Eight people in southern Japan forked over ¥150 million (US$1.27 million) to a man who promised huge returns involving fake US$1 million bills and then disappeared with their money, a news report said yesterday.
The US Treasury does not make US$1 million bills.
The eight, including three who have filed for personal bankruptcy because of the huge outlays involved in the scam, are considering filing a criminal complaint with police, the national daily Asahi Shimbun said.
Police in Kumamoto, 900km southwest of Tokyo, could not immediately comment on the report.
The unidentified investors first heard of the US$1 million note from a 52-year-old construction material company president in early 2003, according to Asahi, citing several investors.
Big money
The president told them about a ``rare'' US$1 million bill that was for sale in Chengdu, China, and invited them to pool money to buy several such notes promising a return 10 times of their investment, the report said.
The investors were told that the US government printed the bills in 1928 to allow Americans in China to bring their assets back home, Asahi said.
The president showed them a thousand of the US$1 million notes featuring a portrait of George Washington at a Tokyo hotel, according to Asahi.
The investors were told the notes could be exchanged for smaller denominations in Hong Kong, but no exchange ever took place, it reported.
"We continued to fork over our money because we were promised, `You'll get several hundreds of millions of yen in three days,' or `You'll get that amount in a week,''' one investor was quoted as saying.
By last March, the eight had handed over a total of ¥150 million, but the company president said that the bills would be exchanged by the end of April and he disappeared, according to the report.
The largest US denomination ever produced was US$100,000 between 1934 and 1935, according to the Treasury.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS