Investigators Seize $6trn of Fake U.S. Bonds

The discovery was part of Operation Vulcania – an investigation led by Italian authorities, with co-operation from the U.S. Secret Service and technical experts, into organised crime. The operation has been called “the biggest for this type of investigation” by the head of the prosecutor’s office in the southern Italian city of Potenza, Giovanni Colangelo.

The bonds were discovered hidden inside false compartments in three reinforced metal crates in Zurich, and the face value amounts to more than a third of U.S. national debt.

“These fictitious bonds were apparently part of a plan to defraud some Swiss banks,” the U.S. embassy in Rome said in a statement.

Operation Vulcania began as an investigation into southern Italian mafia clans, and eventually led to the discovery of the bonds in Switzerland inside the metal containers – which also included a forgery of the Treaty of Versailles.

Eight people have been arrested in Italy – all of whom are Italian nationals. Among them is Rocco Menzella, the 69-year-old former mayor of the southern Italian town of Montescaglioso.

It is not the first time that fake U.S. bonds have been seized by Italian authorities: in September 2009, Italian police arrested two Filipino nationals at Milan’s airport carrying $116bn in forged bonds. That arrest came just months after two Japanese nationals were arrested on the Italian-Swiss border in possession of $134bn worth of fake bonds.

Read the full story here.