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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Rob Woodside, post: 4941209, member: 96187&quot;] <ul> <li>CLIPPED FROM</li> </ul><p><a href="https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-ottawa-journal/1188/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-ottawa-journal/1188/" rel="nofollow">The Ottawa Journal</a></p><p><a href="https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-ottawa-journal/1188/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.newspapers.com/paper/the-ottawa-journal/1188/" rel="nofollow">Ottawa, Ontario, Canada</a></p><p>10 Sep 1971, Fri&nbsp; •&nbsp; Page 3</p><p><br /></p><p>Ex-coin dealer admits mint racket Imperfect coins; imperfect crime</p><p>By JOHN FERGUSON </p><p>Former Ottawa coin dealer Rudolph Hoffman thought he had a novel way of obtaining coin &quot;varieties,&quot; those one-in-a-miilion imperfect coins that sometimes slip through inspections at the Canadian Mint. He had a man inside the Mint who made them for him -thousands of them- which Hoffman in turn sold to coin collectors at highly inflated prices. The idea was novel, but it was also illegal and Thursday, when he was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison on three charges by Judge Robert Hutton. But as the sentences will be served concurrently with a seven-year sentence that Hoffman is now serving for importing marijuana there will be no extension of the time Hottman spends in jail. </p><p>Hoffman was charged with: Conspiring with Frederick Priebe, a Mint employee, and others between Jan, 1, 1969 and March 1, 1970 to unlawfully have in their possession a quantity of coins of a value exceeding $50 knowing them to have been obtained by a breach of trust committed by Priebe:</p><p>- Counselling Frederick Priebe to commit an indictable offence - breach of trust;</p><p>-&quot;Giving benefits&quot; to Darlene Ruddick, an. employee of the mint </p><p>Hoffman pleaded guilty to all three charges. Police testified that there were complaints dating back to 1965 that some coin dealers or dealer was obtaining the coin oddities, or &quot;varieties&quot; as they are known in the trade. The RCMP soon became aware that the oddities were not mint errors but the result of deliberate actcons on the part of a mint employee. </p><p>In September, 1969, the RCMP seized a number of imperfect coins which were on display at a com show in the St. Laurent&nbsp; shopping centre and were able to obtain a number of clear fingerprints from them. This led to the arrest of Priebe and a subsequent search of the mint employee&#039;s car and house turned up gold quarters and gold dollars and a number of gold and silver blanks.</p><p>In a statement, Priebe admitted to police that he had sold the coins to Hoffman. </p><p>&nbsp; In June, 1970, RCMP officers purchased one gold and one silver dollar by mail from Hoffman for which they paid $1,000 and in August, a gold quarter was purchased for $125. The RCMP learned that two other persons were acting as agents for Hoffman in the distribution of the coins. A subsequent raid on an hotel room at the Skyline yielded 66 silver quarters defaced at the edges, 40 dimes with penny inv pressions, 4,354 double impres sion pennies, 12 gold quarters, one silver dollar, one gold dollar, 82 silver discs or coin blanks of various sizes and 66 gold blanks of various sizes. Priebe was sentenced to one year in jail last September for his part in the coin oddities scheme.&nbsp; Darlene Ruddick was fined $5,OOO when she was found guilty of receiving more than $20.000 from Hoffman for pre- shipping $816,000 worth of Centennial coin sets to him in 1967. In passing sentence, Judge Hutton told Hoffman that the &quot;most serious&quot; effect of &quot;his crimes was the &quot;number of other people dragged into the matter.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://img.newspapers.com/img/thumbnail/45927123/250/0/0_0_4047_6200/0/yes/75_2772_2838_1230.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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