Meanwhile, in Nebraska..."Man tried to open account at Lincoln bank with $1M bill"

From the Lincoln Journal Star, Oct. 29:

A man tried to use a fake $1 million bill to open a checking account with the Pinnacle Bank branch in Havelock on Monday, a Lincoln police spokeswoman said.

Staff at the 61st Street and Havelock Avenue branch reported the encounter they had with the man because it was strange, Officer Angela Sands said....MORE

The Associated Press added the word to their headline because the AP thinks people are idiots:

Nebraska man tries to open bank account with fake $1M bill.

Drawing the distinction between this incident and the real million dollar bills in circulation.
All of which is reminiscent of a couple tales we have chronicled:

Man Attempts To Cash A Billion-Dollar U.S. Bearer Bond In Florida

And as related in "So a Sicilian mafioso walks into HSBC…"

From FT Alphaville:
Cracking story on Bloomberg, straight out of the annals of couldn’t make it up if you tried, and involving the Sicilian Mafia, Venezuelan bonds and a host of global banks (emphasis ours):
May 22 (Bloomberg) — Italian prosecutors today broke up an international ring led by the Sicilian Mafia that tried to use fake Venezuelan bonds to obtain credit lines totaling $2.2 billion from HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and unidentified British banks, according to an arrest warrant.... 

I had a somewhat similar experience:

...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