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Gold Counterfeiting Goes Viral: 10 Tungsten-Filled Gold Bars Are Discovered In Manhattan
A few days ago, our report on the discovery of a single 10 oz Tungsten-filled gold bar in Manhattan's jewelry district promptly went viral, as it meant that a tungsten-based, gold-counterfeiting operation, previously isolated solely to the UK and Europe, had crossed the Atlantic. The good news was that the counterfeiting case was isolated to just one 10 oz bar. This morning, the NYPost reports that as had been expected, in the aftermath of the realization that the sanctity of the gold inventory on 47th Street just off Fifth Avenue has been polluted, and dealers promptly check the purity of their gold, at least ten more fake 10-ounce "gold bars" filled with Tungsten has been discovered.
The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District.
The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.
As is to be expected, the Post story is weak on details: after all, any dealer who admits to having allowed Tungsten to enter his or her inventory can kiss their retail business goodbye, as customers will avoid said Tungsten outlet like the plague, for the simple reason that suddenly counterparty risk has migrated from Wall Street to the Diamond District. The one named dealer is the same one who already made an appearance in the previous story on Tungsten in gold's clothing.
One gold dealer discovered that four of the 3-inch-by-1-inch gold bars he bought — worth about $72,000 retail — were counterfeit.
“It has the entire street on edge,” said Ibrahim Fadl, 62, who has been the owner of Express Metal Refining, a Midtown gold-refinery business, for the last 11 years. “I and the others on the street work off of trust; now that trust is strained.”
Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry, purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.
Ah yes, those pesky Russians: always happy to do the Fed's bidding, because who really gains from the loss of confidence in physical gold?
Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it, a source tells The Post.
Fadl said he did his due diligence “by X-raying the bars to ascertain the purity of the gold and weighing the bars, and the Swiss markings were perfect.”
Tungsten is an industrial metal that weighs nearly the same as gold but costs a little over $1 an ounce. Gold closed Friday at $1,774.80 an ounce.
We wish Fadl all the best in his liquidation sale. Others, for logical reasons, are far less willing to step forward:
A second 47th Street refiner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was burned recently when he bought six gold bars that turned out to be mostly tungsten, with just a gold veneer. He would not comment, though, on who sold him the bogus bars.
The counterfeiting so far appears to have impacted solely PAMP (Produits Artistiques Métaux Précieux ) gold bars, madeby MTB, whose CEO can hardly be too happy that some "Russian" has made it a life mission to destroy the credibility of any gold stamped with the PAMP stamp.
Raymond Nassim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, the American arm of the Swiss firm that created the original gold bars — with their serial number and purity rating stamped clearly into them — said he reported the situation to the US Secret Service, whose jurisdiction covers the counterfeiting of gold bars.
He said his company “is supporting and cooperating with authorities any way we can.”
Nassim thought the culprit must be a professionally trained jeweler to have pulled off the caper.
“The forger had to slice the original bar along the side, hollow out the gold and insert the tungsten ingot, and then reseal and polish the bar, Nassim said.
The case of gold counterfeiting has already taken NYC by storm:
At an industry dinner Thursday night hosted by Comex, the New York-based metals exchange, the room was abuzz with talk about the bogus gold bars, according to Fadl.
Which was also to be expected. What is also to be expected is that as more and more stories of Tungsten making it into broader gold circulation, that retail sales of physical gold will certainly be impaired as end consumers become far more cautious about what they buy.
And while we await more information, especially from the Secret Service, who is "on top" of this case, which we assume implies that gold is after all money, we leave readers with our conclusion from Tuesday: "with false flags rampant these days, we would not be surprised if this is merely yet another attempt to discredit gold, this time physical, as an undilutable medium of warehousing wealth. So buyer beware: in a time when everyone is broke, triple check before exchanging one store of wealth for another."
For those curious what a fake 10oz bar looks like, here it is again:
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There is no way a Tungsten slab was inserted into an original good bar, and the mill-out gold recovered for scrap. The edge thickness of the peeled off surfaces wouldn't hold up to a machining operation of a soft metal. The bar was manufactured as discovered.
