WINDFALL FOR ITALY?: Customs Finds $134 Billion in a Suitcase. Spiegal Online, June 12, 2009.
It is either the biggest smuggling operation in history -- or a fraud of equally impressive proportions. Italian customs officials stopped two men at the Swiss border carrying bonds worth $134 billion (95.8 billion euros).

Italian customs officers on the Swiss border often stop smugglers -- but not of this scale. Two Japanese citizens have been detained by Italian police in Chiasso on the Swiss-Italian border after being found with $134 billion of US bonds hidden in the base of their suitcase, according to a press statement by the Italian Guardia di Finanza.

The two men, reported to be more than 50 years old, were traveling by train from Italy to Switzerland on June 3. Financial police at a control on the border found the documents tucked inside a closed section at the bottom of their suitcase, separate from their personal items. According to their statement, the men's luggage included 249 government bonds worth $500 million and 10 so-called Kennedy bonds, each worth a billion dollars.
Italian Police Ask SEC to Authenticate Seized U.S. Treasuries, by Sonia Sirletti and John Glover. Bloomberg, June 12, 2009.


It is nice to see that traditional artisans are back creating counterfeit securities the old fashioned way; I had thought they were driven out of the counterfeit business by the hedge fund boys.