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Gold bars fraudulently stamped with the logos of major refineries are being inserted into the global market to launder smuggled or illegal gold, refining and banking executives tell Reuters. The fakes are hard to detect, making them an ideal fund-runner for narcotics dealers or warlords.
In the last three years, bars worth at least $50 million stamped with Swiss refinery logos, but not actually produced by those facilities, have been identified by all four of Switzerland's leading gold refiners and found in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the major banks at the heart of the market in bullion, said senior executives at gold refineries, banks and other industry sources.
[...] "The latest fake bars ... are highly professionally done," said Michael Mesaric, the chief executive of refinery Valcambi. He said maybe a couple of thousand have been found, but the likelihood is that there are "way, way, way more still in circulation. And it still exists, and it still works."
Fake gold bars - blocks of cheaper metal plated with gold - are relatively common in the gold industry and often easy to detect.
The counterfeits in these cases are subtler: The gold is real, and very high purity, with only the markings faked. Fake-branded bars are a relatively new way to flout global measures to block conflict minerals and prevent money-laundering. Such forgeries pose a problem for international refiners, financiers and regulators as they attempt to purge the world of illicit trade in bullion.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:38PM (4 children)
This part I disagree with. Paper money has a value in society far beyond the value of the paper and the ink. This falsely stamped gold is worth the same as legit stamped gold, so it isn't exactly a forgery. It's something else (but my coffee has just been poured and I can't figure it out).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @05:54PM
It is at least a trademark infringement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:20PM (1 child)
huh? I don't follow. The value of gold is not its intrinsic value anyway, much like the paper and ink of cash. They both are valued beyond its intrinsic value - yes one has higher intrinsic value than the other.
Case in point, now that they've discovered this false stamped gold, taking it off the market means its market value is no longer the same - so its market "worth" isn't the same. There's a difference between intrinsic and market value/worth.
(Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Friday August 30 2019, @06:16PM
That is extremely incorrect.
The value of gold (aside from panic runs in times of global turmoil) is within a very few percent [%+/-3] of the current average cost of extracting and refining said gold to it .999 purity.
Source: access to land with known gold reserves with a cost of extraction exceeding the current market value.
(This is not actually an uncommon situation).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @12:19AM
The providence of something adds value to it. Compare 3 different jackets which are materialistically identical except 1 was worn by Einstein, 1 was worn by Stalin, and 1 was worn by somebody's great-uncle Phil. Would all 3 sell for the same amount at auction?
Likewise even if two gold bars are chemically identical, if 1 came from a mechanical mining operation in the Swiss which has regulations and oversight guarantee humanitarian conditions while 1 came from the sweat of child labor at knife-point from a warlord in a lawless region, they are absolutely NOT worth the same. At least for most people.