• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

12/28/2009

The Austrian National Analysis Center (NAC) examined the 493 banknotes Hölzen and B. had in their possession. Of those notes, 295 were originally $1 bills. Counterfeiters increased the face value of the bills to $1 million, simply by adding six zeros. The counterfeiting was done "very expensively and professionally," say the specialists. According to the NAC, the remaining $1 million bills that were in Hölzen's possession were complete counterfeits.

The Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), Germany's federal police force, is all too familiar with the phenomenon of $1 million banknotes. Since 2003 they have been turning up in Germany more often.

Most are presented to commercial banks for exchange, complete with forged certificates of authenticity. Last June, Italy's financial police found US treasury bonds worth the staggering sum of $134 billion in the luggage of two Japanese nationals. The bonds were counterfeit but they were not well made.

Meanwhile Hölzen claims that, right up until his arrest, he was convinced of the authenticity of the bills and that this conviction -- that the bills were real -- was the only reason he continued to become more involved with the two men. At the beginning of January in 2009, he and van den B. traveled to the Swiss town of Rohrschach. There they met with a Spanish businessman, Cristian C., who they hoped would turn the "certificates" into real money. In a café, the Dutchman handed the Spaniard an envelope containing 490 bills, each denominated at $1 million. Hölzen sat in on the meeting; He paid close attention and then obtained a receipt for the transaction.

The Plan was to Make Handsome Profits for Everyone

Investigators believe that Cristian C. wanted to have the bills examined by a bank so that he could then use them as security against a loan. Hölzen later told authorities that Cristian C. had planned to use the loan to speculate on a grand scale and rake in handsome profits for everyone involved.

But the Spaniard failed to keep his alleged promise. He was unable to use the banknotes as security for a loan or exchange them for currency. He stopped calling the two men and answered their calls less and less frequently. Van den B. and Hölzen became nervous, fearing that C. was going to make off with the banknotes.

On Jan. 21 Hölzen and B. drove to Switzerland a second time. They had an appointment to meet with Cristian C. in Rohrschach at 12:45 p.m. But the Spaniard left them waiting.

Hölzen and B. were in a hurry. They had an appointment at the Volksbank Riezlern, a bank in the Kleinwalsertal area in Austria to keep that they had made days earlier. Riezlern is a popular tourist destination for skiers and hikers. But additionally because the valley is only accessible from Germany, used to have a special tax free status and because many Germans deposit their savings in Austrian bank accounts, it also boasts a thriving banking scene.

'This Stuff is Worthless'

Hölzen was familiar with Volksbank Riezlern from his days as an attorney and he planned to convert the certificates into cash there. He was determined not to share any of the proceeds with the German tax authorities.

When Cristian C. finally appeared, more than an hour late, he handed the two Germans a large brown envelope that contained the banknotes. Hölzen signed a receipt but no one counted the bills. "This stuff is worthless," C. claims to have said -- even though Hölzen and B. refused to believe him.

At the bank in Kleinwalsertal, the two Germans were met by one of the bank's employees, Jutta B. The men were impatient and anxious to unload the supposedly historic bills. They wanted the bank to determine their current market value, then credit the amount to the accounts they intended to open in Riezlern that day. That was the plan anyway.

The two men placed five $1 million banknotes on Jutta B.'s desk. "I had the feeling that they believed that the securities and the money were absolutely real," Jutta B. later told the police. But because the notes on her desk were unfamiliar to her Jutta B. was hesitant. Noticing her reaction, Hölzen and B. pulled out more bills: two bundles, one containing 99 and the other containing 100 banknotes. The notes came to a total of $199 million. The rest remained in the suitcase. Jutta B. excused herself and left her office. She called the bank's headquarters in Vienna where a colleague told her that he did not believe that $1 million bills existed. It was at that stage that someone also called the police.

Did They Really Think the Money was Real?

The eventual case, when it comes to court, will revolve around whether the two Germans believed that the banknotes were real or whether they were deliberately trying to unload counterfeit bills. The investigators claim that by the time they reached the bank in Riezlern, Hölzen and B. "had come to terms with the possibility that the banknotes could be counterfeit." They also say that Hölzen and B. must have figured that the employees at Volksbank Riezlern would not detect the fraud and would "credit their accounts despite the fact that the bills were worthless."

Hölzen, and B., who is in detention awaiting trial, dispute the investigators' claims. They insist that they are not dim-witted enough to have walked into a bank with half a billion dollars in counterfeit money. For this reason, the former attorney plans to tell the trial judge about what, in his opinion, are serious mistakes made during the investigation and why he thinks the case is tainted by legal contradictions.

Hölzen cannot expect any support from van den B., the man who allegedly obtained the counterfeit bills from unknown sources in the first place. The 74-year-old Dutchman, who has avoided being charged because authorities have been unable to find enough evidence linking him to the crime, will appear as a witness for the prosecution. He claims that he had no knowledge whatsoever of Hölzen's and B.'s excursion to Kleinwalsertal.

• Back
• 1
• | 2

• Part 1: Got Change For A Million Silver Dollars?
• Part 2: Just Add Six Zeros And You Have a Million Dollars