More on the smuggled bonds

[FRED]

Re: More on the smuggled bonds

But this Japanese men with the Bonds thing really strikes me as odd. With so little said from authorities, I'm convinced there's more to the story. The "more" could very well be no big deal, but there is more.

The truth is that there is not much to say. Using fake government securities to defraud investors is a scam as old as government securities themselves.

We knew the $134.5 billion in bonds were fake long before the Treasury confirmed this to be the case: the Treasury didn't print bonds after the early 1980s, and bonds printed before then totaled less than $4 billion in face value.

Fake securities are only illegal if you get caught using them in the fraud, and as no one stepped forward as the intended buyer, there was no fraud, only a pile of bogus bonds. Since they were not replicas of anything remotely similar to a real U.S. government bond, they were not counterfeits.

Unable to charge the "smugglers" with either fraud or counterfeiting, the Italian authorities had to let them go.

That's it. That's all there is to it. That's why I moved Karl's latest post to the iTulip version of his "Tin Foil Hat" forum.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: More on the smuggled bonds

... the iTulip version of his "Tin Foil Hat" forum.

My home away from home .

[flintlock]

Re: More on the smuggled bonds

The truth is that there is not much to say. Using fake government securities to defraud investors is a scam as old as government securities themselves.

We knew the $134.5 billion in bonds were fake long before the Treasury confirmed this to be the case: the Treasury didn't print bonds after the early 1980s, and bonds printed before then totaled less than $4 billion in face value.

Fake securities are only illegal if you get caught using them in the fraud, and as no one stepped forward as the intended buyer, there was no fraud, only a pile of bogus bonds. Since they were not replicas of anything remotely similar to a real U.S. government bond, they were not counterfeits.

Unable to charge the "smugglers" with either fraud or counterfeiting, the Italian authorities had to let them go.

That's it. That's all there is to it. That's why I moved Karl's latest post to the iTulip version of his "Tin Foil Hat" forum.

Thanks for the clear explanation. I'm still just curious who the "bonds" were intended to fool. Obviously not a very sophisticated mark. Possibly just something to flash around the intended victim to "prove" they had means.

[Milton Kuo]

Re: More on the smuggled bonds

The truth is that there is not much to say. Using fake government securities to defraud investors is a scam as old as government securities themselves.

We knew the $134.5 billion in bonds were fake long before the Treasury confirmed this to be the case: the Treasury didn't print bonds after the early 1980s, and bonds printed before then totaled less than $4 billion in face value.

Bloomberg has published a news story, "No One Knows Truth About $300B Bonds From Alleged Crash," that seems to put a coda on this strange episode.