By Allison Klein and Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

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

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

After becoming suspicious, police searched his Stafford County home last week. And hit the jackpot. They found much of the booty there -- in a bucket, in rolls and in a cup, court documents said.

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

The 61-year-old city employee did it, police say, by going to work at 3 a.m., well before his shift started. He would jump in his city truck and, under the cover of darkness, empty into bags the contents of coin canisters from parking meters all over Old Town, according to court documents.

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 said.

By the time police caught up with him, his house looked a bit like a Las Vegas casino, documents show. There were coins in cups, coins in canisters, coins in a silver box. Police said they found paper money in a safe and in zip-lock bags. They also found the top of a parking meter in the house.

Fell, who worked for the city for 16 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 an Alexandria judge that he needed a public defender because he did not have enough money to hire a lawyer.

Last year, the city took in just over $1 million in revenue from its 1,040 parking meters, officials said. But they realized something was amiss. They had raised the rates to $1 an hour but weren't getting as much money as they expected.

"It didn't make accounting sense," said city spokesman Tony Castrilli.

A supervisor became suspicious of Fell and began following him during his morning rounds, watching him steal the coins, according to court documents. Alexandria officials called police, who hid a surveillance camera in his city truck, according to the documents.

Between Jan. 22 and March 16, Fell was secretly recorded on his early morning route as he took bags and bags of coins, the documents said. He would empty between one and 24 canisters a day, with each full canister containing about $80, according to the affidavit. In all, police said, he stole at least $170,000.

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

Police were perplexed after they subpoenaed Fell's bank accounts but did not see any of the money there. That was when they decided that it might be in his home and executed a search warrant April 15 -- tax day.

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

"He's not a dumb guy by any means," Fard said. "It was just greed, I guess."

The job paid him $57,800 a year. Now he has been placed on unpaid leave.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.