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$6 Trillion In Fake US Treasury Bonds Seized In Switzerland
ackthpt writes "If you're going to steal, steal big, right? Italian anti-mafia prosecutors have announced the seizure of $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that's almost half of the U.S.'s public debt. The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce."
The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement.
I'm admittedly not a financial/bonds guy, but wouldn't $1 billion securities raise some eyebrows? In the same way that trying to pay for a Slurpee with a $1000 bill would.
Trolling is a art,
The sheer scale of this counterfeiting, $6 trillion dollars worth, and the truly baffling thing is how little coverage its receiving in the mainstream media.
Zerohedge highlights interesting photos: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-were-trillions-fake-bonds-held-chicago-fed-crates
Open Standards Portal
Crooks come up with stupid plans all the time, and often let their own greed blind their judgement. Hell look at some of the people who scam the 419 scammers. The 419 scammers are counting on people's greed to overwhelm their good sense, and then fall victim to the same thing.
Indeed such a thing would almost certainly raise eyebrows but the crooks likely didn't think it through.
Everyone knows the real ones are in China!
I would guess the planned scam (Including the Nigerian connection) would be sending spam e-mails, etc. saying "as a nigerian prince, I inherited this billion dollar certificate. I just need a loan of $10,000 to pay for security, transport, etc. to have it redeemed, then you'll get $100,000 back..."
The certificates themselves would never be 'redeemed' just used to bait greedy people into getting scammed.
The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce."
OK, it's the Libyans who want plutonium and used pinball machine parts, and you only need a couple heads of lettuce to generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity with Mr. Fusion, not 6 exa-heads of lettuce. Get your Back To The Future quotes straight!
Why do the photos have a 50 star flag over the "series 1934" label? The box itself isn't even correct... unless there is some good reason it doesn't have the period correct 48 star flag.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Seriously, that is the dumbest conspiracy theory I've seen. The fact aside all the truther bullshit of "9/11 was an inside job" there's no way the bonds were real on account of the amount. In 1940 the US debt was only about $43 billion dollars (the GDP was only $97 billion). So there weren't $6 trillion of bonds floating around. The debt didn't hit the $6 trillion mark until late 2002 (the GDP was about $10 trillion). However, dates of the bonds aside, the treasury doesn't issue physical notes anymore. They are all just electronic entries in a database. Far more convenient, secure, and trackable.
Might want to lay off the conspiracy sites. Here's a hint: If someone starts going on about 9/11 being an inside job, they are a conspiracy nut.
(Okay, I originally typed this in all caps...because it's funnier that way...but Slashdot's code doesn't permit it.)
I am the widow of A.Q. Khan from Pakistan. I am contacting you in good faith because I know you are a good person and will help me. I need your help in moving $6 trillion worth of plutonium out of the country. In exchange, you will receive a ten percent commission...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Don't they have serial numbers and a look-up verification system or something? How can that much fake mulah not stand out like a sore thumb sooner?
Table-ized A.I.
Pretend they are real and pay down the US debt?
-- Terry
It's as the bad proposal similar to evil poker.
That, my friend, is the quote of the day.
I am a Nigerian widow who just inherited $6,000,000,000,000.00 from my late husband, and I need help getting it out of my country.
etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
it's only 6 bills Mr. Burns used have one now it's in cuba
If true, this is the more interesting fact in the news. Unless one assumes, of course, that it is an exchange of fake plutonium for fake bonds. Ah, Nigeria-- a banana peel Republic economy.
I have here a $1 billion FRN I will be happy to exchange on Monday, for a bitcoin mine today.
My poor brain. What did I just read?
I'm more interested in why it has 25 stripes.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Remember that's what they are trying to do. However the boxes are fake. How can you tell? Easy: The flag. The stars are staggered, not ordered. From 1912 to 1959 the US flag had 48 stars, which were in 6 rows of 8 stars, all on a nice ordered grid. The staggered flag we see now didn't come until later. Our current 50 star flag was in 1960. There were earlier staggered flags, but not in the same 6-5 configuration.
Then there's the fact that it has like 25 stripes. The flag has always had 13 stripes.
This was a half-assed forgery done by someone who didn't do their homework. When the government stamps the flag on shit, they tend to get it right.
We don't need to try and prove they are fake, there is no way they are real. There weren't bonds issued in that amount, or anywhere near it, in 1934, the boxes feature obvious errors, they are forgeries.
Because the scale means it was pretty much automatically ineffective. Also the instruments they counterfeited were never real. There are no billion dollar bonds floating around from 1934, and certainly not $6 trillion worth.
Effective counterfeiting requires that you are cloning an instrument that actually exists and people would accept, and that you pass it off in amounts that doesn't raise suspicion.
It's amusing, but it isn't as though these were some supergenius criminal masterminds who came close to making $6 trillion. They are some idiot criminals who had a scam pretty much doomed to fail.
