Arrests made in Italy after discovery of $6 trillion in fake U.S. bonds

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/17/world/europe/italy-counterfeit-bonds/index.html?hpt=hp_t3


Arrests made in Italy after discovery of $6 trillion in fake U.S. bonds


By the CNN Wire Staff
February 17, 2012 -- Updated 1659 GMT (0059 HKT)



NEW: $6 trillion is more than twice Italy's national debt
The bonds were discovered as part of an investigation into a local mafia group
Arrest order was issued in the southern Italian city of Potenza
8 people arrested after $6 trillion in fake U.S. bonds found in Italy
(CNN) -- Italian authorities on Friday arrested eight people in possession of an estimated $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. Treasury bonds, according to Italian paramilitary police and an Italian news agency.

The discovery of the fake bonds -- made to look as if they were printed by the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1934 -- came about as part of an investigation into a local mafia association.

The arrest order for the alleged criminals was issued by a preliminary investigative judge in the southern Italian city of Potenza, police noted.

Italian authorities, working with their Swiss counterparts, learned about the counterfeit bonds by way of eavesdropping on wiretapped phones, police said.

The total of $6 trillion is more than twice the Italy's national debt.

The Italian news agency, ANSA, reported that the bonds were also discovered "alongside copies of the Treaty of Versailles rolled inside lead cylinders."

CNN can not independently verify that account.

"reported that the bonds were also discovered "alongside copies of the Treaty of Versailles rolled inside lead cylinders."

why would they have a copy of the treaty?....wtf?

wonder if those bonds are really fake then?....if the treaty is authentic?

MORE ON THIS:


Link has some pictures: http://news.sky.com/sky-news/content/StaticFile/jpg/2012/Feb/Week3/16172274.jpg



Anti-mafia investigators have found fake US treasury bonds with a face value of $6trn (£3.8trn) hidden in a Swiss bank vault.

The bonds were discovered inside false compartments in three reinforced metal crates in Zurich.

The face value amount equates to more than a third of US national debt.




Some bond certificates were valued at $1bn each


Eight arrests have been made in Italy, in an investigation led by Italian authorities and aided by the US Secret Service and technical experts.

"These fictitious bonds were apparently part of a plan to defraud some Swiss banks," the US embassy in Rome said in a statement.

Operation Vulcania, which actually took place in November last year, has only now been revealed.

Italian investigators said members of a criminal network had tried to use the bonds in emerging markets around the world or to give them to banks as collateral for loans.

The bonds were dated 1934 and one of the deposit boxes also contained a forgery of the Treaty of Versailles, which investigators said could have been used to justify the sums involved as payments between states following World War I.




A fake 1919 Treaty of Versailles was also in the haul


The operation was "the biggest for this type of investigation," Giovanni Colangelo, the head of the prosecutor's office in the southern city of Potenza, said.

The trail to the bank vault started with an an investigation into southern Italian mafia clans, Mr Colangelo said.

The investigation allowed detectives to uncover "an international network with people implicated in numerous countries," he said without giving more details and adding that he believed more fake bonds were still hidden.

US Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary said: "Our Rome office assisted the Italian authorities with expertise and confirmation that the subject obligations were fictitious."

A US law enforcement source said: "Part of the scam is that you say: 'We came up with this from long lost supply of US government notes that were hidden in a warehouse.'

"Essentially, if it is too good to be true, it probably is."




Copies of US Federal Reserve certificates were also found


The eight people arrested are all Italian nationals and include 69-year-old Rocco Menzella, a former mayor of the town of Montescaglioso in southern Italy.

Friday's was not the first seizure of fake US bonds by Italian authorities but it is the one with by far the highest face value.

In September 2009, Italian police seized $116bn (£73bn) in phoney bonds and arrested two Filipino nationals carrying them at Milan's airport.

And just months earlier, police arrested two Japanese nationals on the Italian-Swiss border carrying bonds with a face value of $134bn (£84bn).

that one way to trim the deficit......just say the bonds are fake, novel idea.....wonder if Biden came up with that?