The Wall Street Journal has an article on frequent flier mile junkies who discovered a loophole in obtaining free frequent flier miles by taking advantage of a free shipping offer on $1 US coins.

The buyers would buy a large amount of coins (several hundred thousand at a time) and get the dollar miles associated with that purchase. And when the shipment arrived, the buyer would simply turn them into a bank for a deposit. It’s a pretty ingenious plan and one that worked for a while until credit card companies and the U.S. Government caught on. Nobody got in trouble really since it was all legal, but word is that the government has since started looking into purchases made in bulk for these items. Oh well…I guess it was nice while it lasted.