2 Japanese carrying $134 bil worth of U.S. bonds detained in Italy

[David Guyatt]

One avenue worth exploring is to write to the US authorities, namely the Department of the US Treasury - probably the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (contact at http://www.moneyfactory.gov/section.cfm/16 ) and ask them directly why the confusion?

I once did this with the UN over a somewhat strange case of what was undoubtedly (imo) a scam. I was eventually partnered with a Press Officer who was, after being sent from pillar to post, directed to the UN legal department who promised an answer. Weeks passed and the PO became increasingly more embarrassed at the lack of response. Eventually he "went on holiday". I never heard from him again and am still awaiting an answer from the UN.

Some things in the world are so convoluted that a direct question is the last thing that can be answered. Sometimes a scam has an official sanction. Sometimes, important and/or well placed bureaucrats are engaged in fleecing their own beds. And sometimes matters are so secret that a bodyguard of lies surround them.

But I don't suppose it would hurt to ask the DEP the question and see what happens?

Btw, one fairly senior official of the DEP I knew who specialized in these areas, was eventually sacked for taking a bribe.

[Peter Lemkin]

One avenue worth exploring is to write to the US authorities, namely the Department of the US Treasury - probably the Bureau of Printing and Engraving (contact at http://www.moneyfactory.gov/section.cfm/16 ) and ask them directly why the confusion?

I once did this with the UN over a somewhat strange case of what was undoubtedly (imo) a scam. I was eventually partnered with a Press Officer who was, after being sent from pillar to post, directed to the UN legal department who promised an answer. Weeks passed and the PO became increasingly more embarrassed at the lack of response. Eventually he "went on holiday". I never heard from him again and am still awaiting an answer from the UN.

Some things in the world are so convoluted that a direct question is the last thing that can be answered. Sometimes a scam has an official sanction. Sometimes, important and/or well placed bureaucrats are engaged in fleecing their own beds. And sometimes matters are so secret that a bodyguard of lies surround them.

But I don't suppose it would hurt to ask the DEP the question and see what happens?

Btw, one fairly senior official of the DEP I knew who specialized in these areas, was eventually sacked for taking a bribe.

Bribes in that department must be fairly cheap...if one cooks the books on how many bonds were printed, then the cost to the 'giver' is zero - only the risk of being caught. The paper and ink costs little to nothing. I presume no answer would be forthcoming on this. The silence is deafening and I don't understand why financial analysts are not interested - ditto the press. Seems the media/propaganda lobotomies have really worked on most citizens of this Planet. No one thinks [can think] independently - well few, indeed!

[Carsten Wiethoff]

In fact, if you go back to some of the early posts and urls on this thread, you'll see that the Italian authorities said they were indistinguishable from REAL bearer bonds [i.e. if fake, they were such good fakes as to be not discernible as such!]. This was an Op of some kind - I think a very complex one by several governments or entities and the fact it was let to 'disappear' down the rabbit hole of 'old stories' without explanation is both interesting and frightening. Among holders of large denomination bonds around the world I don't think they've recovered yet. Someone was sending a message. I'm not sure exactly what. Perhaps, "we get to say which bonds are considered real and which are not: - it has NOTHING to do with which really are and are not!

Your ebay 'bonds' have the word 'commemorative' on them. Such a word was not on the real ones, I believe, and are a dead give-away they are 'paste' rather than diamonds. There were other security features [secret] built in, but known to those who need to know. Did you buy 134 of them? Any idea how popular they were on ebay? Maybe they should stop the Fed and Treasury sales and just sell bonds now on ebay.

Peter,
it is my firm conclusion that the "Kennedy Bonds" pictured on the original italian press release of 4th June are EXACTLY the same as my "ebay bond".
So yes, until proven wrong, I will be affirmative that these "Kennedy Bonds" never existed, they always were commemorative notes, not legal tender and in fact worthless pieces of paper. And everybody, including all persons who ever saw them in Chiasso, Como or wherever they may be now MUST KNOW that they were worthless pieces of paper.
The only "security feature" on it is a nice hologram on the back, displaying "APOLLO II", an eagle symbol and the letters "OK" in different sizes.
I did buy exactly one of them, serial number 071047.
I do not think they are very popular, there were two available from the seller in Singapore and they were available several days after I posted my find and before I finally decided to buy one, just for the fun of it. I am fully aware that paying 30US$ for a worthless piece of paper is silly, but I tend to have my silly moments.
If anyone is interested I can post a superhigh resolution scan of both sides of the note, as soon as I have my scanner installed again, which can be immediately, if necessary.

