Posted on 12/02/2010 5:07:12 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
HONG KONG (AFP) – Hong Kong's myriad jewellers and pawn shops have been hammered by a gold scam after unwittingly buying hundreds of ounces of bogus bullion, a report said Thursday.
The Financial Times described the swindle as "one of the most sophisticated scams to hit the Chinese territory's gold market in decades", and comes as the price of gold sits around record highs around 1,400 US dollars an ounce.
"It's a very good fake," Haywood Cheung, president of the Chinese Gold & Silver Exchange Society, Hong Kong,s gold exchange, told the newspaper.
Cheung told the FT that jewellers and pawn shops in the gold-mad city have discovered at least 200 ounces of fake bullion -- worth about 280,000 US dollars -- so far this year.
But he estimated that 10 times that figure could be making its way through the city's retail market, the paper said.
Among the fakes was a specimen with pure gold coating that masked a complex alloy with similar properties to the precious metal, suggesting fraudsters used sophisticated techniques and equipment, according to the report.
The fakes are difficult to detect by sight or touch, and are usually revealed by high-tech tests involving high temperatures and chemicals, the report said.
The Luk Fook Group, one of the city's biggest jewellers, was also tricked into buying almost 12,000 US dollars worth of fake gold until it discovered the scam and alerted its retail stores, the paper said.
"This was the biggest hit ever," Paul Law, the company's executive director, told the FT.
The scam targeted the sale of scrap gold to jewellers, not the bigger market for gold bars which is more rigorously controlled, the paper said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They got Fooked and are out of Luk.
There is reason to believe a lot of US Treasury gold is also tungstun-core.
The Luk Fook Group...
Yep. Can’t imagine why the supply hasn’t been audited in close to two decades.
Aw, come on, dude. You can imagine.
Curious...If it looks the same and feels the same does it turn green(or tarnish or whatever)?
Waidaminnute...If it's FAKE, then wouldn't its value be, uh, NOTHING?!
1,000 or 2,000 years ago there was a test which was to bite the coin. Gold is soft enough that one leaves bite marks when this is done. I wonder if the tooth feel is the same.
“Curious...If it looks the same and feels the same does it turn green(or tarnish or whatever)?”
....I was wondering the same thing...I would have thought that gold would be impossible to fake...after all this kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.
China can make a fake of anything.
“mong the fakes was a specimen with pure gold coating “
Bookmark
“1,000 or 2,000 years ago there was a test which was to bite the coin. Gold is soft enough that one leaves bite marks when this is done. I wonder if the tooth feel is the same.”
That only works if you’re dealing with pure gold. But gold coins these days have alloys mixed in to make them hard...so not a chance of biting in.
In much the same way that there is reason to believe the moon landings were faked and the Queen of England had a baby with the pope.
Not the ones I buy, but then biting them would lower their value.
She did???
j/k
--and even more reason for us to believe the SOP is that US ingots are tested by more than just "sight or touch". If you don't think so then maybe you could offer to sell them a couple of really good solid gold ingots super cheap and then see what happens...
It’s not easy to audit. Take a brick of Tungsten and coat it with 1/4” of gold. It has the same density and weight. You need to look beyond the 1/4” to see the difference.
How?
I doubt X-rays will penetrate far enough. Drilling is destructive and time consuming.
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