Brother, can you spare $500 mil?
If you're gonna go out, go big. Well, at least that's what Darrell Lee Johnson allegedly thought before the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hooked him up on Friday. The 78-year-old San Marino man stands accused of possessing and attempting to sell fictitious financial obligations, namely fake $500,000,000 bills.
The half-billion bills appeared to be Federal Reserve notes printed in 1934 and bearing the picture of Pres. William McKinley. The only problem is, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing didn't make notes of that denomination, not even close. The bills, used for transaction between Fed banks, only went up to $100,000 and weren't publicly circulated. Johnson and his confederates allegedly tried to trick investors into taking the notes by weathering them to make them appear older.
“You would think the half billion dollar denomination would be a dead give away that these notes are fake, but people are nevertheless taken in,” said Deputy Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Silliman, in an unusally funny press release. “For investors, the bottom line needs to be, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
ICE says it caught Johnson with close to 500 phony notes, both at home and at his Wilshire Boulevard office. It also grabbed his associates, Renato Gaza, a 60-year-old from San Diego and Dallas resident Victoria Hoffman, 48. Johnson appeared in federal court on Friday, when a judge set his bond at 100 grand (no word on whether he attempted to post it with a really old looking $100,000 bill).
Agents are still looking for anyone who got caught up in the scheme and would like 'em to call 1-866-DHS-2ICE with any info.
Oh yeah, the best part of this? Johnson's job: attorney-at-law. So, if he's guilty of his alleged crime (and, as always, he's innocent until proven otherwise), he really shoulda known better.