Didn't Dr. Evil demand that kind of money back in 1960 and it didn't exist yet?
It's even weirder than that... Here's the highest res shot of the front of the thing that I could find - link. (Caution -- source website contains industrial grade crazy. Just mousing over the link will get you on at least four watch lists.)
Zoom in on the flag. It's grainy, but I'll be damned if there aren't eight rows, alternating between 6 and 7 stars each. That's 4 x 13 = 52 stars.
Personally, I choose to believe that these are boxes sent back from the future year 1934 AA (after apocalypse), by future Americans who live in a 52 state US (50 + Canada + Mexico + Airstrip One - California [it finally sank]). In the future, the six trillion dollars barely buys a sandwich, but if they invest it several thousand years ago, they'll be rich! Unfortunately, the time traveler who was supposed to invest the money got distracted chasing after a bunch of loonies who were just trying to let all the animals out of the zoo, and the money ended up in the hands of the mob.
Hey, it makes more sense than any theory from those Divine Cosmos people.
It's a shame they seized this. It would have been so much more fun to actually have these con guys con other con people with the bonds before arresting them all.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
But, the staggered stars does not coincide with the common 48 state pattern of that time.
Based on what I've read, there are either lot of counterfeits of a real thing, or this was one incredibly engineered large scale counterfeit. These boxes have been found from all over the world recently, with highest concentrations in the Philippines, with people digging them up in the 1990s. There are quite a few stories to go with them, some more plausible than others. Yet, I cannot find any solid scientific evidence placing the origin of these boxes in history, other than when they were dug up or acquired and the condition they were in.
Given how interesting this could be even if it all the boxes are fraudulent due to its large scale and long history, I think this is worth trying to understand better.
Open Standards Portal
... that the MAFIAA was against counterfeiting?
Can anyone comment on the infamous "bearer bonds" which Hollywood and movie bank robbers are so fond of?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It's that roman_mir guy isn't it? Trying to destabilise the Fed from his secret Swiss base.
LOLOLOLOLOL, how reliable is Switzerland and their swisse banks as to don't accepting fake U.S. Treasury bonds? Didn't they check the validity of the money when accepting them? Then, why did they have them fake inside?. LOLOLOLOL.
In Quantum Mechanics, $100'000 is an infinitesimal measurement value that is 99.9999% statistically undetectable respecting to the current relative totality of the current U.S. debt of >$13'000'000'000'000.00
Obama bought much plutonium under his bribery, and at same time, he did forbid to the Iran's president Ahmadinejad to fabricate its own plutonium. Period.
In the obscurity's underground of Obama, he did prepare many ICBMs with plutonium's warheads for the comming World War III in this Spring 2012 announced precipitatedly by Israel & U.S..
During this coming spring, instead of breaking out flowers, they will sprout nuclear mushrooms. What why is that?.
JCPM: my/our arrow is into GRID of Quantum SAT solvers.
My poor brain. What did I just read?
I zhink ze lulz are taking over ze zlazzzhhhdod mahn! My dear!
Bzzt. The Google GDP numbers are not corrected for inflation, which means the Japanese economy has been either flat or slowly declining depending on the year you compare from. This is commonly known as their lost (two) decade(s). Japan is NOT in shape and hasn't been for a long time now, it's just that in a race to the bottom they don't stand out when the numbers are massaged just right (or enough new debt is taken on to paper things over at least until the next bureaucrat has to deal with them, who more than likely will keep trying to do the same).
GDP is a useless statistic for a number of other reasons, such as that it does not reflect quality of life indicators like the size of the middle class etc. But mainly because it has become meaningless due to runaway leveraging through derivatives and unfettered rehypothetication. In other words, if your Zynga Dollars or your financial sector grows by 500%, and your GDP grows by 1%, your real economy (such as manufacturing, agriculture, you know, STUFF) just massively deflated.
A few years ago two old forgers, father and son, were caught. They did masterful work but their real master stroke was in authenticating the items. How do you proof something is yours and is legit? Well, you shows that you, or rather, someone long death in your family, bought it legit at an auction.
How? They used an old and real auction catalog, pointed to an item description that was similar to the item they had forged and went with a story like my father bought this item here, what do you think it is worth if we wanted to sell it? It worked wonders. The documents were 100% legit and therefor in no doubt, they just weren't related.
If you want to sell these bonds, you have to come up with a convincing story of why you have trillions worth of bonds. You don't just dump them in a shopping bag and get payed. A scam is about the details and a period container complete with dust is a nice detail.
Mind you, you would have to be bloody greedy to believe such a scam but there are plenty of greedy people on the planet.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
First off, does Nigeria have Plutonium? Or just Uranium.
Secondly, Mafia is not building nukes. So, who were they obtaining Pu/U for? Obviously, they want to sell this on the black market, but who is buying? The only nations that I can think of would be North Korea, Burma, and Iran.
