Time runs out for meter man

Imagine $170,000. Now imagine that much in quarters and nickels and dimes.

That’s how much money police in suburban Alexandria, Va., say William Fell stole, canister by canister, from his job as a parking meter repairman over about a year.

After becoming suspicious, police searched his suburban Stafford County, Va., home last week -- and hit the jackpot. They found much of the money there, in buckets, rolls and plastic bags, they said.

“It’s pretty bold,” Sgt. Shahram Fard, who oversees the city’s property crimes unit, said Tuesday. “I’ve never recovered that much money in a search warrant.”

That much money in quarters, dimes and nickels would weigh at least 4 tons. If it was all in nickels, it would weigh nearly 19 tons.

Police said Fell, 61, carried out the theft by going to work at 3 a.m., well before his shift began. He would take his city truck and, under cover of darkness, empty coin canisters from parking meters into bags, court documents allege.

Then he would drive back to his personal car, stash the bags in his trunk and go about his normal workday fixing meters, a search warrant affidavit says.

By the time police searched his house, they said, it looked a bit like a Las Vegas casino. There were coins in cups, coins in canisters, coins in a silver box.

Police said they found coins in a safe, along with stacks of paper money, and coins in cloth collection bags. They also found the top of a parking meter.

Police said Fell, who lives alone, did not appear to use the money for anything specific and mostly kept it in his home.

“He’s not a dumb guy by any means,” Fard said. “It was just greed, I guess.”

Fell, who worked for the city for 17 years before his promotion in June in the Department of Transportation and Environmental Services, faces two counts of embezzlement by a public officer and is being held at the city jail.

He told a judge that he needed a public defender because he did not have enough money to hire a lawyer.