Fake $1B bond yields 2nd arrest

When a South Florida man’s friend sent him photos of a $1 billion bond earlier this year, investigators said, Michael Ifrah quickly pronounced it was genuine.

Ifrah wrote back to his pal that "the bond was real and it was more real than any other bond in the world," federal prosecutors said.

But that assurance was about as credible as the counterfeit bond, prosecutors told a judge Monday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

"This case is about two defendants trying to cash an unbelievable amount of money — a $1 billion bond. Few people have actually seen a billion-dollar bond, and that is because these bonds do not legally exist," prosecutor Daniel Cervantes wrote in court records.

Hugo Barrios Brecino, 50, of Venezuela, and Ifrah, 54, of Aventura, are facing federal charges they illegally tried to cash in or sell off the fake bond.

Barrios Brecino, who was arrested in August, is expected to plead guilty to at least one related charge Tuesday, court records show.

Ifrah, who was arrested last week, pleaded not guilty to federal charges Monday. A judge ruled he will remain jailed while the charges are pending. Ifrah has family cash and joint U.S. and Venezuelan citizenship, which could make it impossible to extradite him if he fled, the judge ruled.

Ifrah, an international consultant to small businesses who previously owned a kosher market in Hollywood, was initially questioned and released by the U.S. Secret Service when he and Barrios Brecino attended an August meeting with a financial adviser and an undercover agent in Fort Lauderdale.

The financial adviser tipped off agents that he had been asked to cash a fake bond, authorities said.

The men asked for $500 million to be deposited in an investment account and $500 million to be placed in a bank account, both controlled by Barrios Brecino, authorities said. The men also discussed selling the bond for less than its face value to someone else who would assume the risk of verifying it, prosecutors said.

Ifrah planned to testify against Barrios Brecino if he went to trial, but prosecutors said they decided to arrest Ifrah after they uncovered evidence he was much more involved in trying to cash the bond than investigators initially thought.

Ifrah’s lawyers said their client did nothing illegal and thought the bond belonged to "some powerful industrial group in Colombia."

The bond, supposedly issued in 1934, was an obvious fake and a Google search would have made that clear, agents said.

It was printed on an inkjet printer and appeared to contain a security thread — two technologies that were not invented until long after 1934, prosecutors said. The fake also appeared to be issued by the Federal Reserve, not the Treasury, and featured a portrait of Grover Cleveland, who was president in the 1880s and 1890s.

The largest bond ever issued by the U.S. was $1 million in the 1970s, according to court records.