BlindLoop

5 Biggest Frauds in the History

December 5, 2009 Corporate

Fake US Treasury Bonds
The fraud was committed by former Scotland Yard official Graham Halksworth. He authenticated US treasury bonds of worth $ 2.5 trillion claiming that bonds have been issued by US government in 1934 to help nationalist in China but the plane carrying the bonds crashed and bonds were later discovered by local tribesmen.

According to Halksworth bonds remained with tribe for over 60 years and were handed over to some soldier and then brought to the London bank.

The fraud was uncovered when two men tried to pass bonds of worth $25 million at the Toronto bank and a bank official noticed the bonds bore the word dollar instead of dollars. Another reason of bonds being fake was, bonds were printed with an ink jet printer; which wasn’t invented at the time of issuing of bonds.

Ponzi scheme
Charles Ponzi an Italian by birth migrated to US and started a scheme which promises investors great returns within 45 days. He promised to double investor’s money and initially paid returns from the money investors invested.

He trapped many people and was caught and jailed in 1920.

$50 billion fraudster Bernard Madoff

Mr Madoff was one of Wall Street’s most-respected investment managers, but all the respect he got vanished after his confession about his business that it was nothing but a big lie. All the investment returns were fake and old clients were paid from the money of new ones. According to his personal estimates losses were of $50 billion.
Banks, charities, billionaires everyone was victim of this breathtaking fraud.

Parmalat

Parmalat was Italy’s largest food company. The company was shut under $ 27 billion in debt after uncovering a financial scandal that its $ 10 billion declared assets are disappeared. Later investigation revealed that about $17 billion of funds have disappeared and can’t be tracked.

Portuguese Bank Note Crisis

Alves dos Reis was the mastermind behind the plot. He masked himself as an official of Bank of Portugal having legal right to negotiate loan for Portuguese colony of Angola in Africa.
He conned the currency printer Waterlow and Sons Ltd. of London to print Portuguese banknote telling them that project is a highly secret project of Bank of Portugal. He created his own banks and even bought shares in Bank of Portugal. The drama was unfolded when a bank teller found the different notes with same serial numbers. According to estimates Reis managed to launder 1% of Portugal’s GDP at that time

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