The whole point I have is that the press release from June 4th was a scam from the beginning and all people involved in this press release and the ridiculous statements regarding these "Kennedy Bonds", like that they were of good paper quality and so on, knew that exactly.
I also believe that it was done for a purpose, maybe warning Japanese/Chinese against under the table sellings, maybe trying to put pressure on the dollar, maybe something different.
The perpetrators realized that the "Kennedy Bonds" were recognizable on the photos despite the very low resolution, so they did not appear in later versions of the photo with the table and the two Police/Customs caps.
This could not have been done without active participation of Italian customs officials and quite likely people like Stephen Meyerhardt, even if the funny statements of the US officials may not be counted as a crime or even a lie.

Of course, I can only speak about the ten "Kennedy Bonds" of one billion (?) each, I have no firm evidence about the 249 other papers. But my trust in them being genuine Federal Reserve Bonds is zero.

Peter, get over it, Kennedy Bonds with a One Billion denomination never existed. The probability that they do exist and that some private company prints commemorative notes looking exactly the same, is zero.

Carsten

[Carsten Wiethoff]

For the ones interested I just checked and the other one Kennedy note is sold. But there are two more available right now:
http://cgi.ebay.com.sg/USA-1000000000-19....m14.l1262

I have no commercial interests in that and I notice, the price increased.
This is worthless paper, but nice to look at.

Carsten

[Peter Lemkin]

In fact, if you go back to some of the early posts and urls on this thread, you'll see that the Italian authorities said they were indistinguishable from REAL bearer bonds [i.e. if fake, they were such good fakes as to be not discernible as such!]. This was an Op of some kind - I think a very complex one by several governments or entities and the fact it was let to 'disappear' down the rabbit hole of 'old stories' without explanation is both interesting and frightening. Among holders of large denomination bonds around the world I don't think they've recovered yet. Someone was sending a message. I'm not sure exactly what. Perhaps, "we get to say which bonds are considered real and which are not: - it has NOTHING to do with which really are and are not!

Your ebay 'bonds' have the word 'commemorative' on them. Such a word was not on the real ones, I believe, and are a dead give-away they are 'paste' rather than diamonds. There were other security features [secret] built in, but known to those who need to know. Did you buy 134 of them? Any idea how popular they were on ebay? Maybe they should stop the Fed and Treasury sales and just sell bonds now on ebay.

Peter,
it is my firm conclusion that the "Kennedy Bonds" pictured on the original italian press release of 4th June are EXACTLY the same as my "ebay bond".
So yes, until proven wrong, I will be affirmative that these "Kennedy Bonds" never existed, they always were commemorative notes, not legal tender and in fact worthless pieces of paper. And everybody, including all persons who ever saw them in Chiasso, Como or wherever they may be now MUST KNOW that they were worthless pieces of paper.
The only "security feature" on it is a nice hologram on the back, displaying "APOLLO II", an eagle symbol and the letters "OK" in different sizes.
I did buy exactly one of them, serial number 071047.
I do not think they are very popular, there were two available from the seller in Singapore and they were available several days after I posted my find and before I finally decided to buy one, just for the fun of it. I am fully aware that paying 30US$ for a worthless piece of paper is silly, but I tend to have my silly moments.
If anyone is interested I can post a superhigh resolution scan of both sides of the note, as soon as I have my scanner installed again, which can be immediately, if necessary.

The whole point I have is that the press release from June 4th was a scam from the beginning and all people involved in this press release and the ridiculous statements regarding these "Kennedy Bonds", like that they were of good paper quality and so on, knew that exactly.
I also believe that it was done for a purpose, maybe warning Japanese/Chinese against under the table sellings, maybe trying to put pressure on the dollar, maybe something different.
The perpetrators realized that the "Kennedy Bonds" were recognizable on the photos despite the very low resolution, so they did not appear in later versions of the photo with the table and the two Police/Customs caps.
This could not have been done without active participation of Italian customs officials and quite likely people like Stephen Meyerhardt, even if the funny statements of the US officials may not be counted as a crime or even a lie.

