Seems like a pretty small-time shipment to be a government operation. They could just as easily have shipped $3M or $300M.
I'm sure we just caught a small sample. I wonder how much of this stuff they could be passing around overseas among banks.
Three million dollars’ worth arrived on another ship in Newark two months later
I think it's supposed to be $300,000,000.
There is a comma after the second set of zeros.
We inspect 5% of containers, so one container with 300K is the spillage of running dozens of containers into the US. Most counterfeits are used overseas, it is so bad that most foreign merchants will not take a US 100 dollar bill, and these are the ones in proximity to Us FOBs and bases.
I think it would depend on the uses of it. If the attempt is to undermine the value of the currency then yeah 300k is small time, however if the attempt is to make a profit or to use it as real currency at face value then the perps probably would rather keep the production at a fairly unnoticeable level.
But, I wonder how many times they've done this and not gotten caught.
This shows the wisdom of keeping bank note denominations relatively small. The Europeans have a 500-euro note that is worth about $600, and therefore six times easier to smuggle than the same amount in Benjy's.
-ccm
I suspect printing the notes is the easy part. Getting them in circulation is the difficult part. There are few places you can put down millions of dollars in cash, and not get a few questions. Even if not at the time, the investigation would eventually get back to the source.
So you would need to spread out the risk, and wash those notes all over the place. I had heard one of the hardest task the mob has, is converting "dirty" money to "clean" money. Which is why they establish front businesses that appear on the surface clean, but are really just a way to clean up their money.
Trying to pass millions of dollars in the United States would be difficult. Which is why most of that sort of money is passed in Europe or third world countries.
Besides, this may have just been a test run.