LOL, either your neighbor got scammed, or is trying to run the scam.

Either way, it should be entertaining.

The person selling the worthless or near-worthless banknotes of third world pestholes and leading people to believe that the currency will balloon overnight 100-1000x in a "revaluation". That's who's making the money.

If it was such a good deal, why wouldn't the scammer just hang onto all that mega-cash himself?

Either your neighbor got completely bamboozled and is buying stuff with money he doesn't have (The wire transfer is coming any day now! We couldn't wait to celebrate!), or he's making a conspicuous display of wealth to try and con other people, period.

The only time this really happens, is when there's hyper-inflation, and a country re-values the bills, i.e. On Jan 1, 2017, a 10,000 Asscrackistani bill will be worth 1 "new" Asscrackistani bill, (You have to take them to the bank and switch the bills out though, the old ones aren't accepted at the "new" value) and it's too expensive and too much hassle to re-value or exchange out all the coins. And someone sitting on a hoard of coins comes out on top. Well, at least for a little while, because the underlying economic problems in that country that caused the hyperinflation aren't being addressed in any way.

The only quasi-legit instance of this happening was all the U.S. servicemen who got thousands or millions of Iraqi Dinars as change or whatever during the Gulf War, hoping there'd be some kind of bailout from Uncle Sugar, oil would start pumping, Iraq would stabilize, and instead of .000001 USD to the Dinar, maybe it would be .01 USD to the Dinar etc. and their relative value on world currency exchange would go way up, but even then, the actual payoff never happened. It was only "legit" in the sense they didn't scam anyone to get the bills, they were just hoping to get lucky. Which of course they didn't.

If it's "Zims" we're talking, it's even more funny. You can buy the bills as collector items on Amazon. The monetary value is "zero". Zimbabawe gave up on issuing currency and is just using the U$D now. And on the last day a Zimbabwe umpteen trillion bill was still "good" in Zimbabwe, it was worth about .0001 USD or something. You couldn't even buy a stick of gum with it. LOL.

http://www.amazon.com/Zimbabwe-Trillion-Elevators-Brilliant-Uncirculated/dp/B01FGA2TKM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1463963822&sr=8-4&keywords=zimbabwe+100+trillion+dollar

I have one of these over my desk at work as a joke. Because I work in IT at a investment fund company.

You'd have better luck buying Bitcoin at today's price of $438.44, hoping Donald Trump wins the White House, and "Makes Mexico pay for the wall" and does so by cutting off all the Walmart wire-transfers the Illegals send home to make them do it. Because then, they'll all start using Bitcoin, and it'll shoot up to $1200 per BTC or something, because people will start bidding up bitcoins faster than the blockchain "miners" can produce new ones in the Bitcoin algorithm.

You'll know if your neighbor is the scammer because eventually there'll be cop cars at his house, and if he was the victim, because there's repo-men and their house goes up for sale in foreclosure.

The Zimbabwe currency isn't good anymore, not even in Zimbabwe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe