1. catdynamics
  2. $53.6 billion fine.

$53.6 billion fine.

By catdynamics on June 12, 2009.

Japan to secretly join CERN?

Two travelers with $134 billion in US Treasury and Federal Reserve bonds hidden in a suitcase, seized at the Italian-Swiss border.

Seriously

This is just fascinating:

who tipped the Italians off, and why?

will the Italians really take their 40% fine for failing to declare if the bonds turn out to be real?

How to tell if US Treasuries are real
NB: UST bearer securities were discontinued in 1982.


sample fake UST $100 million bond.

Here is the NY Federal Reserve page on scams, with images of past sample scams
They note in particular claims of $500 million denomination bonds dated 1934.

are the travelers really Japanese?

who would trust two individuals with that amount of money, real or fake?

why was it being moved secretly?
who was the sender, and who was the intended recipient?
what was the quid pro quo?

Hm, it'd take 1608 pallets of $100 bills to pay for it.



a billion dollars (from geekologie.com).

or maybe they'll just take California... hey, if they'd tried to bring it into LAX and been found by CHiPs driving off the rental lot, California's budget problems would have been solved, through 2012 or so.

this could be a very interesting story, if we ever get to hear the end of it.

My personal bet is either an MTV stunt gone wrong; or, North Korean agents with fake bonds trying to buy fake nuclear material from fake russian mafioso.
If anyone were gullible enough to believe North Korea had $134 billion in USTs that is.

That is the real puzzle - the scale of the thing makes almost all scams so implausible that it is hard to understand what the game is.

sounds like forgeries - that would have really made some people irate at some point.



some customs guys had fun setting this up

h/t CR of course

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Politics

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Probably the Amherst guys trying to put their winnings out of JPM's reach...

By Andrew Foland (not verified) on 12 Jun 2009 #permalink

It should be noted that in the last ~ 6 months there were several (>=3) seizures of US bonds at the Italian-Swiss border of Chiasso (see e.g. here - only italian), though much smaller than this (the one in the previous link was worth 100 million). In all the previous cases, the seized bonds were found to be forgeries.

I also happen to cross the very same border station every ~2 weeks since the beginning of 2007, and the police never looked into my bags (sometimes, they ask whether I have "something to declare"; but never really check). So, in all those cases the police was definitely tipped off.