Thursday, April 11, 2013

1934 $100,000 Dollars scam

A reader asked me via email about a $100,000 US Bond. Asking me if his notes is genuine or fake. He maybe had been reading about the story of the $100,000 US 1934 Gold Certificate in my blog. He said he bought this notes from a collector friend. He also enclosed his $100,000 dollars notes that you can see below. I am 100% sure that this notes is a fake. The 1934 $100,000 Dollars scam has been in  Malaysia since 2006 and many "investor" bought their piece from Philippines and Indonesia.

100000 dollars

$100,000 Dollars Banknote feature:
The $100,000 bill was released only as a Gold Certificate in the series of 1934. Woodrow Wilson's image was shown on the obverse, while its reverse contained the "100,000" denomination printed in several places in orange- or gold-colored ink.

This 100,000 Dollar Gold Certificate is the highest U. S. denomination. Only 42,000 were printed. They were used only for transactions between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. These notes were never issued for public circulation. When the Government stopped using them, most were destroyed. Only three are known to have survived. One is housed at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, one at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and one at the Smithsonian Institute. It's illegal for a private person to own one of these notes, and none has ever been in private hands.

Why I am saying this is a scam?
  • These Series 1934 gold certificates (of denominations $100, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000) were issued after the gold standard was repealed and gold was compulsorily confiscated by order of President Franklin Roosevelt on March 9, 1933 (see United States Executive Order 6102), and thus were used only for intra-government transactions and not issued to the public. Of these, the $100,000 is an odd bill in that it was printed only as this Series 1934 gold certificate. This series was discontinued in 1940. It was issued by the Treasury Department of the US to the various Federal Reserve Banks to evidence gold deposits held at the Treasury that were equivalent to credits between the Treasury and the Banks.
  • If this thing is for real, why the seller sold it for a cheap price? The notes/bonds should worth at least 1 million dollars for a single note. Its a 1934 gold certificates notes.
  • The quality of the note look like a low quality counterfeit.
  • I received hundreds of email before offering me the same bonds/notes in my email. Even your email is in my spam box, automatically. I only realized about this question when you sms me about it. A Nigerian guy also called me before asking me if I want to buy cheap US notes. You can also read about 1934 $100,000 Bill scam in US Federal Reserve website:
Discovered 1930s Notes and Bonds
July 2005

The Federal Reserve is aware of several scams involving high denomination Federal Reserve notes and bonds, often in denominations of 100 million or 500 million dollars, dating back to the 1930s, usually 1934. In each of these schemes, fraudulent instruments are claimed to be part of a long-lost supply of recently discovered Federal Reserve notes or bonds.

Fraudsters often falsely claim that the purported Federal Reserve notes or bonds that they hold are somehow very special and are not known to the public because they are so secret. Fraudsters have attempted to sell these worthless instruments, or to redeem or exchange them at banks and other financial institutions, or to secure loans or obtain lines of credit using the fictitious instruments as collateral.

The Federal Reserve has never issued any bonds or notes with coupons attached. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is not aware of any currency or debt stockpile of large denomination Federal Reserve notes from the 1930s and warns that any institution that pays out on such a claim does so at its own risk.

It should also be noted that the largest denomination of currency ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000 Series 1934 Gold Certificate featuring the portrait of President Wilson. These notes were printed from December 18, 1934, through January 9, 1935, and were issued by the Treasurer of the United States to Federal Reserve Banks only against an equal amount of gold bullion held by the Treasury Department. The notes were used only for official transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and were not circulated among the general public.


If the offer is too good to be true, it most probably is a scam. Hopefully you don't loose a huge amount of money buying this banknotes.

Source: Wikipedia, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.