Brig. Gen. Sar Theth is the police chief of Battambang, a languid riverside town in western Cambodia. You could also call him the seven million dollar man.

On Sept. 19, Sar Theth's officers tracked three Thai men in a pickup truck as it passed through a remote border checkpoint from Thailand. When the truck stopped in the Cambodian district of Phnom Proek, the police pounced.

Inside, said Sar Theth, they found three cardboard boxes packed with $7.16 million in counterfeit $100 bills, the largest seizure of fake U.S. notes in Southeast Asia for about a decade and the biggest ever in Cambodia.