Why any dealer in bulk, would not have an ultrasound probe at his disposal is beyond comprehension. It would pick these forgeries in an instant. Lots of bars probably have to be audited. Wonder if Chavez used ultrasound on the ones he brought back?
He said the business is done in trust, and he knew the Russian seller. There is likely a bit of bravado, with a known guy walking in and putting 10 oz bars down to sell, nobody is putting the bars on an unltrasound machine. However if the seller walks in as an unknown, his bar is tested in every sense. In any case, I'm sure everyone is testing everything now...
There is one Russian who ain't gonna be doin' buisness on 47th anymore, thats for sure
"There is no way a Tungsten slab was inserted into an original good bar, and the mill-out gold recovered for scrap. The edge thickness of the peeled off surfaces wouldn't hold up to a machining operation of a soft metal. The bar was manufactured as discovered.
Why any dealer in bulk, would not have an ultrasound probe at his disposal is beyond comprehension."
Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.
This is an old story move along nothing to see here
http://stevenmcollins.com/WordPress/?p=571
is the source of all tungsten
It's Bernanke trying to roil the PM markets ! I was in an Egyptian flea market and bought some gold filled tungsten bars .... made in Iran ! LOL
So the crooks have solved the rehypothecation problem with fake gold bars. Works great until found out.
Here's the Dr. Strangelove theory - it's the Federal Reserve planting these fake bars around Manhattan, in order to discourage public purchase of gold in general. Then it gets "leaked" to the mainstream media, people stop buying gold, gold price goes down, Federal Reserve is happy, people remain none the wiser. Mission accomplished.
So..that makes 11 or is it 10? Thankfully it's only 10oz bars
So far...
Oh, I bet the Secret Service has their "top men" working the case to restore faith in the "barbarous relic" that the FED loves so much.
Top men, tip-top men.
(/sarc)
Same business model, different day. Cannot have the proles bolt off the US Dollar Reserve currency. This will interfere with QE3 money laundering scheme.
Stolen Gold Coins and Fake Silver Bars
http://www.fbi.gov/philadelphia/about-us/history/famous-cases/famous-cas...
Simple fix
Pour bars like Swiss cheese
They pour Swiss cheese ?
Fondue and all it grotesque local variants tend to involve molten Swiss cheeses...
But the making of the cheese itself, no, it's grown that way..
Real Gold Bitches!
It's just another technique for re-hypothication. What's the big deal?
Is it tungsten for sure? Or are these bars the first of the new series of
Gold-Pressed LatinumLOL! Only Trekkies will thumb this up.
Ouch... seeing tungsten branded into PAMP Suisse HURTS. Most of my gold is PAMP Suisse, luckily in smaller 100g ingots. Fokken bitchezz.
Physical coins bitchez!
Tungsten has few refiners and a small number of industrial consumers. It would be very easy for the FBI to do an elemental analysis on the Tungsten to find the source and refiner. From there it's an easy matter to follow the trail. If that leads nowhere then it's not a small counterfeiting operation but a government scale operation. Or does the FBI care?
Neal Caffrey and Peter Burke could figure it out.
"Or does the FBI care?"
Fascist Bureau of Investigation could care less. Unless the Gangsters aren't in the Zionist Bankster\government traitors\elite owners jerk circle they might do something?
Which prison is Corzine in again?
Earth.
This could be solved easily, but since states cannot commit crimes........
Careful. Mitt Romney hears that and he'll declare that states are people too. And then Obama will say "you didn't mint that" and we'll be back to square one.
If you cornered Mitt he'd have to admitt that people are not states, as states cannot commit crimes.
Obama would say "you didn't mint that", but if you asked him "who did?", he'd say "beats me. Ask Holder."
It basically says we are near the end of the bull run.
Yep. New bull market - fiat currency. Because that's a lot harder to fake.
