But the morning chaos on the Moscow Ring Road was all in vain.
A police spokesman says "somebody made a stupid joke" by throwing wads of bookmarks resembling thousand-ruble notes along a stretch of the road circling Moscow. The notes would be worth about $35 each if they were real. Sprinkler trucks were brought in to wash away the fakes.
A similar traffic jam happened last July - but with real money -when two Moscow officials detained with $350,000 in alleged bribe money threw the cash on the road.
