Childhood Coin-Op Crime Costs Banker His Job

DES MOINES, IA -- Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has fired an employee at its branch here because of a 1963 incident at a Laundromat.

According to local press reports, Richard Eggers, 68, was terminated in July from his job as a customer service representative because he used bogus coinage in a washing machine almost half a century ago.

Using a cardboard cutout of a dime in a coin-op laundry in Carlisle, IA, resulted in a conviction of "operating a coin-changing machine by false means."

Eggers is quoted as calling it a "stupid stunt" while his defenders say the bank is simply using the nearly 50-year-old incident as an excuse to sack an older employee.