Man busted in Calif. with billion dollar bills (Reuters)

[Up2Late]

(See, here's the problem, the criminals these days just seem to be getting more and more stupid. Do they have a special prison for guys like this?)

Man busted in Calif. with billion dollar bills

Tue Mar 14, 2006 08:22 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The counterfeit money looked good, but there was one flaw. There's no such thing as a one billion dollar bill.

U.S. Customs agents in California said on Tuesday they had found 250 bogus billion dollar bills while investigating a man charged with currency smuggling.

Tekle Zigetta, 45, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of trying to bring cash, phony bills and a fake $100,000 gold certificate into the United States in January.

Further investigation led agents to a West Hollywood apartment where they found the stash of yellowing and wrinkled one billion dollar bills with an issue date of 1934 and bearing a picture of President Grover Cleveland.

(more at link below)

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=11532895&src=rss/domesticNews>

[DemInDistress]

1. where would you fit all those zeros?

1,000,000,000,000.00 or 1000000000000.00 how good could it look? where would he cash such a bill? what kind of idiot was this counterfeit looking for?

[Up2Late]

4. I want to know where he expected to spend or exchange a Billion Dollars...

...in L.A.? And who can make change for that?

[DBoon]

21. He wanted to buy a small bungalow and pay cash

this is California after all.

[hippiechick]

29. Remember last year - someone tried a $1M bill at WalMart?

:shrug: There's suckers everywhere.

[0007]

32. If this story isn't bullshit, I'd have to say the man is mentally ill.

[rocktivity]

33. Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger was his target

Think of how his political fortunes would turn around if he could announce to Californians he'd gotten his hands on 250 billion dollars!

:headbang:
rocknation

[sheelz]

24. He probably

abbreviated 1000000000000.00 and still called it a billion. :rofl:

[lovuian]

2. Stupid is stupid does

:rofl:

[OnyxCollie]

3. He needed 250 billion dollar bills? nt

[teach1st]

5. Imagine trying to find a place...

...that would give you change.

[Benhurst]

6. They are a lot less risky.

You only have to cash one or two at the local Wal-Mart and you're set for life.

:rofl:

[dweller]

7. Grover Cleveland??

mine has Herb Hoover on it, that's the real one.

dp

[Up2Late]

14. My Million Dollar bill has the Statue of Liberty on it!

I'd love to know where my Dad got that thing.

Anyone else have one of those?

[bbinacan]

8. I'd love to see

a picture of this bill.:rofl:

[Tab]

9. Yeah, but like it said...

those were 1934 dollars.

I wonder what they'd be worth now? :eyes:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

10. What a hoot!

He should've put RayGun's pic on there...

[Trillo]

11. This seems like it should be in "the onion". NT

[soothsayer]

12. With *'s spending, the day is coming when we'll have those bills

[mikelgb]

13. he should have done trillion dollar bills...

and tried to pay off the national debt.

ba-da...chhhhh

[uncle ray]

31. no, it shoulda been, wait for it...

BRAZILLIAN dollar bills!

:rofl:

[daleo]

15. A good lawyer ought to be able to get him off the billion dollar charge

Just say he was making novelty money. Nobody would every believe in a billion dollar bill, let alone accept one for anything.

[LisaL]

17. You haven't met most cashiers, have you?

Recently one of them gave a customer change from a 100 $ bill. It had Bush on it.

[Up2Late]

19. Are you sure is was $100? Or was it these lame $200.00 bills...

...they have a photo of at Wikipedia:

Scroll down at this link:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._thousand_dollar_bill>

[Mithras61]

30. You really need to look closely at these...

I like the "Moral Reserve Note" header... it's just too funny!



The signs on the WH lawn on the back are cute too!

[daleo]

35. Well, that may well be

But I can't see anyone giving $999,999,995 change back after a customer buys a loaf of bread and a quart of milk. More likely "I'm sorry sir, but I can't break a billion. We only have $50 on the premises after dark."

