So on June 3rd, a couple of unidentified men who were allegedly Japanese nationals were arrested by the Italian police crossing into Switzerland with what appeared to be $134.5 billion dollars in U.S. Treasury Bonds. The men were subsequently released and the US Treasury says the bonds are crude fakes.
I mean bad fakes like:
Another U.S. official said the seized bonds were purported to be issued during the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, but the certificates showed a picture of a space shuttle on it — a spacecraft that first flew in 1981. Some of the bonds were purportedly issued in a $500 million denomination that never existed.
So it is kind of interesting that it took two weeks to figure out that was a fake, hmm.
As far as the “Japanese” men who were arrested and released:
The Japanese nationals who were caught bringing in the bonds have been released as they “broke no laws”
So why were they arrested in the first place? Either they were smuggling huge amounts of money across the border, or they were in possession of obscene amounts of couterfit bonds. I think one of those might be just a little illegal. Just a little?
Of course if it was all a Mafia courtefit scam, perhaps that makes sense. Does it make more sense than if Japan is unloading its US debt holdings on the down low? As the LA Times says, “This is manna from heaven for conspiracy theorists.”
2 Comments
michelle · June 23, 2009 at 10:57 am
Let’s not forget that $134.5 billion happens to be the EXACT amount of the TARP. I’m just saying…
Steve Buchheit · June 23, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Yeah, but being transported by “two guys” with a false bottom valise? You know, because you wouldn’t want them to say, be robbed or have their luggage misplaced and lose $134.5 Billion because of such a mistake. You’d think for that amount of money, they could have had at least “four guys” trying different routes in.
What’s more interesting is in the last two years they’ve seized more than $800 Million in bonds on that border.
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