OSLO, Norway (AP) — Arild Tofte and Kaare Heggdal know that recycling pays, but they weren’t quite prepared for the jackpot that a scrapped cash machine contained.
It was still full of cash. Enough to buy a house and take a luxury vacation. The two Norwegians run a recycling company in the western Norway town of Aaroedalen, and had been hired by the Sparebanken Moere bank to remove an outdated automatic teller machine from a gas station.
Tofte, 30, said the woman on duty at the gas station was more than a little skeptical when two men showed up with a trolley and a truck, wanting to remove her ATM.
“She calmed down when I explained that the machine was empty and that we had a contract to pick it up,� Tofte told the local Romsdals Budstikke newspaper.
During their rounds to pick up more scrap, they got a call saying a security guard was seeking the machine.
“The guy was apparently a bit agitated,� said Tofte. “He was very eager to empty the cash from the machine.�
The cash was removed. The bank — which blamed the incident on a communications mix-up — didn’t say how much was in the ATM. But Tofte said the guard who emptied the machine told him it was enough to buy a house, take a luxury vacation and still have money to burn.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2005/01/12/896078.html
It was still full of cash. Enough to buy a house and take a luxury vacation. The two Norwegians run a recycling company in the western Norway town of Aaroedalen, and had been hired by the Sparebanken Moere bank to remove an outdated automatic teller machine from a gas station.
Tofte, 30, said the woman on duty at the gas station was more than a little skeptical when two men showed up with a trolley and a truck, wanting to remove her ATM.
“She calmed down when I explained that the machine was empty and that we had a contract to pick it up,� Tofte told the local Romsdals Budstikke newspaper.
During their rounds to pick up more scrap, they got a call saying a security guard was seeking the machine.
“The guy was apparently a bit agitated,� said Tofte. “He was very eager to empty the cash from the machine.�
The cash was removed. The bank — which blamed the incident on a communications mix-up — didn’t say how much was in the ATM. But Tofte said the guard who emptied the machine told him it was enough to buy a house, take a luxury vacation and still have money to burn.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2005/01/12/896078.html
