$134 BILLION dollars - in a SUITCASE

Billion, mind you - not million. $134,000,000,000 worth of securities found in a suitcase by customs agents. And not in Zimbabwe - in Italy! The smugglers were Japanese, heading toward Switzerland:

It is either the biggest smuggling operation in history -- or a fraud of equally impressive proportions. Italian customs officials stopped two men at the Swiss border carrying bonds worth $134 billion (95.8 billion euros).

The two men, reported to be more than 50 years old, were traveling by train from Italy to Switzerland on June 3. Financial police at a control on the border found the documents tucked inside a closed section at the bottom of their suitcase, separate from their personal items. According to their statement, the men's luggage included 249 government bonds worth $500 million and 10 so-called Kennedy bonds, each worth a billion dollars.

More at Der Spiegel. Absolutely fascinating (if real). Who is behind smuggling at the level of hundreds of billions???