Article content

At the busy Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit to Windsor, the continent’s most heavily travelled crossing, a Canadian border agent greeted three men in a GMC Yukon Denali with the usual recital of questions.

Did they have any firearms? Were they bringing in currency worth $10,000 or more?

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or The tale of a mysterious mound of Iraqi cash seized at the border, and the oddball cast that’s fighting for it Back to video

“No, no, nothing like that,” the driver answered, according to notes made by members of the Canada Border Services Agency. Unconvinced, the agent told him to pull over for a search.

An inspection of the car would turn up two handguns and some ammunition, but when CBSA agent Celine El-Tayar opened the back door on the driver’s side of the SUV, she faced a wall of banker’s boxes. She tugged on one. It was unexpectedly heavy.

Lifting the lid, she saw wads of money.

Box after box — 24 in all — were similarly stuffed with bound wads of currency, each bill featuring the cursive swoops of Arabic lettering.

Over the next several hours, border agents and RCMP officers counted and photographed more than eight billion Iraqi dinars, at the time worth about $7.4 million.