On June 3, what appeared to be United States securities worth $134.5 billion were confiscated by Italy’s financial police at the Swiss border. Two weeks later, the mystery still remains. Are they authentic or counterfeit? What’s the story behind the story?

It sounds like the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel. Two men, alleged to be Japanese nationals, are traveling from Italy into Switzerland. Dressed like businessmen, they are carrying a briefcase. And in that briefcase is a secret compartment — containing $134.5 billion in U.S. securities.

Yes, that’s billion — with a “b.”

So began the saga of the bearer bonds, a truly fascinating story rife with inconsistencies. Initially, no one had much idea whether they were authentic or counterfeit. According to many observers, each of the two possibilities defied logic. First, as some in the German media believed, it didn’t make sense they could be counterfeit. After all, such securities generally aren’t negotiable by individuals, and at issue are 249 Federal Reserve bonds worth $500 million each, ten so-called “Kennedy” bonds and other U.S. government securities worth a billion dollars each. So it’s not as if you’d walk into your local sushi bar and order an avocado-roll appetizer with them. Moreover, how could you move them? No one will accept a half a billion dollar note without authenticating it first, opined commentators.

But the notion they were real didn’t seem too tenable, either. First, bearer bonds are like cash. If you lose them, that’s it; they’re gone, finished, and you’ll likely not recover your loss. Then, the U.S. Treasury ceased issuing these bonds in 1982, probably because, since they are like cash, they could be used to facilitate criminal enterprises. Additionally, these securities are issued only to large entities such as banks and governments, presenting the unlikely scenario that such an entity would risk transporting such an astronomical sum illegally via two apparently unarmed men. And because of this failure to declare the securities, it wasn’t just criminals the bonds’ owners had to worry about but also cops. Italy’s money-laundering laws entitle it to keep 40 percent of all undeclared cash and instruments in excess of 10,000 Euros, which in this case amounts to $53.8 billion. The Italians would be singing Funiculì, Funiculà all the way to Banca D’Italia.

There are also other inconsistencies: some news organs reported that the smugglers were arrested; others reported they weren’t. Then, the method of transport’s stupidity rivaled its riskiness, as the two well-attired Asian smugglers were traveling aboard a train largely used by Italian laborers, causing them to stick out like sore thumbs. Next, Bloomberg reported on the apparent fraudulent nature of the bonds on June 12, writing, “Such high denominations would not have existed in 1934, the purported issue date of the notes, Mecarelli [Colonel Rodolfo Mecarelli of the Italian financial police] said. Moreover, the ‘Kennedy’ classification of the bonds doesn’t appear to exist, he said.”

So, many had pointed out how unfathomable this was. How could counterfeiters professional enough to forge securities virtually indistinguishable from the real McCoy make bush-league blunders such as placing the wrong date on the bonds, creating a type that never existed and putting their Japanese GQ couriers on a train with rough-hewn laborers? Did they want to get caught? If so, why? And if the bonds were real, why would their owners take the risk of transporting them illegally? Was an entity secretly trying to dump U.S. debt? If so, since $134.5 billion would make that entity our government’s fourth-largest creditor, the implications for the dollar would be serious.

But, hold on, there’s a kicker — two kickers, actually. The $134.5 billion was the exact amount remaining in the TARP fund on March 30. Coincidence? And add to this the fact that this story — front-page pedigree be the bonds real or Memorex — has been virtually blacked out by the U.S. mainstream media. A fascinating picture, any which way you slice it.

Regardless, it now does appear the securities are fraudulent. Bloomberg reports:

“They’re clearly fakes,” Stephen Meyerhardt, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of the Public Debt in Washington, said yesterday. “That’s beyond the fact that the face value is far beyond what’s out there.”

. . . Meyerhardt said Treasury records show [that only] an estimated $105.4 million [some sources say billion] in bearer bonds have yet to be surrendered. Most matured more than five years ago, he said. The Treasury stopped issuing bearer bonds in 1982, Meyerhardt said.

This really isn’t surprising. While it’s understandable how many would assume that only an insane man would try to negotiate a forged $500 million note and only a more insane one would buy it, it has been done before. In fact, there was just such a case last year. The Dallas Morning News reported:

Federal authorities charged a Dallas woman in connection with a scam to sell billions of dollars in fraudulent Federal Reserve notes, including some with a face value of $500 million.

