Suckers pay for fake $1,000,000 bill

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        $1 million bill scam       

Eight Japaneseinvestors pooled their money to buy incredibly rare US$1 million notesfrom 1928 that they believed could be resold for ten times what theypaid. Over several years, the men paid out more than 150 million yen(US$1.27 million) to the president of a construction materials companywho was brokering the deal. Last March though, just a month before theywere told they'd receive the $1 million notes, the president of thecompany disappeared. Worse, it turns out that the largest US bill everprinted was a $100,000 note. From the Associated Press:

The investors were told that the U.S. government printedthe bills in 1928 when Chiang Kai-shek was still in power in China toallow Americans to bring their assets back home, Asahi said.

The president showed them a thousand of the $1 million notesfeaturing a portrait of George Washington at a Tokyo hotel, accordingto Asahi. The investors were told the notes could be exchanged forsmaller denominations in Hong Kong, but no exchange ever took place, itreported.

"We continued to fork over 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.