>>>https:// www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html

>>Global Business - Mystery of Fake U.S. Bonds Fuels Web Theories By ELISABETTA POVOLEDOJUNE 25, 2009. Some confiscated bonds had a face value of $500 million each, but only $105 million in Treasury bearer bonds is outstanding.

>Ever since two middle-aged men with Japanese passports were caught in Italy this month trying to smuggle a purported $134.5 billion in United States government bearer bonds into Switzerland, the Internet has been abuzz with theories.

>Was the Japanese government, or some other creditor nation, secretly trying to dump Treasury bonds to drive down the value of the dollar? Had the Italian mafia stolen the equivalent of 1 percent of the American gross domestic product, using the paper, which supposedly was instantly convertible into cash, to run a giant scam?

>Adding spice was the whole Bond — James Bond — aspect of the tale. A crowded customs checkpoint near the Alps; two men traveling on a local train, professing that they had nothing to declare; and a false-bottom suitcase containing United States government bonds made out in stratospheric denominations.

>In all, the Italian financial police and customs guards confiscated 249 paper bonds, each supposedly worth $500 million, and 10 bonds with a face value of $1 billion each.

>Too bad the bonds were fake.

>“The whole thing is a total fraud,” Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said Thursday. “They don’t look anything like real securities, which in any case were never issued in any of those denominations.”

>The highest denomination ever issued by the Treasury Department was $10,000, he said. The Italian financial police claimed some of the paper was “Kennedy bonds” from the 1930s, but no such bonds ever existed. And the total of Treasury bearer bonds still outstanding is a mere $105 million; the Treasury has been issuing bonds in electronic form since 1986.

>But none of this has stopped the rumor mill from grinding away. After reports of the seizure began to trickle out of Italy, the blogosphere sprang into action, the ponderings fueled by suspicions that the mainstream media was willfully ignoring the tale.

>The story took on greater life after Italian authorities — who have refused to talk about the scandal — declined to declare the bonds fakes until they were examined by Washington. After all, although the Guardia di Finanza suspected the bonds were false, if they were not, the Italian treasury stood to profit from a law that permits the government to pocket up to 40 percent of the total value of cash or securities smuggled into the country over the legal export limit, which is 10,000 euros.

>Repeated telephone calls to the prosecutors’ office in Como, Italy, that is handling the investigation were not returned.

>Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the United States Secret Service, which was contacted by the Italian financial police and the prosecutor’s office to determine the “legitimacy of the seized financial instruments,” said that his agency had verified the bonds were “fictitious instruments and were never issued by the United States government.”

>Col. Rodolfo Mecarelli, the provincial commander of the financial police in Como, said the investigations were focused on “understanding who these men were and where they were from.”

>Or where they might have been going. “Switzerland may not have been their final destination,” he said in a recent interview. “They could have taken a plane anywhere.”

>Also unknown are the whereabouts of the two men, who were released after being stopped in early June. Italian law does not call for the criminal arrest of persons found to be taking funds without permission to another country. It might have been another matter if the police had determined immediately that the bonds were false.

>“The men were questioned, but not arrested,” said Naoki Oyakawa, an official at the Japanese consulate in Milan, which contacted judicial officials in Como after reading about the seizure in the Italian papers.

>He said the two men had valid Japanese passports, but he would not elaborate further on their identities. “We don’t know where they are now,” he said. “We have had no contact with the two men. They have not asked us for our help.”

>What the bonds were for remains unclear. “It’s not the sort of thing that you can just go into a bank and convert,” said Colonel Mecarelli. “But they may have been useful to guarantee business deals among people who don’t use cash.”

>Agencies that deal with financial crimes, including Europol, declined to comment while the Italian investigation was still under way.

>The Treasury Department says it is stumped, too.

>“I can’t speak to the motives of the person or persons who tried to do this,” Mr. Meyerhardt said. “I would guess that they were trying to find someone foolish enough to buy the securities for real money.”

