Uncle John’s True Crime by Bathroom Readers’ Institute

where they were surprised to find $250,000,037,000 in cash. The $37,000 was real; the $250 billion was in the form of 250 billion-dollar notes. The bills were dated 1934, bore the likeness of President Grover Cleveland, and were stained yellowish to make them appear old. Zigetta said he found them in a cave in the Philippines. (There is, of course, no such thing as a billion-dollar bill.)
    The Contraband: Human bones
    The Story: In June 2007, Indian police announced that the discovery of a “bone warehouse” near the Bhutanese border had led to the uncovering of an extensive international bone-smuggling operation. The smugglers claimed that the bones had come from bodies meant for cremation in the Indian city of Varanasi. “During questioning they confessed that there is great demand for femurs that are hollow, to be used as musical instruments,” officer Ravinder Nalwa told Reuters, “and skulls as bowls for drinking during religious ceremonies.” He said the bones were headed to Buddhist monasteries in Bhutan and Japan.
    The majority of home burglaries occur during the daytime .
    The Contraband: Critters
    The Story: The smuggling of wildlife isn’t uncommon, but in March 2007, a woman attempting to travel from Egypt to Gaza was caught taking it to bizarre heights. “The woman looked strangely fat,” border spokes-woman Maria Telleria said, prompting guards to call for a strip search. According to Telleria, the female guard who performed the search “screamed and ran out of the room.” The woman had three 20-inch-long crocodiles taped to her torso. She said she planned to sell the crocs to a zoo.
    The Contraband: Cows
    The Story: In India the majority Hindu population considers the cow a sacred animal. In bordering Bangladesh, the majority Muslim population considers the cow a food source. That may explain the huge cow-smuggling trade between the two nations: In 2006 more than 400,000 cows made their way from Indian villages to Bangladeshi dinner tables. In 2007 the Indian government came up with a plan to stop the trade: All cows living in villages near the border are now required to get photo IDs. “A bit strange it may sound,” said Somesh Goyal, a top Indian Border Security Force officer, “but the photo identity cards of cows and their owners is helping.”
    The Contraband: Tobacco
    The Story: In 2001 Indiana State Police arrested John Hester, 51, for smuggling tobacco into Pendleton Correctional Facility. The operation was troubling for two reasons: 1) Hester worked at the prison slaughterhouse, where he was in charge of acquiring cattle to be consumed by inmates; 2) he smuggled the tobacco into the facility in plastic bags...in the cows’ rectums. “It was stuffed into the cow,” said Indiana State Police Detective Gregory Belt, “and then the cow was brought onto the floor and it was removed.”
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LOUIS LOUIS
    World’s most counterfeited items: Louis Vuitton purses. The company estimates that only 1 percent of “Louis Vuitton” purses are authentic.
    According to insiders, some Mafia bosses are appointed through yearly elections .

DID THE PUNISHMENT
FIT THE CRIME?
    They don’t give judges awards for creativity—but maybe they should. Do these guys deserve a prize? You be the judge .
    T HE DEFENDANT: Edward Bello, 60, a vending machine repairman and small-time crook
    THE CRIME: Conspiracy to use stolen credit cards, with which he racked up more than $26,000 in charges
    THE PUNISHMENT: Federal District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein sentenced Bello to 10 months of home detention... with no TV . The tube-free environment would “create a condition of silent introspection that I consider necessary to induce the defendant to change his behavior.” Despite a 30-year history of committing petty crimes, Bello has never spent a day in prison and says he’s grateful to the judge for sparing him from the slammer one more time. But he’s appealing the no-TV sentence anyway, claiming that it’s a