Local news in Brief : Ohio Authorities to Pick Up Suspect
A man accused of being the “Coin Box Bandit,” who allegedly stole $500,000 from pay telephones throughout the country, agreed Friday to return to his home state of Ohio to “face the music.”
James Clark, 49, waived his right to fight extradition and should be picked up by Ohio authorities by Sept. 19, his attorney, Paul Potter, said after a hearing in Los Angeles Municipal Court.
Clark acknowledged that he is the man named in a November, 1985, arrest warrant issued in Akron, Ohio.
FBI agents arrested Potter Aug. 26 at his home in Buena Park, alleging that he had developed a sophisticated device to unlock the coin boxes on pay telephones, beginning his spree in Akron then raiding telephones across the West and Southwest.
“He’s a very nice man. . . . He wants to go back to Ohio and have this thing played out,” Potter said. “It’s time to go back and face the music.”
Potter called his client a “garage inventor . . . an American tinkerer.”
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