Buried loot a mystery for authorities

WASHINGTON (AP) — The businessman arrived at the Treasury Department carrying a suitcase stuffed with about $5.2 million in petrified, nearly unrecognizable bills. He asked to swap it for a cashier's check.

Money like this normally arrives after a bank burns or a vault floods. It doesn't just show up at the visitor's entrance on a Tuesday morning.

But Franz Felhaber's banking habits had stopped making sense to the government long ago.

For years, authorities say, he and his family have popped in and out of U.S. banks, looking to change about $20 million in decaying $100 bills for clean cash, offering ever-changing stories:

_It was an inheritance.

_Somebody dug up a tree and there it was.

_It was found in a suitcase buried in an alfalfa field.

_A relative found a treasure map.

That buried treasure stands to make someone rich. It could also send someone to jail.