Makes you wonder if all those pallets of cash we sent Iran really contained all the money we said it did. Also makes me wonder how you count money that arrives on pallets like that? Do you set up a warehouse full of money counters?
A quick look around says commercially available bill counters count around 1000 bills per minute. Low cost counters have batch sizes of around 200 bills. Larger capacity counters are available.
Assuming the process keeps a single counter running continuously, it would be 1000 minutes, not quite 17 hours of work to do a single pass counting with one counter. There's a maintenance interval though. Some of the counters will scan serial numbers, so you could probably confirm you saw 1 Million distinct serial numbers while scanning. Multiple counters in parallel would reduce the wall clock time, of course. And you might want to do multiple counts, sometimes bills stick.
You could also count the number of straps and take a random sample to count. While counting the straps, you'd probably notice any grossly miscounted straps. If any of the sampled straps are wrong, you would presumably increase the sample rate to confirm. Weighing groups of 10 straps is probably faster than counting, but I don't know how sensitive it would be (depends on how consistent weights of the strapping material is, as well as weight of circulated bills).
While doing work for hospitality optimization software, I had the fortune of seeing some of the cash management infrastructure at gaming trade shows.
I wish I remembered more specific details, but I at least assume similar levels of capacity for bill counting and counterfeit detection are available to nation states. Verifying the cash would be even easier and faster than you're describing.
<Cue Borat impression>My wife</end> works at a legit, long-established, high volume retail store. Some of the time she keeps books there. They just weigh money, it’s accurate enough for them.
2016: "The Obama administration is acknowledging its transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran earlier this year was made entirely in cash" -- We froze a bunch of their money in the 70s; Obama unfroze it.
