I suspect though, that some detail of the various ways he did this just got lost over time. You could probably fish them out with superglue or sticky mastic on the antenna rather than a magnet, for example.

Or maybe the magnet was always used to hold some kind of trap door open rather than directly fishing the coins.

Loonies are coated in a different metal making them less magnetic, but stronger magnets will fix that.

Now, yes. But this was the 90s. You could still (just about) buy some items for a single penny back then.

In other words, you wanted to cheat. I can't comment on whether that's fraud in a legal sense, it's still cheating.

The game in question --the penny pusher-- pits a player's skill against the (the design of the) game, and (probably) allows a skillful player to earn a greater return. The game is inherently designed to restrict winnings, and (so goes urban legend) the owners can restrict winnings further by, for example, gluing coins to the base in certain areas.

I'd therefore argue that exploiting gaps or flaws in the game's design are just an example of a especially skillful operator beating the game and its designers, and not cheating. The line between clever exploitation and outright theft is a probably difficult one to draw; although turning up with a giant electromagnet which just pulled the coins straight off the shelf, would probably be over that line :)

There's a reason 13-14 year olds aren't held to the same standards as adults.

https://www.royalmint.com/stories/collect/why-are-some-uk-co... - the composition of 1p and 2p coins was changed from bronze to copper-plated steel in 1992 and the composition of 5p and 10p coins was changed from cupro-nickel to nickel-plated steel in 2011