Scam city! Free shipping of $1 coins from US Mint = free credit card rewards and frequent flier mile points.

At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off.

Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit.

Wow, what a scam. Even better than buying pudding for airmiles.

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3 responses
This is ingenious!
This totally reminds me of that old story where some guy borrows $1000 at 10% interest per week from a NYC bank, leaves his car as collateral, comes back and repays the loan with the $100 interest.

When asked why he was willing to borrow such a small amount of money at such a high rate of interest, he casually responds, "Where else am I going to get a week's worth of parking in Manhattan for $100??"

It angers me so much that I had never known about this.