US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

[cjppjc]

Re: US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

My guess is that they will turn out to be both real and perfectly legal.

Yeh, hard to think you can get away with counterfeiting something worth a billion dollars. But who knows. Maybe some criminal deal where the price paid is 20 cents on the dollars, and the purchaser has contacts who can wash them through the banking system.

[Chris Coles]

Re: US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

My guess is that they will turn out to be both real and perfectly legal.

[audrey_girl]

Re: US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

if these are real - who has this much to smuggle?

US, China, Japan, ,,,?

anyone else?

also - what could you do with this in Switzerland? how could you trade these?

could you affect the major world markets? euro, us treasury, stock?

just asking

[Andreuccio]

Re: US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

It's been about twenty years since I've crossed the border between Italy and Switzerland, but I don't remember ever running into the "Financial Police". Is the border more difficult to cross now than it was then?

Of course, I didn't have $135 billion in bonds on me, either, so maybe they knew who to look for.

[dummass]

Re: US$ 134.5 billion seized at Italian Border

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A

These are strange times! :eek:

[Sapiens]

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A

US government securities seized from Japanese nationals, not clear whether real or fake
Bonds worth US$ 134.5 billion are seized. This is the largest financial smuggling case in history. But are they real? Concern over ‘funny money’ or counterfeit securities is spreading in Asia. The international press is silent.

Milan (AsiaNews) – Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.

Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones.

What caught the policemen’s attention were the billion dollar securities. Such a large denomination is not available in regular financial and banking markets. Only states handle such amounts of money.

The question now is who could or would counterfeit or smuggle these non-negotiable bonds.

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