. . . "You would think the half billion dollar denomination would be a dead giveaway that these notes are fake, but people are nevertheless taken in," Jennifer Silliman, special agent in charge for ICE's office of investigations in Los Angeles, said in a written statement.

And just as in the Italian case, the notes here were dated 1934.

Additionally, the Federal Reserve issued a warning about these scams here in 2003, and in 2001 the BBC reported on a counterfeiting operation in the Philippines involving $2 trillion in U.S. bonds. So these scams do bear fruit. I guess you could say there’s a rich sucker born every minute, too.

The bush-league blunders aren’t surprising, either. I would remind you that the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter was lost because of a failure to convert maneuvering data from English units into metric. Brilliant people are often undone by the simplest things.

Yet there’s still much mystery surrounding the bearer-bonds incident and many questions left unanswered. Most significantly, why does mainstream media choose to ignore one of the largest financial smuggling operations in the history of the world?

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

 

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Pat Henry said:

see no evil, hear no evil Well, the Twin Towers' collapse served as good cover the destruction of the fortified WTC7 (which the BBC reported as having collapsed ahead of time, with the building still visible behind the reporter on live TV, remember?). What papers were there, and in the part of the Pentagon destroyed, that needed done away with by Cheney & fellow neo-cons, while sending that deadly message to those who might oppose them? Perhaps the Wanta - Vince Foster bond connection will yet unravel. See the old stories at Rumor Mill News reading room: "THE WANTA SAGA CONTINUES: VINCE FOSTER MURDERED IN SHADOW GOVERNMENT BLACK OPS" (12 Jan 07) and "THE GOLDEN AGE OR A BOIST'ROUS STORM A-BREWING ?" (11 Dec 02) Seems like a good topic for a sensible Jasper investigation.

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June 19, 2009
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Tom Miller said:

	Performance Art The obvious conclusion is that it's high-end performance art.
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June 22, 2009 | url
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Joe Jones said:

	vote cullen www.votecullen.com
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June 22, 2009 | url
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Ray Hicks said:

	... Was that a black helicopter that just flew over? http://rayhickslovesyou.blogspot.com/
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July 04, 2009 | url
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REAL6 said:

... It's just crazy how you don't hear about this. The 3 men that were stopped 2 Japanese and one other non asian. The manin one, his real name Tuneo Yamauchi is really “Akihiko Yamaguchi". Here is his passport picture!!! www.rumormillnews.com/... Akihiko Yamaguchi was a top official at the Japanese Ministry of Finance, and the signatory for the Dragon Funds under the authority of the Ministry of Finance / Minister. Yamaguchi was also responsible for the unauthorized and illegal issuance of the Japanese 57 Series Bonds which were issued using the Dragon Funds as Collateral. Yamaguchi was subsequently arrested and incarcerated for Fraud. Obviously he is now out of prison and up to his old tricks. Some people never learn do they. However, the fact that neither he or his Japanese accomplice were actually arrested or charged by the Italian Authorities, when they are undoubtedly and blatantly breaking Italian Law relevant to the carrying of cash / securities across borders, and International Law whereby they were in possession of stolen property (The UST Historic Bonds 1933/34 = $134 billion USD) whereby the intent was to commit fraud and criminal / fraudulent deception by virtue of the possible illegal use of the Stolen Property; is in my opinion evidence that there is something more than just strange about the whole issue surrounding the $134 bill UST Bonds and the actual people involved. Perhaps the notion of Yamaguchi being connected to the CIA and covert operations has quite a lot of foundation. I also hasten to add that the other Japanese person in Italy with Yamaguchi may have been Mr Mitsuyoshi Watanabe (Yamaguchi’s accomplice in the Japanese Series 57 Bond scam) For those interested I attach in Adobe .pdf format, copies of Yamaguchi’s Passport and details of the illegally issued Japanese 57 Series Bonds, plus copies of the Passports of all other known persons involved with this illegal issuance matter, which I gained when investigating this same.

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July 29, 2009
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