I suspect Jon Corzine...what the hell...it aint like he has to worry about anything, if caught.
...purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.
please. an un-named russian salesman? how convenient. well boyz, the trail grows cold there. i guess we'll never get to the bottom of it. :roll:
Russian mob = Satanic Tribe
The Russian has a name, but no one can spell it. Sneaky bastard.
Did the Russian salesman look like The Bernank and did he happen to have one of those 3D printing machines?
"...were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District."
I don't believe that there is even one unsuspecting dealer on 47th Street.
Made me think of this scene from Marathon Man:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8GiV38Tdts
Somehow Iam sceptical about this story. Seems disinfo to me. Check the bar numbers on the pics. The whole one has an 8 as last number. The 2nd last pic with tungsten has a 2....
Ive never seen a 999,9 purity bar before. mine are stamped .999
OK ann I've seen one now
"Ha, Ha. Told you so."
Charlie Munger
The price of tungsten should skyrocket with these latest advances in alchemy.
This is a BIG operation. Not to sound like a government conspirator, but someone on a large scale is producing bars like this. This isn't your typical counterfeit....
It seems to me that if this were a nefarious plot by the US (or some other) government to discredit gold as an investment or savings vehicle, it would have been MUCH more effective to have put out counterfeited one-ounce gold coins and not ten-ounce gold bars, which VERY few people own.
Not that I would put such a thing past them; in fact, I fully expect to see and hear about exactly that at some point.
I would think they would be more concerned with dissuading deep pocket institutional investors from entering the physical market, but if they forged the 400oz bars it would bring the LBMA system into question (as well as their own reserves).
Yep. State actor. Unfortunately, the majority of states in existance are kicking themselves if they hadn't already thought of this idea.
I'm shocked! Shocked! To hear of such goings on. No doubt an inventory of Fort Knox will start immediately!
:)
How long have these guys held the bars?
How many hands have they gone through?
Were they worth the price of gold when both parties believed they were gold?
This could have been done years ago and now people are finding out.
I wonder how many of these bars China has purchased this year?
Note: The serial number on PAMP bars are [machine] etched into the bar. The fake bar has raised (molded in) serial numbers. This is an instant give-away IF you look for it.
Click on the right-hand image of the 10oz PAMP bar here:
http://www.apmex.com/Product/30945/10_oz_Pamp_Suisse_Gold_Bar_9999_Fine_...
They only recently started etching the serials into the bars. Before that they were cast into the bar itself.
I just opened the packaging on a 1oz pamp, raised letters, including the serial number.
All mine are 1oz, [machine] etched, and purchased from APMEX as new bars over the past several years. You might be correct that some have raised serial numbers, but I would find someone to check your bars with acoustics and/or xray. Having said that, I doubt anyone is faking 1oz bars, because the small size is more difficult.
Bingo. Easy to spot fakes.
I just checked my Double E's and to my dismay half of them were full of chocolate.
funniest comment of the week!
I don't see why a professional dealer wouldn't check a gold bar with an x-ray diffraction setup before signing for it. You would only need a few such setups to stop the counterfitting dead in it's tracks?
Most XRD uses Cu or Mo Ka radiation, and neither will penetrate the gold veneer. High energy tungsten or uranium Ka radiation is required to penetrate a gold bar.
I suspect the supply of LBMA bars now dries up completely.
"with false flags rampant these days, we would not be surprised if this is merely yet another attempt to discredit gold, this time physical.."
And that is the point I think. Plants. Stay away from gold is what "The Authorities" would like us to conclude.
Buy COINS. You wealthy people who want to buy Large units... Good luck.
For us small people. Buy Au/Ag Maples and Eagles Coins. Do it today.
It's seems like they must be scared if they go to this much trouble.
