North Point depot was where bus fares collected each day were counted. Designated workers would dismount the vaults from the returned buses, delivered them to the coin room where more than 10 coin counting workers, all male, would sort out the coins by denominations and count them with machines before bagging them. The coin room was kept under constant closed circuit television monitoring and security guards would check the identities of all staff going in and out. All coin counting workers had to be naked from waist up and wore only shorts so that no coins could be hidden beneath their clothes.
Yet the workers came up with an ingenious ploy to outmanoeuvre the tight security. Beneath their shorts they wore two to three underpants sewn up at the legs, turning them into double or multi-layered pant-shaped bags. When the swivelling surveillance camera was not looking in their direction, they would stealthily sweep $5 or $2 coins into their pant-shaped bags. They had also bribed the security guards for turning a blind eye when they staggered out of the depot with bulging shorts. Monitoring from the first floor car park of a neighbouring residential building, Danny Lo recalled that most of the workers, apparently weighed down by kilos of coins, had to literally drag themselves out of the depot during lunch hours.
“These workers would normally have their lunches at nearby restaurants. Once inside, they would sneak into the toilets and unload the coins from their underpants. They would then exchange the metal into notes at the rate of $110 to $100 with associated restaurant or store operators in the area,” said Hans Wong, then an Acting Chief Investigator.
Coins counted and checked were put into designated moneybags. They were dispatched together with a list of records to the account office where the cashiers or clerks would further inspect and countercheck the records. The bags of coins would then be stored in a strong room for delivery to the bank the following morning. Investigations revealed, however, that the cashiers would as a matter of routine leave several bags of coins off the book each day for obvious reasons. The unrecorded bags were mostly filled with $1 or $2 coins, each carried $2,000 worth of coins. The theft was believed to have been going on for at least two years, causing CMB on average losses of up $5,000 in revenue each day, or some $2.6 million throughout the period.
Each morning, workers would protrude a custom-made removable conveyor belt out of the window of the strong room and connect it to an opening on the top of a converted escort vehicle. Bags of coins were loaded onto the vehicle by the belt before heading towards the bank under the escort of the Chief Cashier or his deputy, and the security guards. Mingled amongst the recorded coin bags, however, were the unrecorded ones. The stolen coins would be exchanged for notes through conspiring bank staff. Of the exchanged notes, 90 per cent would go to the Chief Cashier and would either be deposited into the personal bank accounts of syndicate members, or distributed to associated CMB workers. Security guards who were in the know would also be bribed for their silence. The remaining 10 per cent would be given to the involving bank staff as reward.