Where's The Money From?

International money conspiracies, real or imaginary, seem to pop up on a regular basis like wild fires in the mountains of Ikaria. A recently uncovered banking ploy involves the rise of the new affluent Russians and their attempts to money launder their Rubles, Euros and U.S. dollars primarily in Cyprus and in Greece. Getting money out of Russia seems to be an ongoing and lucrative activity since the time of the Russian Czars. Wealthy Russians noting the somewhat lax banking laws and regulations in Greece and in Cyprus have established both real and bogus accounts in both countries. It has been rumored, and there is some credence to this rumor from the U.S. Treasury department, that there are more U.S. counterfeit one hundred dollar bills circulating in Russia than anywhere else in the world. This rumor certainly hasn’t escaped notice with our provincial banking institutions on Ikaria.

 

 

Arriving in Ikaria from the States during the summer of 2012, with a handful of one hundred dollar bills fresh from Chase bank, I was anxious to exchange them for Euros before the inevitable summer swoon of the dollar against the Euro occurred. Clutching dearly on to my American passport I entered the diminutive, but highly air-conditioned Alpha bank at Agios Kirikos, capital of Ikaria. I looked around somewhat warily and noticed there was little customer traffic in the bank, so I confidently figured this was going to be an easy in easy out banking transaction. Then I quickly recalled past banking experiences and remembered, not too fondly, there is no such thing as easy in easy out in Ikaria.

Immediately, as I handed the teller my freshly minted hundred dollar bills, she looked up at me with a suspicious glare undoubtedly trying to figure out what ruse I was trying to perpetrate. To ease the situation I promptly produced my American passport which she grabbed with both hands and proceeded to closely examine the outside cover. Once satisfied, she opened it to the identification page glancing at my prison mug shot type photo, then at me during what seemed to be several uneasy moments. Finally, she picked up the hundred dollar bills, rubbed each one gently between her thumb and forefinger, then she held each one up to the light examining them all for any tell tale sign that they might be counterfeit. Suddenly, with one harried scoop she picked up the bills along with my passport, stood up, turned and walked to a copy machine situated at the back of the bank. In no time she zeroxed the main pages of my passport along with both sides of the one hundred dollar bills. Returning nonchalantly to her desk she proceeded to copy down by hand all the serial numbers of the bills onto the official exchange form. Giving me a copy of the form, she then stapled all the zeroxed pages to the exchange document and filed them away, along with the hundred dollar bills in a large coffee stained manila folder. Seeing the muddled expression on my face she calmly reassured me, “We have to do this because of all the fake hundred dollar bills coming out of Russia.” Nodding my head with approval I understood the ramifications to a small bank on Ikaria if it was to get stuck with a manila folder full of counterfeit one hundred dollar bills.

So, thanks to this new crop of Russian counterfeiters , next time I try to exchange my American dollars who knows what the bank might require for such a transaction, fingerprints, eye scans, signed affidavits, oaths of perpetual truthfulness, my computer passwords? The answer seems to be ditch the U.S. hundred dollar bills and enter the 21 st. century by just carrying an ATM card, but this being Ikaria I am left wondering what are the chances that any one of the four ATM machines on Ikaria might be working on the day I need one?