Andrei Kurov sat on his flight from London for Moscow believing that his retirement fund had been safely tucked away by the two Irishmen in Dublin. There was no way they would attempt to double cross him knowing his terrible reputation.
At that same moment three men were assisting the authorities in Dublin Friday after police from both sides of the Atlantic announced they had uncovered an attempted fraud involving $30 million in fake U.S. Treasury bonds.
The three from the Ireland and Britain were arrested Thursday after a week long operation conducted by the Irish police and a U.S. Secret Service agent detached to the City of London financial district. A fourth person was understood to have left the country.
The police struck after the team allegedly deposited fake Treasury bonds in a Dublin bank. Sergeant Padraigh Kelly of the Dublin police would not name the institution involved, saying only that it was a part of a major bank. Other sources identified it as the Irish Union Bank.
The bonds, purported to date from the 1970’s, but were probable produced by a sophisticated computer controlled printing machine, normally only found in plants that printed security paper the police said. They were being examined by U.S. agents.
“There’s nothing genuine about them. They’re fraudulent documents, probably made by real professionals.” said Jim Gallagher, Secret Service attaché at the U.S. Embassy.
The bonds would have probably been used to obtain smaller sums “from investors unaware of the authenticity of the documents,” Detective Inspector Seamus O’Rially of the Dublin police said.
Frauds involving U.S. currency were common, Gallagher announced adding that the very same day police had seized a quantity of counterfeit one hundred dollar bills in Limerick City, believed to be part of a much larger quantity, however bonds of the type involved in this scam were uncommon.
A spokesman for the Dublin police said the amount of money at stake was quite astonishing. Unofficial sources said that the police had been alerted on the basis of information from Scotland Yard in London.
Forty police and specialists had participated during the surveillance and arrest of the suspects. The police reported that criminals often tried to use the fake bonds as a guaranty to borrow money or to obtain an advance on the interest from this type of obligation.
Two Limerick men and an Englishman named Harry Rossiter from Liverpool were believed to be amongst those being held at Mountjoy. They were said to be helping police with their inquiries.
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