LMAO! Long Drill bits!
about a year ago, when we were new to buying PMs out of our store, a kid with the "my grandfather just died" story came in with a quantiy of scrap, including 2 "One Pound" silver coins...we put everyting to the "acid test", paid for the lot, figuring the "one pounders" at their actual weight, which was not 16 oz..(yes, bells were rigning, but he was a nice kid...). Then, when we took the load to our buyer (the old pro), the first thing he did was sniff out the big coins...we did the quick and dirty--cut them both in half on the big metal shear---and sure enough, one was brass with sliver plate...having some experience with coins, and a lot of experience with antiques I did think the big coins had some age, as in maybe 20-30 years old...(and actually, I think the kid was telling the truth about his family)..but fyi to ZH, faking coins, and sliver at that, is a time tested scam...best protection is buying smaller denominations with wear...takes up more space but almost certainly, guaranteed to be the real thing...
The Satanic Tribe strikes again!
QE-XAU
QEXAU is one of those "ghost cities" in China, right?
Seeing that we are at QE Number 3, this story should get one more iteration.
I have been drilling into my fake tungsten bars and to my delight have found them to be full of gold.
Seriously though, counterfeiting is to be expected as is the case with fiat money.
I suspect delers will either buy the necessary eqipment for testing or buy it for the purpose of making money by offering verification servces.
Tungsten is NOT a Barbarous Relic
Tungsten in your gold won`t get you arrested, yet.
Have some in your copper and you'll be in trouble...
Unless it's 30-06 or 50 BMG. :-)
Both the stories have peculiar inconsistencies that suggest an attempt at disinformation that plays on the technical credulity of the mass audience: Ignore the technical facts that belie the explanation, and drown out conflicting information with the intensity that only massed media can provide.
First, no ultrasound as a standard testing methodology. This absolutely strains credibility for the context.
Second, the mention of X-Ray as part of due diligence. X-Ray is essentially useless here for indicating density differences. What may be looked for is manufacturing artefacts, or characteristic indications of internal voids, but these can be faint and require experience to confidently/reliably interpret. So, let us see the parameters of the supposed applied X-ray technique, and let us see the film, if the radiography was film, or the digital record. If the source to film/sensor axis happens to be ideal, faint edge artefacts (e.g.: cracks, effective spaces between surfaces) may be imaged. If a a crack/space plane is oblique to the source to media axis, it is unlikely to be imaged. X-ray just makes no sense here as a primary methodology.
Ehm. It isn't your common or garden hospital x-ray we're talking about here. It isn't the density which xrays measure it's the interaction between the rays and the electrons in the target material.
Gold and tungsten have different electron configurations, crystal structures and when hit by an xray will fluoresce on different spectra.
example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_fluorescence
If you test the bars using XRF you'll get gold + a lot of something else back.
Do investigate the depth of penetration for your XRF method and get back to us about the implications for the gold film thickness necessary to defeat the confidence for the method.
And as a clarification to what I said above, density is a non relevant property because the density of W and Au are, within the sensitivity of typical radiographic techniques, the same here. The only utiltiy of radiography here is to detect subsurface geometric artefacts of the counterfeit manufacturing process.
Uh, those serial numbers don't match up. Pic one ends in 8, pic 2 ends in 2.
WTF?
The first picture, the undrilled bar, is not necessarily a picture of the drilled bar, just a picture of a whole bar.
What's all that noise in the "u" in Suisse in the first pic. Sure looks like a drill wound to me.
Look at it this way. If owners check them then they are out the cash. If they don't check them and offload them to someone else they don't lose anything. Who would want to know that they have tungstan gold bars. Unless they are going to bribe the police department but if it is just the DC politicians who cares.
Just to point out the obvious, there are no tooling marks to the inside faces of the gold that ZH has suggested was hollowed out. In order to make it smooth you'd have to heat the inside up, in doing so would likely destroy the markings on the front you are trying to preserve. I maintain my believe that this was made for purpose, moulded by manufacturer of said bar. I have made personallised jewelry for relatives. It is very hard to not mark and then to remove it 100%. What you are describing is more difficult than moulding the bar with tungsten embedded from scratch.