Of those, Iran is the likely suspect. If Iran is buying Pu on the black market, that says a lot. Basically, it means that they are trying hard to move their timeline up. The reason is that right now, they are breeding it in their reactor, but it will take some time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Where have I heard this before? Fraud...Nigeria....Ahhh!
"Hello, my friend. I am a Nigerian Prince with a great offer for you. I need $1,000 to regain my homeland. In return, I am willing to sell you a million dollars in US Treasury bonds..."
Not to defend Zero Hedge or "truthers", but if you assume that the wikipedia definition of conspiracy theory is accurate, the official version is just that: a conspiracy theory.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
Its cabbage, "That's a lot of cabbage"
...once you get past the title, there are enough quotes of the day in that post to fill a calendar.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
for example, the pension funds and retirement funds of the entire planet were conned into buying CDOs back in 2000-2008. those were essentially 'garbage securities' but everyone was too lazy to actually give a shit until 2008, when the government simply bailed out the crooks for 2 trillion dollars.
if you slather over a bunch of electronic securities with mathematics and "well spoken men in armani suits", you can pretty much get away with anything.
so whats the problem with paper securities? exactly what you say. the trick is to somehow get them infiltrated into the electronic system. id wager there is some way to do that though the same obscure off-shore accounts that corporations and rich people use every day to hide their misdeeds.
do tell, do tell kind sir.
Stalin had a plan to counterfeit dollars. Why not counterfeit bonds too? There was some very strange stuff going on in the KGB + SS back in the day. And lots of insane programs that were of low quality.
of course now days, we pay people like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke to counterfeit dollars, but we call it 'increasing money supply'. And our economy is wrecked worse than Stalin ever dreamed of. But whatever.
Why the U.S. agents had tried to poison the bankers or their inheritage's families or their redeemers/owners with unauthorized poisonous gas made by U.S.?
Because all was part of a conspiracy theory from U.S. for killing everyones, poor and rich peoples that manage the U.S. bills or U.S. bonds.
If they failed the TRUSTABILITY IN GOD then they should assume their own consequences.
Forensic researchers know that the ink used for printing these seized U.S. bonds contain "carbone atoms", so that they can test the "radioisotope C-14 decayment" evidence for proving the authenticity of these seized U.S. bonds that were dated from 1934. Now the question is the conflict of interests between trustability and fakeness, and if it resulted fake, when was it fake? In year 200x or in year 1934?. It's in the game of the God trustability that claimed the U.S. government during almost than one century.
In 1934, the Plutonium, or the Uranium, or whatever rare Earth elements were unknown for almost peoples, so that for rare minerals, they were paid in very expensive prices for owning these "rare minerals" that didn't exist in another place of the Earth in 1934!!!.
Oloro of Oro, the King of Yoruba, the Supreme King of the 9 tribal communities, what did happen there in 1934? The local goverment did raise the taxes them, and then bloody riots did ocurr inmediately, justly when Llorin was arrived, i believe it, i'm not sure. I don't know exactly the history, but "historians" and "witnesses" should investigate deeply their versions of the happened things 78 years ago.
JCPM: i'm analyzing the meaning of "In God, we trust" & "E PLURIBUS UNUM" written in their U.S. currencies/bills, and the impact implications that can have them on the world since 1934 that the dispute could originate from now in 2012, when the bankers or the redeemers are deceptionated after of >78 years of "banking deposits" for NOTHING after of their commercial exchanges 78 years ago!!!.
I tell you, the Chosen One is deep and he is the only one who can pull this off.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This happens all the time. I wouldn't wonder if US TLA's were involved.
2009: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/business/global/26fake.html?_r=1&dbk
2001:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,100595,00.html
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
5 years ago they could have labeled these billion dollar financial instruments "Collateralized Debt Obligation" (aka CDO, a bundle of worthless subprime mortages) and sold the crap successfully. Same piece of paper crap whether its a fake TBill or CDO, but the latter is completely legal.
To my eyes it looks like the bottom row with 6 stars, and the row above that with 7 stars. That doesn't match any US flag of *any* vintage, let alone a 50-state one (having 6 with 5 above). It be used for a 52-state flag, I think. Not that it matters, fake is fake is fake.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
And more accurately, the U.S. budget deficit was $3.59 billion in 1934. Just four $1 billion bonds could cover it completely. $6 trillion in total means that there were 6000 of these fake bonds.
Italians seem to have unique solutions to their economic woes. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14774526
Casteism
but could he be the new apk?
dirka dirka dirka... ah dirka dirka jihad.
he has balls... i like his balls
just don't get on his shitty wall
Would no one have noticed 6 trillion extra dollars floating around,
I thought all the money was accounted for....so even if they were to fake them
could they really use them, or they cloned other bonds, and were going to cash them in,
sort of like using a cloned CC, where once the money is gone, its gone...?
Can anyone help explain please?