Two Filipina old-age pensioners have been arrested and charged in the City of London with trying to cash a fake US bearer bond with a face value of $25bn (€28bn), in what is understood to be the largest ever attempted fraud in the UK.

In one of the most bizarre financial fraud cases ever, the two sisters, Lourdes and Erlinda Veloseo Quintos, attempted to convince a London bank that the single fake Federal Reserve bond with its astonishingly high face value was legitimate.