If this is like what was implied from last ZH article, a copied bar and owner was foolish enough to use a real numeric and pass on their certificate then they've given away the trace because ultimately dealers keep records of sale. PAMP would know what main distributor had this bar, they in turn would know what smaller dealer or direct customer bought it. If in euroland you'd know checks on customers are very tight because of tax taxivation. You'll probably find out the trail goes to a gumtree advert, blah!
I find it interesting how nobody is naming names about who sold them the gold. If I just got shafted for tends of thousands of dollars, I'd not only name the names, but I'd put a bounty out to recover the gold that I was owed.
If yer gonna put a hit on them, you don't want any names. Just sayin.
The new ads that will be coming out soon for PM dealers.
Buy 500 oz of silver or 10 oz of gold and get a FREE SET of drill bits.
this seems to obvious to me, normaly jewish dealers et cons. in 47th street are too smart, they are not buying this rubbish. propaganda of it's finest.
Yeah, I used to go to shops on 47th years ago. Those hebes were a hard-nosed bunch of businessmen. I respected their attention to monetary detail.
And spot gold has retraced its 61.8%.
http://bullandbearmash.com/chart/spot-gold-daily-september-21-2012/
If the US Dollar keeps falling, gold should continue to rise. For this to occur, the Euro will also need to rise - the Euro - the currency of Europe - the bastion of economic success and prosperity.
"IF"?
So on the one hand they could print lots of new ones, and on the other they get burnt for heat and removed from circulation....
hmmmm, i think the serial number is Dimons phone extension #
I bet UTIMCO is sweating bullets right now about their 664,000 ounces of gold they're storing at HSBC's Manhattan vault(s).... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-15/texas-university-endowment-holds-almost-1-billion-in-gold-bars.html
So... these guys have been in the business on 47th for years.....and what kind of testing do they perform?
This is...way too fishy.
The Corzine Mob is behind this!
Like somebody said.. the guy Drills into an 18K$ product?
The simple answer is somebody wanting to inject Doubt and Suspicion into the physical PM market!
Or, this is one hell of a big, big fraud operation and somebody is sitting on millions of Au, and there are hundreds, or Thousands of fakes in circulation.
Trust but Verify!
.....And, remember in 1964? The coins went from Ag to Ni/Cu?
Looks like now they are debasing gold bars, haha.
I clearly remember watching TV (I was a budding numismatist) with grandpa, when LBJ said all this BS about how our silver coins would circulate right along with the fakes...riiiight....grandpa looked at me and said, "sonny, save up every silver dime, quarter and half you can. I did. When he passed, I had another huge sack left by grandpa, bless his railroading investigator soul. Too bad the coins perished in a house fire, but that is another story.
So.... now we are "printing gold" like on those TV commercials everyone sees where they sell "100% (.0001 gold flashed) American Buffalo Gold Coins! Limit 5 @ .9.99USD!
These bastards are not happy just to rip us all off. They want to rape us alive like the Libyan CIA Ambassador, cut off our nuts and blow our brains out.
Fuck Them.
stay out of tall buildings with gold in the basement
Ultrasonic thickness gauge is the way to go. Something would have to match the size, weight, and sound speed of Gold all at the same time to be convincing. Gold sound velocity is between 3200-3250 (meters per second), while tungsten is 5180-5400. If you were to set your thickness gauge to a frequency to match gold's velocity and there was tungsten in it, the measurement would come back wacky for the size of the bar/coin. http://www.bamr.co.za/velocity%20of%20materials.shtml
When you buy paper gold, you can be certain there's no tungsten in it.
/sarc/
You should buy Canadian Gold Maple Leafs instead of gold bars...WAY safer!
I am willing to bet the source of fake bars is Iran.....
... or NK. I believe they are pretty good at stuff like that.
LOL, Iran!!! Try Israel or at least the tribe that infests the place!
"Seriously, would YOU take a DeWalt to a $72k bar of shiny stuff?
Mr Fadl seems to be unaware of ultrasound, quite odd for a long-time dealer......
