Treasury officials puzzled by loot

[flashl]

By Matt Apuzzo and Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The businessman arrived at the Treasury Department carrying a suitcase stuffed with about $5.2 million. The bills were decomposing, nearly unrecognizable, and he asked to swap them for a cashier's check. He said the money came from Mexico.

Money like this normally arrives in an armored truck or insured shipping container after a bank burns or a vault floods. It doesn't just show up at the visitor's entrance on a Tuesday morning. But the banking habits of Franz Felhaber had stopped making sense to the government long ago.

For the past few years, authorities say, he and his family have popped in and out of U.S. banks, looking to change about $20 million in buried treasure for clean cash.

The money is always the same — decaying $100 bills from the 1970s and 1980s.

It's the story that keeps changing:

• It was an inheritance.

• Somebody dug up a tree and there it was.

• It was found in a suitcase buried in an alfalfa field.

• A relative found a treasure map.

No matter where it came from or who found it, that buried treasure stands to make someone rich.
It could also send someone to jail.

[unhappycamper]

1. IIRC, we were pretty busy in Central America during the 70's and 80's. n/t

[CanonRay]

2. D.B. Cooper?

[flashl]

3. Thought that tied to the $20 bills. nt

[OneBlueSky]

4. I confess . . . it's mine . . . feds, e-mail me for instructions on where to deliver . . . n/t

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