Michael Thompson

Favourite story.

Three, two, one, go.

It has to be the former CIA agent arrested in Virginia in the US, charged with the theft of...

of $40 million in gold bars.

Okay, the numbers here are pretty ridiculous.

He is alleged to have stolen 303 gold bars from his place of employment, from the CIA.

Each of them weighs one kilogram.

So these are hefty little units.

He's also alleged to have stolen $2 million in foreign currency.

Again, same source.

When they searched his house, they allegedly found 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolexes.

The best bit here, right, is I was thinking, why gold bars?

I went and had a look into it, and it said that court documents say that over a five-month period, he had requested and received a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.

But I love the fact that on the expense form at work, there is a box that you can tick.

How do you need this paid out?

Do you need it paid in gold bars?

Yes.

And where do you collect it from?

And so I went looking to see kind of like, why does the CIA have this as an option?

And there's a lot of kind of rumors and reports, obviously, that the CIA uses gold bars as essentially an un-traceable currency for a lot of different, not necessarily-