WTF | July 30, 2008 | 6 comments

Dude approaches the Treasury with $5.2 million in decaying bills

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/28/AR2008072800240.html

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Christof
The businessman arrived at the Treasury Department carrying a suitcase stuffed with about $5.2 million. The bills were decomposing, nearly unrecognizable, and he asked to swap them for a cashier's check. He said the money came from Mexico.

Money like this normally arrives in an armored truck or insured shipping container after a bank burns or a vault floods. It doesn't just show up at the visitor's entrance on a Tuesday morning. But the banking habits of Franz Felhaber had stopped making sense to the government long ago.

For the past few years, authorities say, he and his family have popped in and out of U.S. banks, looking to change about $20 million in buried treasure for clean cash.

The money is always the same _ decaying $100 bills from the 1970s and 1980s.

It's the story that keeps changing:

_It was an inheritance.

_Somebody dug up a tree and there it was.

_It was found in a suitcase buried in an alfalfa field.

_A relative found a treasure map.
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    WTF,   Random,   Money,   Currency
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    WTF,  Not News,  Random,  Money,  4 more
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6 comments // Dude approaches the Treasury with $5.2 million in decaying bills

  • Robroy1
    • 0
      Robroy1  

    • I hope I see the follow up story. I am curious as to the story he will come up with and if Uncle Sam will believe him and pay him without a legal battle.

    • 3 years ago
  • vardy1690
    • 0
      vardy1690  

    • cliff notes: He got a couple 100,000 through money transfers, but the bulk of the money (over 5.2 million) is in government hands right now and he will be able to claim it in a couple of weeks but he has to come up with a sound story as to where it came from and how he got it.

    • 3 years ago
  • joefac3
  • Kynmore
    • 0
      Kynmore  

    • The truth is he inherited a treasure map that led him to a suitcase that was buried under a tree in the middle of an alfalfa field. I mean, seriously, who hasn't had this happen to them?

    • 3 years ago
  • Psychedelic
  • JohnA
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