Perhaps it is just a piece of 'brothers Grim' fantasia to keep would-be gold bugs away from the sweet meats."
From http://www.zerohedge.com/users/orkneylad
Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry........
Need i say more?
And where does it say that Mr Fadl didn't put an UTG to the bar with wacky results before deciding to drill?
That' would be of enough importance to write down. This stinks more than another remark from Mario Draghi about Spanish banks.
Dont you have to fill out forms pursuant to patriot act to sell?
who are the people selling?
I smell BS here.
These dealers have probably bought the bars at a deep discount from people they knew to be shady, with the expectation that the bars were hot. And they got burnt.
Look at the last time this scam was attempted large scale: The counterfeiters claimed the bars were part of a bank robbery when they tried to sell them at a deep discount to gold traders.
Hold small junk silver. The day it pays to hollow out a silver dime and fill with whatever is the day that silver is way up there.
I strenuously object to referring to old US 90% silver coins, or ANY form of silver for that matter, as "junk". This terminology needs to be put into the trashcan and taken out of circulation once and for all.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
It should be fairly easy to determine the thye perpetrator(s). MTB sold all the bars to the original buyers. All are numbered and ccertificated. The original purchase date is known. Video probably exists. Unless the original buyer reporterd the bars as stolen,the chain of custody should be easy to determine. The anti-money laundering prorvisions of the tax code require dealers to document identification and detailing the sale, date method of payment etc . My guess is a 47th street concern with knowedge and skills perpetrated the crime. MTB should offer a significant reward for any information leading to arrest and convition. My guess is the bench jeweler would flip for a large sum of money. Also the actual craftsman who were paid to do the work should go int hiding for their own safety,post haste.
soon to be known as swiss bored authenticity
One of these is all you need
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh0Mcagio5Q&feature=player_embedded
Lol @ planted story to scare phys buyers.
Anyone here going to stop buying gold because of a few fakes ?
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
Same sorta deal with fake tits - I guess.
Putin
Dunno about Tungsten.....
.
.. the object in that last photo looks more likely to have been filled with sardines.
True. Spanish sardines.
This tungsten story is may be a good sign ,may be Banks and Government have no more gold to Dump ! Remember, Gordon Brown have already sold Britain's gold (400 tonnes) between 1999 and 2002 for a prices between $256 and $296 !!! One day Banks and Government only asset will be zillions of worthless fiat money.
canada sold all of its gold at about the same time..
coincidentally, it was about the same time canada was working with the IMF to fix mulroney's economic disaster.
Australia sold a lot at that time also??
Who leaned on the "Common-WEALTH" countries at that time and to what ends??
"! One day Banks and Government only asset will be zillions of worthless fiat money."
And the gold of anyone within their jurisdiction that they can point a gun at.
this news stinks to high-hell.
the level of desperation of the EE is growing by the day.
the end must be very close.
..what if gibsons paradox is a pile of horsesht ? the price of gold simply corrects the interest rate to what it should be.
First they take away your right to carry a gun and then they sell you Fools Gold. I wonder how many times these bars were sold? Probaby came from London. Sure glad a New Yorker bought them! TEE HEE HEE....
Relax, i'm working on a process that turns tungsten into gold.
Should have it ready in about a week.
No worries.
Gold substitution (Incase you are interested)
Its density, similar to that of gold, allows tungsten to be used in jewelry as an alternative to gold or platinum.[6][52] Metallic tungsten is harder than gold alloys (though not as hard as tungsten carbide), and is hypoallergenic, making it useful for rings that will resist scratching, especially in designs with a brushed finish.
Because the density is so similar to gold (tungsten is only 0.36% less dense), tungsten can also be used in counterfeiting of gold bars, such as by plating a tungsten bar with gold,[53][54][55] which has been observed since the 1980s,[56] or taking an existing gold bar, drilling holes, and replacing the removed gold with tungsten rods.[57] The densities are not exactly the same, and other properties of gold and tungsten differ, but gold-plated tungsten will pass superficial tests.[53]
Gold-plated tungsten is available commercially from China (the main source of tungsten), both in jewelry and as bars (copied from Wikipedia)
1.Worldwide coordinated central bank money printing.