Of course, I can only speak about the ten "Kennedy Bonds" of one billion (?) each, I have no firm evidence about the 249 other papers. But my trust in them being genuine Federal Reserve Bonds is zero.

Peter, get over it, Kennedy Bonds with a One Billion denomination never existed. The probability that they do exist and that some private company prints commemorative notes looking exactly the same, is zero.

Carsten

I see it seems to also have the words 'non-negotiable' on the top front. Carsten, you miss my point. Whether they are real or not [I'm inclined, but not convinced most of them are real] is NOT the point. The Italian Border Authorities said they seemed real...yet released the 'Japanese' men and released [by some accounts] the 'bonds' too. It is the funny-business in all aspects that is important - even if it was monopoly money - or real - there was a well-staged 'theater' to send strong and covert messages. NOTHING that happened or was said 'fits'! David, who's quite an expert in this field, thinks it possible that there have been secret printings by 'authentic authorities' of bonds....not officially recorded nor acknowledged. Hall of mirrors. Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I still don't understand the lack of media interest - they obviously bought the simplest [and obviously false] version of them being amateurs with monopoly money. If so, they'd be in jail and certain other things said and done, never would have been.

[David Guyatt]

As a example of a false trail being laid by Authorities, which may be the game being played here, I can cite the case of Peter Johnston, an Australian who was arrested in the UK circa 1996 for trying to negotiate a false instrument - namely a god certificate with an apparent value of $7 billion - the smallest of a dozen or so certificates from the same series that Peter had access to.

During the trial phase a Brit newspaper published a story about the certificates warning "the public" not to be taken in by them. The purpose of this Bank of England inspired newspaper story was obviously not to warn the public. After all, which member of the public has an odd $7 billion in their back pocket to purchase a gold certificate?

I always believed that the story was "leaked" to scare off another buyer of another certificate of the same series that was being negotiated at the time. That buyer was a European state owned bank of considerable standing.

Despite various State authorities from the US and UK in particular (but Switzerland also), saying all certificates from this series were fraudulent, two different court cases, one in the US and another in Australia, proved otherwise.

In the US court case, the United States government itself went to considerable time and trouble to become the new legal owner of one certificate, using all sorts of unpleasant persuasion to gain control of it. Had it truly been a fake they could simply have impounded and then destroyed it as they do with fake UD dollar bills. But they didn't. The strove to become the new legal owners. In other words, the underlying certificate had genuine value of some kind.

As I believe I mentioned earlier in this thread, there has been a long running rumour/speculation that JFK reached an agreement with Indonesia's President Soekarno to gain access to certain gold reserves controlled by Soekarno. What this might have been for, if ever proved true, remains a mystery. But it is a long-running evergreen rumour.

Interestingly, the various gold certificates I referenced above come from the very same Soekarno "collection".

Every one of those certificates in that collection contained various and very obvious flaws: transparently wrong dates, misspelling of beneficiary names (sometimes hilariously so) etc etc. They were very obviously fake. Except that because every single certificate contained the same errors it became obvious these had been purposefully built into the certificates to discredit them at first sight, rather than the result of error. And each certificate had anything up to 80 pages of accompanying documents that collectively made up the whole. That's an awful lot of work and printing to put down to a momentous cock-up by an uneducated counterfeiter.

So, my personal view in light of the foregoing, is that absolutely nothing can be taken for granted. When vast sums of money are involved night is day and day is night.

We never know what the game is as we are not on the inside looking out, but on the outside looking in. And the glass window in between is reflective.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

The Italian Border Authorities said they seemed real...

Yes, and that is a crass violation of their professional duties if, as is the case with the "Kennedy Bonds", the fact that they are worthless paper is obvious. They must have done it for a reason, as the two Japanese individuals must have made their journey for a reason.
If, in fact, at least the basic story really happened as described.

