UK man jailed over $2.5 trillion fraud

[emad]

From BBC News:

A former forensic scientist has been jailed for six years for his role in a $2.5 trillion scam. Graham Halksworth, 69, from Greater Manchester, helped pioneer fingerprint evidence before getting involved in one of the world's biggest potential frauds. He worked with former Yugoslav spy Michael Slamaj, who runs an engineering firm in Vancouver, Canada, to perpetrate the scam, which involved bogus US Treasury bonds. The men were convicted last month of conspiracy to defraud, after the false documents - carrying a face value greater than the world's gold stocks - were used by a range of international criminals to try to get credit. Halksworth was sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court, London, on Friday.

At an earlier hearing the court heard the scam began to unravel when two men tried to cash $25m worth of the fake bonds at a Canadian bank in February 2001. Halksworth, of Staley Road, Mossley, was caught after a simple spelling mistake, when some of the high denomination bonds were spotted with "dollar" on them, instead of "dollars". At their trial both men insisted the bonds were genuine, claiming the US government issued them to Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist government in the 1940s in a secret attempt to undermine the communist revolution in China.

The jury heard the plane carrying the bonds crashed on the Filipino island of Mindanao in 1948. Slamaj then said the bonds were recovered by locals, before they were handed to him by a tribal elder. However, Detective Inspector Roger Cook later told the court the bonds were fake, produced on an inkjet printer with spelling mistakes and included zip codes - not introduced in the US until 1963. He said the defendants had been "corrupted by greed" and had taken advantage of people's gullibility.

Halksworth was arrested in May 2001, when City of London Police were tipped off by the Hong Kong authorities after two Australians were arrested with bonds and a certificate signed by Halksworth. Slamaj was then detained in March 2002, when a London solicitor tipped off police when he became suspicious about a transaction he had been asked to broker for him. After they were convicted Judge William Birtles warned them to expect "lengthy custodial sentences".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3229711.stm

[SlavesandBulldozers]

1. 2.5 trillion? 6 years?

when you sell 3 grams of crack in Florida you get 30 years. You steal 2.5 trillion you get 6 years. I'm guessing this guy's not black.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. Heck, with that kind of cash - you could buy anyone - no ?

. . . and DON'T for a minute they found ALL of his money ! ! !

:dunce:

[LibLabUK]

3. umm

He didn't steal anything. He conspired to steal (infact, defraud). There's a difference.

Also, he was tried in the UK, so the penalty for crack dealing in florida has no bearing.