2.Supress paperprice on the papermarket.
3.Plant a story about tungest filled bars to curtail physical demand.
Timing to perfect to be true.
When was the last time a central bank plan did not have the exact opposite effect that was intended?
go back to hand pouring the bars made to order!! Right in front of the buyer
If I were a counterfeiter, retail bullion is what I would be making. That bar is in the sweet spot for size. No talent, government infringement, or artisitic talent required. LBMA bars and other mainstream stuff gets remelted all the time. You will go to prison selling fakes into that system. Coins mean jail time for counterfeiting. Jewelry takes talent.
The only problem is when you sell to the Russian mob.
The Russians enjoy a level of ethics and integrity envied by all other mobs.
So, as too many other's details here have pointed out, the originating articles have no fundamental technical credibility, no competant forensic reportage, nor sufficient authenticity as objective reportage. This is one dog waggin' big fat tale.
Grab some [real golden butter] popcorn, sit back, and watch the disinfo theatre.
> Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it...
Ah ha! So he's an idiot.
Here's hoping the gold ring the ex got in the divorce was sold to our jeweler by Russians.
Meanwhile, one block away - at Lloyd's Tungsten-Squid 24-hr Diner on W.48th St - something seems to be amiss.....
"Vaiter! Vaiter! Zer is a 10oz tungsten-filled matzo-ball in my soup!"
"Oi Vey! Vat do you expect at these prices - gold?"
theres plenty of chinese 1 ozfake silver out there... you need to be very carefull with all your PM purchases..this story covers a chinese fake silver ring making Morgan silver dollars with pics ...!!
http://coins.about.com/od/worldcoins/ig/Chinese-Counterfeiting-Ring/Stri...
No worries. JPM is on the case...oh I meant the government.
Next up will be 'fake' ultrasound machines which will test your 'gold' bars to any % you want.
I completely agree. How do you calibrate the machine?
A lot of respondents here are citing the relevance of using ultrasonic examination methods, but the technical principles and practices toward confident interpretation are not trivial. Certainly, a calibration basis and practice is essential and implicit for an application such as this (i.e. calibration standards replicating essential geometry and interfacial properties of W in various states of contact with Au). One reason I would prefer an imersion process is the need to scan variant geometries over its complete area with high integrity acoustic coupling and flexibility for probe type(s), size, and orientation.
Wow sounds complicated, better hire someone, or just buy a box which does it all for you and spits out the result. Electronics are cheap these days.
The necessary level of confidence for certification is not. The standards for confidence for a business dealing in, having liability for, large quantities of gold with serial number traceability is not the same as for individual wanting greater confidence that what they own is authentic.
The assumption should be that counterfeiting can take many forms, and a well engineered system and protocols are necessary to confidently indicate the potential variants. The conditions are no less demanding than what is needed for industrial applications. If gold was 5 k$ an ounce, the relative profit for only pinching 40% of mass from around the edges, leaving the center monolithic (where typical UTG verification would be made) may be great enough to justify the effort. And what would it take to expose that?
What's the differance between a tungstun filled gold bar and a CDO full of junk mortgages?
One is packaged in actual gold. The other is packaged in mere gilt. Note that I didn't spell that "guilt."
Those pictures hardly look like they were originally legitimate 10 oz gold bars. They in fact look as if they were simply plated gold. The gold veneer shell on those fakes looks to me like they were coated over top of those perfectly sized tungsten bars. This is no doubt a high level operation carried out by none other than the federal Antichrist, and just as Tyler's say, to discredit physical gold purchases just at a time where it should be a parabolic frenzy.
Question: who has the motive and the means carry out such a dastardly deed right at this most pivotal point in time?
Funny how these fake gold stories come out on Sundays right before trading is set to resume.
Perfect timing once again Satan!
