Toxic banknotes poison police

[emad]

Richard Luscombe
Sunday February 13, 2005
The Observer

Mobsters may be using biotechnology to give new meaning to the phrase dirty money, fear FBI agents investigating a suspected drugs operation in Pennsylvania.

Detectives are awaiting laboratory test results on a $250,000 (£134,000) stash of banknotes seized from a car in Philadelphia this month after two police officers who made the arrest became ill.

One required hospital treatment after breaking into a sealed plastic bag to count the money, thought to be the proceeds from a drugs deal involving the Russian mob. Crime experts are concerned gangsters have found a novel way of protecting cash during transit by coating it with bacteria.

A leaked preliminary report indicated that the money might have been contaminated with toxins from the bacterium staphylococcus, which can attack the respiratory tract and skin and cause a variety of infections including pneumonia and meningitis in severe cases.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1411810,00.html

[amazona]

1. oh come on like that's so believable

Hello, mobsters are not immune to staph. Why would they contaminate their own money?

A friend of my mom's got staph from having breast cancer biopsy and lost breast, leg, and arm. Maybe the mob got to her doctor while they were at it.

Staph, sadly, is everywhere, and we don't seem to understand why it hits so randomly.

They'll have to show much better proof than this for me to swallow this particular claim.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[bin.dare]

6. my feelings exactly, ...

... it is Sunday and time for the Sunday Observer fluff stuff.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. back right after 9/11

I was doing paranoid mind-games about how "they" might attack the infrastructure and poisoning the money system seemed like it had lots of possibilities. I think there are technical issues that make it unlikely though.

Another good one was putting contact poisons on gas pump handles. Kind of an ironic twist considering that this is an oil war.

Who here approached their mail boxes with trepidation when the anthrax letters were a happening thing?

After the anthrax letters stopped and the apparent threat of follow on attacks died down, I stopped worrying about it.

[R Hickey]

3. I will test your paper money for bacteria for free.

Don't take a chance with your health!

Send me any suspicious wads of bills you find and I will test them for you.

Any bills found to be contaminated will be destroyed by my company at no expense to you...did I say we also test for radioactivity...

[burn the bush]

4. staph is everywhere. It's more likely that the money had staph from

being stashed someplace icky than to have been intentionally coated with staph.

[KittyWampus]

5. Is The Government Intentionally Starting Urban Myths?

[shanti]

7. does a bear....

well, you know the rest!

[Fovea]

8. Are you a DARE Graduate?

I am serious. I have noted the
DARE kids as adults sometimes display
frightening credulity, even in the face
of contradictory evidence.

The others who reject the conditioning
tend toward having at least one bad
pass with drug addiction.