EP Heidner seems to think that it could have been an action to attack Venezuelan Banks (http://epheidner.blogspot.com/2009/06/13...-bomb.html).

Anyway, Peter, I think I am in agreement with you that this story was an operation of some sort and I still want to know what really happened and who pulled the strings. I am just affirmative that "Kennedy Bonds" of one billion denomination, as pictured on the press release, are worthless commemorative papers.

Carsten

[Damien Lloyd]

http://www.treasuryscams.gov/images/inst...cecert.jpg

Doesn't the picture above from Treasuryscams.gov look exactly like the bonds on the right hand side of the Kennedy bonds?

Curtesy of Wikinews where a similar conversation is going on there. (I especially enjoyed the comment where someone asks the reader to "Imagine if they turn out to be North Korean agents"

[Magda Hassan]

As a example of a false trail being laid by Authorities, which may be the game being played here, I can cite the case of Peter Johnston, an Australian who was arrested in the UK circa 1996 for trying to negotiate a false instrument - namely a god certificate with an apparent value of $7 billion - the smallest of a dozen or so certificates from the same series that Peter had access to.

During the trial phase a Brit newspaper published a story about the certificates warning "the public" not to be taken in by them.

If god ends up being real I think he could well be worth much more than 7 billion dollars. In the mean time the Brit paper was right to warn the public not to be taken in. A false instrument indeed. :bandit:

[Ed Jewett]

HERE WE GO AGAIN: U.S. AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATE $100 BILLION BOND SEIZURE IN ITALY

September 19th, 2009 This isn’t the incident from June. This is a new one.
Via: Bloomberg:
The U.S. Secret Service is examining more than $100 billion of U.S. government bonds confiscated in northern Italy in August, just two months after $134 billion of allegedly fake securities were seized in a nearby town.
The Secret Service is analyzing whether the bonds taken in August may be counterfeit, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Rome. Italy’s financial police in Varese, north of Milan, arrested two individuals carrying the securities in a briefcase, according to a person involved in the case.
The two men currently are in custody as prosecutors in the town of Busto Arsizio carry out their investigation, the person said. The seized notes include securities with face values of $500 million and $1 billion, Italian daily MF reported today, without saying where it got the information.
“There must be a well-organized group behind these alleged crimes,” Fabio Polimeni, a Milan lawyer specializing in counterfeiting cases, said.
Italian authorities seized U.S. treasuries on June 4 with a face value of more than $134 billion from two Japanese travelers attempting to cross into Switzerland. The two men later disappeared and the case is still under investigation. The U.S. government bonds found in the false bottom of a suitcase carried by the men were fake, a U.S. Treasury spokesman said June 18.
“As financial markets become more sophisticated, creative and bigger, we can expect criminal activity to go with it and it’s happening everywhere,” Livia Oglio, a Milan lawyer, said. “The amount seized is phenomenal.”
Since the beginning of the year the police at border stations in Italy have seized 1.7 million euros of genuine money and bonds, and have confiscated more than 100 million euros of bonds that have been determined to be false, according to an Italian finance police statement in July.
Posted in Covert Operations, Economy | Top Of Page

2 Responses to “HERE WE GO AGAIN: U.S. AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATE $100 BILLION BOND SEIZURE IN ITALY”

1. D Says:
   September 19th, 2009 at 1:50 pm I would say this is less likely covert operations and much more likely the continuing fall of the legitimacy of the Italian and US nation-states coupled with the rise of financial guerilla “tribes” (the mafia in this case) enabled by globalism. See John Robb for more ideas on this topic. (http://globalguerrillas.typepa.....errillas/)
   
2. lagavulin Says:
   September 19th, 2009 at 6:28 pm D, I’d tend to agree with you. But I still haven’t a clue about the motive…I mean who’s buying/redeeming these bonds? Physical bearer-style bonds are about as illiquid as you can get, putting aside the whole claim that there really shouldn’t be any saleable ones left in the marketplace at all. When I read about the Japanese situation, I thought maybe they’d found a serious idiot, but now it’s beginning to look like there may be a more significant underground market for them…but I still don’t get why anyone would want this stuff? How do you actually sell/launder them when there’s no legitimate market?