"Con men stopped entering Vatican bank with €3 trillion of fake bonds"

What...the...hell?
From the Telegraph:

Police in the Vatican have prevented a pair of fraudsters from trying to enter the Vatican bank with a suitcase stuffed with trillions of euros of fake bond certificates 

 

 The middle aged men, an American and a Dutch citizen of Malaysian origin, arrived at the main gate of the Vatican on the morning of March 11, telling Swiss guards they had an appointment at the bank

Two smartly-dressed men armed with forged bond certificates worth trillions of euros have been caught while trying to talk their way into the Vatican's bank, in a spectacularly bungled fraud scheme. 

The middle aged men, an American and a Dutch citizen of Malaysian origin, arrived at the main gate of the Vatican on the morning of March 11, telling Swiss guards they had an appointment at the bank, which has been dogged by scandals over the years.

When bank staff said they had no record of an appointment, the two men said cardinals were expecting them – arousing the suspicions of Vatican police, who called in colleagues from Italy's tax police.

"When we arrived, the Vatican police had opened the men's briefcase to find bond certificates valued in US and Hong Kong dollars, as well as euros, worth €3 trillion," said Lt Col Davide Cardia, a tax police official....MORE

As I mentioned in "So a Sicilian mafioso walks into HSBC…":

In a less sophisticated move, I once had a slightly deranged money guy insist that his $1 Billion of Japanese government bonds were good collateral. Here's one of the issues he proffered, image via Scripophily.com:

Here's a close-up of the engraving:

Certificate Vignette

For the longest time Carl Marks & Co. (or was it Herzog?) made markets in defaulted bonds, for some reason I remember the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes 8's of 1922.
It may have been a different S,C&S issue, I can't find any record of the paper. Off to Zagreb?
[try 'off too, Zagreb' -ed.]
Here's a quick story about this odd corner of the market, from Time Magazine, Aug 8, 1983:

...Foreign bonds are riskier because it is difficult to force payment or arrange settlements. The Wall Street firm Carl Marks & Co. is still fighting a class-action suit against the People's Republic of China to recover losses from Hukuang Railroad bonds issued by the imperial Chinese government in 1911. Last year a U.S. district court in Alabama ordered China to cough up to U.S. bondholders the unpaid principal plus the interest that has been mounting at 5% annually, a total of $41.3 million. Marks also has two suits against the Soviet Union involving $75 million in dollar-denominated bonds issued by the imperial Russian government. The bonds, held by U.S. investors, were repudiated by Moscow after the 1917 revolution. Daniel Collier, a Marks vice president, is not holding his breath. In his firm's offices, one of the Russian bonds is mounted, with a small hammer beside it, along with the words: IN CASE OF SETTLEMENT, BREAK GLASS.
Even if the court actions fail, some of the paper still has value. A Hukuang Railroad bond for 20 gold pounds ($96) that is in good condition is worth from $50 to $100 as a collector's item....