Somehow a man stole $65,000 in change from Coinstar machines across Colorado
Jul 21, 2026, 2:32 PM | Updated: 2:52 pm
This has to be a Netflix documentary at some point… There are heists, and then there is whatever Richard Pena did. A Las Vegas man has been sentenced to up to four years in a Colorado prison after stealing more than $65,000 — in coins — from Coinstar machines inside grocery stores along Interstate 70. He pulled it off in four days. With a hand dolly. And a van.
Pena, 37, broke into 11 Coinstar kiosks at grocery stores along the I-70 corridor between Grand Junction and metro Denver over four days in November 2021, according to an indictment by Colorado’s statewide grand jury. The machines — those green kiosks where you dump a jar of loose change and get a voucher — hold the deposited coins in large bins inside the unit. Pena apparently had what appeared to be a key to open the machines, walked in with a hand dolly, removed the coin bins, wheeled them out to his van and drove away. Eleven times.
The total haul: $65,769.82 in coins. For context, a single U.S. quarter weighs 5.67 grams. If even half that amount was in quarters, we’re talking about roughly 730 pounds of metal. This man was loading hundreds of pounds of loose change into a van at grocery stores across a 250-mile stretch of Colorado highway, and nobody stopped him until it was over.
The case took years to prosecute — the burglaries happened in 2021, and Pena was only recently sentenced after being indicted by the statewide grand jury and prosecuted by the Colorado Attorney General’s Special Prosecutions Unit. The AG’s office noted: “Through hard investigative work, prosecutors in the Special Prosecutions Unit were able to bring justice for this 2021 coin-cashing kiosk heist that stretched from Grand Junction to Thornton.”
Four years in prison for $65,769.82 in stolen change. That works out to about $45 a day for the effort, which — after gas, van maintenance and what must have been a truly punishing amount of coin-hauling — probably wasn’t worth it. But you have to admire the commitment. The man drove across the entire state, hit 11 stores in four days and never once thought, “Maybe this is a lot of quarters to explain.”