MO
fiat currency, gold bars, APPL, and "old" baseball cards are all worth what the next rube is willing to pay for them. Real or fake.
True enough...
So perhaps you'd be better off saving in some asset class that has the maximum scarcity-of-supply value combined with the widest, highest and stickiest demand profile. Like gold.
either
odummer is behind it (low probability---although NOT implausible)....90% chance = made in china ! or some other outfit. question? how about those 1 kilo bars OR 400 oz bars?
wow !!
nice going ZH. I'll take a one oz gold foil chocolate for $2.00
i agree that these bars look manufactured, not sliced, hollowed out and refilled. which makes the man a liar, which makes this story likely another attempt to demonise gold, in an odd way, as it could well lead to directly the opposite of fear pushing the price down (you could argue, gold must be more scarce than it appears, hence the price should be higher). if this keeps up (anyone else remember the gold plated steel the ethiopians discovered a few years ago?), it'll be interesting, but it looks between a bad marketing excercise and a bad propaganda piece to me.
"An Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge (UTG) will easily verify the authenticity of a gold bar or coin."
WRONG! It will merely verify that it is the thickness it's supposed to be. Hell, the Density = Mass/Volume method, with accurate scale and graduated cylinder, works better than that!
But is still problematic. As an astute poster a few days ago pointed out, you could drop the bar into a graduated (has measurements on it) cylinder full of water, see how much water it displaces, then weigh it and divide the volume into that, and there's the density. Does it match the density of gold? Problem even with this is that tungsten's density is so close to gold's (and you can spice things up by inserting a bit of high density osmium or something), that the margin of error of the volume measurement exceeds the difference in densities (between gold and tungsten.)
No, you have to actually drill it. Even a standard Xray won't work (even at high res, it shows a bad bar same as a good bar, if well formed with tungsten.) OR, use a very sophisticated metal detector with the ability to check Forward Gauss and compare the readings to a known-good bar.
The problem is...knowing for sure that some "known bar" is really good. So if you have a number of them, check them all. If one seems a bit off, drill it. Then drill a few that measure what the rest do, and once you confirm those are for real, use that "pattern" as the test for all others.
Pimpin' ain't easy.
The oft-repeated advice to buy gold coins like Eagles is good advice. It is more difficult and relatively expensive (even w/ gold at $1750 an ounce) to tungsten-fill a gold coin. As gold prices increase (inevitable), that will change, and the incentive to adulterate gold, even "just coins", will greatly increase. Expect it to become the norm. A Forward Gauss enabled metal detector is a great investment (and potentially very lucrative, if you live near a popular beach, or even abandoned gold mines and are patient.)
How exactly do you think this stuff works?
Speed of sound in gold is: 3200 - 3250m/s
Speed of sound in tungsten is: 5180 - 5400m/s
A sonic thickness guage will tell you it's half as thick as it really is. It'll be blindingly obvious to anyone who's actually making a measurement.
Owning anything Au, that is not a coin of one of the major soverigns, is asking for it.
I have NEVER trusted bars of any size, even 1oz ones.
Therefore no Au bars for me, period.
Gold chains are nice, because if you need to buy groceries, you can just cut off a few links.
What ... Midas, lost his touch?
Why don't the serial numbers match on the photo examples?
If you stick with fractionals and 1oz gold coins, you'll have no issues. However, I predict the premiums on these products will be heading higher because of this.
“The forger had to slice the original bar along the side, hollow out the gold and insert the tungsten ingot, and then reseal and polish the bar," Nassim said.
That would make it rather difficult to tungsten-ize one-ounce UBS bars, Aussie Kangaroos, Canadian Maple Leafs, sovereigns or double eagles, etc. They are much, much thinner than a 10-ounce bar. Also, any counterfeiter would target brand new, preferably encapsulated GAEs before anything old. Counterfeit coins are seldom well-worn.
I'll sleep well.
Electrical discharge machining.
You only have to remove molecules.
Bullish for coins.