How Did They Make A Million Dollars Off The Kuwait RV?

RamblerNash wrote:Lots of facts and stuff...

Sam I Am wrote:I checked and their largest note at the time was a 20, so if you divide 14,409 by 20 you still have 720 notes.  That's a lot to be stuffing into your pockets.  Not bloody likely, is it?

Sam I Am wrote:My bad

Oh? I took it as you were pointing out what you had to have and just using that number.

14,409 KWD is still quite a bit to carry and it would of yielded $49,999.23 USD, less any fees, but gets closer to some kind of reality. Not all the notes would have been 20's, so there would have been more to have been put into your pockets when you walked into the bank. At that time Denominations were 1/4, 1/2, 1, 5, 10 and 20 Dinar.

This was also at a time before the internet. Anything about buying up the Kuwait Dinar, because it's going to revalue after Saddam got kicked out, wasn't posted on forums or hyped up from the currency dealers to make a profit. Most folks were fleeing the country with what they had on them and what was in the banks was looted by Saddam and brought back to Iraq.

Like so many of the bank stories we've seen, the details of how someone made a million from the Kuwait RV aren't there. Just someone repeating something they heard from someone who heard it from someone else.

Just the facts of bringing bricks of cash into the bank to do the exchange goes beyond ridiculous...

RamblerNash wrote:The story that Kuwait RV'd their currency and made millionaires from it, inspired quite a few "Currency Speculators" to get themselves involved into purchasing Iraqi Dinar after the end of the war.

The situation in Kuwait is a bit different than Iraq, but did people make millions from speculating on the Kuwait Dinar?

In order to get 1 million USD from acquiring KWD, you would have had to of had 14,409 20KWD notes at the exchange rate, at that time, of 3.47USD to 1KWD. That's 288,180 KWD.

That's quite a bit for the average Joe to be carrying around in their wallet, let alone in a small backpack.

A bundle is 100 notes and a brick is 1000. Here is an example of a 100 note bundle of KWD:




So 14,409 KWD notes would be 144 bundles or 14 1/2 bricks.

Just to get what size that would be, here is Ty Rhames of Sterling Currency Group in front of the bricks of Dinar (IQD) he acquired:




Just count about 15 of those and imagine them in a backpack. That's what you would need to go into a bank to get your million USD.

You also would have needed to get through customs, at both countries, and into a bank, without raising and red flags, if you went to Kuwait to do that exchange.

Of course they aren't going to let you walk out of the bank with 1 million USD, so you would need to set up some kind of account and do a wire transfer or something.

If you did the exchange at a bank in the USA, then they would of had to be dealing with the KWD, and not question the backpack you carried it into the bank with.

When you think of how many people who have had stories of numerous people making millions of dollars from the Kuwait RV, the logistics of it all puts it in a bit of perspective. How did they get a backpacks worth of Dinar in a short period of time?

Here's what a million dollars would look like if you were to walk out of the bank with it.