>>870699

>>>https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasso_financial_smuggling_case

>>Chiasso financial smuggling case. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

>The Chiasso financial smuggling case began on June 3, 2009 near Chiasso, Switzerland (near the Swiss/Italian border), when Sezione Operativa Territoriale di Chiasso in collaboration with officers of Italian customs/financial military police (Guardia di Finanza) detained two suspects (who appeared to be Japanese nationals in their 50s) who had attempted to enter Switzerland with a suitcase in their possession with a false bottom containing what at first appeared to be U.S. Treasury Bonds worth $134.5 billion. The two possessed 249 U.S. bonds worth $500 million each (among other securities, they also had 10 "Kennedy bonds" denominated at $1 billion each); and the large denominations of the securities, along with accompanying bank documentation was what attracted the Italian police's attention. Large denominations are not available to the general public; only nation-states handle such amounts of money.

>Investigation and determination

>Assessment as to the authenticity of the bonds began immediately (counterfeiting of these securities was suspected). One source reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had been requested to verify the authenticity of the bonds. A spokesman for the Bureau of Public Debt has commented on the matter.

>On June 18, 2009 the Financial Times reported that the Italian police and the U.S. Secret Service had concluded that "the bills and accompanying bank documents were most probably counterfeit, the latest handiwork of the Italian Mafia." Though this information has not been verified by Italian official sources. Mckayla Braden, senior adviser for public affairs at the Bureau of Public Debt at the U.S. Treasury Department also said that this type of counterfeit bond scam "has been going on for years." Although these bonds, if fake, appear to have been of very high quality. Col. Rodolfo Mecarelli, the provincial commander of the financial police in Como, said that the bonds "are made of filigree paper of excellent quality."

>The Financial Times also reported that the two suspects "had been released" by Italian authorities. No additional comment or elaboration from the Guardia di Finanza (Italian financial/customs military police) headquarters in Rome was available. As well, Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the United States Secret Service, has said that the “U.S. Secret Service, which polices counterfeiting of U.S. currency, is assisting Italian authorities in tracing the source of the fake bonds."

>Nonetheless, Japanese authorities also remained interested in the matter; Takeshi Akamatsu, a press secretary for the Japanese foreign ministry, confirmed that the two suspects were carrying Japanese passports and had been detained and questioned by the Guardia di Finanza, but that Tokyo had not been informed of their names or whereabouts during or after their release.

>The motivation or likelihood of passing counterfeit bonds of these types and size is not known.

>>870703

>Reactions and speculation

>There has been very little in the way of official statements regarding this case, raising concerns about who made them, dumping of U.S. debt and Italian interests.

>Other questions include the identities of the Japanese men detained, the reason for their release, the origin of these high quality fake bonds, the U.S. Secret Service investigation, lack of Italian official acknowledgment of fakes and many other questions.

>Initial reactions to the story contemplated the possibility that the bonds were genuine; if the bonds had proven to be genuine, this case would have been regarded as the largest single act of smuggling (with respect to financial value) in recorded history. The total value of the counterfeit bonds was estimated at approximately one percent of total U.S. GDP in 2008]. The pair would also have been considered the fourth largest creditor to the U.S., ahead of the United Kingdom and just behind Russia. As well, according to Italian law failing to declare currency above 10,000 euros can be punished by fines of 40%.

>Since the confirmation by American officials that the bonds were counterfeit, some reactions have shifted to taking note of a general loss of confidence in international banking and finance (in general) and the U.S. dollar in particular—as noted by a recent downward trend in the U.S. Dollar Index (and the dollar reaching a new low for 2009 vs. other world currencies on July 28, 2009). The Daily Telegraph commentator Edmund Conway noted that when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner traveled to China (in June 2009) and asserted in Beijing that Chinese financial assets denominated in the U.S. dollar "are very safe," it drew laughter from the audience, even though laughter was not Geitner's intent.

>Conway also speculated that this incident may be a sign that "America is on the brink of losing its economic superpower status."

>Similar Incidents

>On September 18, 2009, a similar incident was reported[14] by the Italian financial military police Guardia di Finanza, this time involving two (apparently) Philippine nationals smuggling U.S. Treasury bonds (valued at approximately $180 billion) at Malpensa Airport (the largest airport in Milan, Italy). The two were detained and the assessment of this case is on-going.

>On January 26, 2011, another similar incident was reported[16] by the Italian military police Carabinieri, this time involving six smuggling U.S. Treasury bonds (valued at approximately €20 billion and said to be counterfeit) at a highway rest stop. The six are under investigation for receiving stolen goods.

>On February 17, 2012, it was reported, Italian police seized $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds.