Netflix movie fictionalizes coin heist at US Mint

Netflix will debut an original movie Jan. 6, Coin Heist, that pro­vides a fictional account of the planned theft of $10 million from the Philadelphia Mint.

Internet Movie Database offers the following synopsis:

“United by dire circumstances, four unlikely allies from a Philadel­phia prep school — the hacker, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student — band together to attempt the impossible: steal from the U.S. Mint.”

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The movie is directed by Emily Hagins, a screenwriter who also wrote the movie’s script based on a novel by author Elisa Ludwig.

Todd Martin, deputy director for the U.S. Mint’s Office of Corporate Communications, said that:

“1)?The Mint did not cooperate with the production of this film.

“2)?No Mint production facilities were used.

“3)?The Mint provided no footage of coin production.”

The premise for the heist is to make $10 million to offset the loss of school scholarships.

The four students take a tour of what is purportedly the Phila­delphia Mint and are informed about how lucrative error coins are.

During the tour, a male adviser is arrested by Mint police.

The quartet of students believe it will be an easy task to break into the Mint, strike untold numbers of counterfeit error coins using fake dies, and carry the coins out of the Mint because security is “lax.”

The design of a quarter dollar illustrated in a trailer for the movie appears at first glance to be a Michigan quarter dollar, issued in 2004 as part of the 50 State Quarters Program. The design is shown hubbed into a mold, which is not how genuine dies are made.

The MICHIGAN lettering at the top, with the 1837 date of statehood, is correct. The date for the year of issue is partially obscured, but still discernible as not 2004, more resembling 2016.

The design elements of a fish enlarged above a scene of a fisherman in a stream do not ap­pear on any U.S. quarter dollar. 


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