[spacelady]

16. AIM HIGH! n/t

[EarlG]

18. So there are apparently real $1000 bills

from 1934 with Grover Cleveland on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._thousand_dollar_bill

I guess the forgers just added too many zeroes :)

[Up2Late]

20. I wonder if that's were the guy got the image of the Bill?

That's a very large image that they have there at Wikipedia, much lager that the images at the U.S. Mints website: <http://www.moneyfactory.gov/document.cfm/5/42/1359>

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. There was a $100,000 bill

"In the 1930s, a series of $100,000 bills were printed, the largest denomination in U.S. history. These bills were used only for transactions between Federal Reserve banks; they were never circulated publicly."



Link:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/currency10.htm

Edit:
If you want change, you have to buy something.

[Dover]

23. Didn't anyone teach Bill Gates to carry smaller bills?........n/t

[Celeborn Skywalker]

25. What a dumbass. (nt)

[TheWatcher]

26. Maybe Bush can use those Bills to pay for his war.

After all, it would only be fitting.

They are as bogus as his war, and himself, are.

[formercia]

27. Just returning from Nigeria.

He had to go pick up the money himself...

[rman]

28. I think it's not counterfeit if no real billion dollar bill exists. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. Last April: 2 Brits arrested with $3 trillion in fake reserve certificates

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1412609

Another instance:

Naive scam - or secret CIA counterfeits?

A HAUL of $2.5 trillion dollars worth of United States Federal Reserve notes, dated 1934, bearing the signature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, packed in sealed tins, some said to be protected by canisters of poisonous gas, does require explanation.
...
Where might Federal Reserve notes have fitted into the operation? Prof Aldrich explains that they may have been used "for persuading managers of major banks in the interior of China to part with their vast stocks of gold".

Printing Federal Reserve notes to a value much greater than that of the gold they were intended to replace could have been an operational necessity. The US almost certainly had no intention of honouring them anyway.

In fact, suggests Prof Aldrich, the monetary instruments obtained by Slamaj may be intricate forgeries, but if they are, it is possible that the CIA manufactured them.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1040642003

From the UK Association of Chief Police Officers:

Although genuine Chinese Bonds have a collector's value of about £20 each, the faked US Treasury Bonds are well known to the US Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies, in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Canada. Attempts have been made by fraudsters to use them as collateral for loans or to obtain money from naïve investors.

On the second occasion a number of people were arrested in the City of London after presenting billions of dollars worth of these bonds to a financial institution attempting to obtain “facilities”. Two women have been charged.

The story usually given by the fraudsters is that these bonds were printed by the CIA and given to Chiang Kai Sheck who opposed Chinese Communism in the 1930’s. However, so the story goes, some were lost and were then found in caves/crashed aircraft/sunken submarines (take your pick) by illiterate natives who passed them on to city slickers in exchange for a few trinkets. The fraudsters have even attached details of a B17 bomber, its tail number and details of the crew which perished in a crash in the rainforests of some distant tropical island.

Investors in the Far East have parted with huge sums of money to buy these bonds at 1¢ in the dollar. In June 2001 a US resident shot his wife and two children then turned the gun on himself after finding that these bonds, which he tried to encash at the US Bureau of Public Debt, were complete fakes.

http://www.uk-fraud.info/alerts/treasury.html

[Up2Late]

36. UPDATE: The Smoking Gun Has PICTURES! Plus, an LA Times update

The Smoking Gun Link below!
<http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0315062billion1.html>

Fake $1-Billion Bills Are Seized

By Jill Leovy, Times Staff Writer
March 15, 2006

Federal authorities have seized 250 counterfeit $1-billion banknotes from a West Hollywood apartment as part of a currency smuggling investigation, officials said Tuesday. The bogus Federal Reserve notes carry 1934 issue dates and are stained to look old.

"They are a replication of 1934 Grover Cleveland $1,000 bills — manipulated to look like $1 billion," said James Todak, deputy special agent in charge for the Secret Service in Los Angeles. He described the notes as "green and waxy, old-looking documents." They have attached coupons, apparently to make them look like government bonds, he said.

Federal officials were directed to the bills by accused smuggler Tekle Zigetta, 45, who was arrested in January at Los Angeles International Airport on charges of failing to declare cash. Zigetta was caught trying to sneak $37,000 into the country on his return from South Korea, officials said. Later, he told authorities that he also had some $1 billion notes hidden away.

(more at link below)

<http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-fakebillions15mar15,1,3764593.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california>