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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @07:39PM (1 child)
I'm not GP, but my personal answers, maybe they'll prove I'm a good/bad individual:
1) Okay for who? The one who stole it should be required to make the store whole including the full value of everything they stole, but I as someone who DIDN'T rob the store but instead bought a "lightly used TV" on the used market shouldn't be held liable for not verifying that the seller actually acquired the item legally. This varies where there's a legal verifiable chain of ownership such as a deed or title, like land and/or vehicles, but for a commodity where any one is as good as any other and chain of ownership isn't reasonable to confirm, the buyer shouldn't be out anything.
2) No, because I do not like or want an iPhone. Given your meaning, the question is how they're representing it. If they're representing it as "!Phone" making clear that it's a 100% Apple compatible product, then I'm OK with that, assuming the parts used are not stolen(assuming that as factory feedstock is typically inventoried). If they're selling it as the actual iPhone product, then no because that's inaccurate/incomplete. You wouldn't call up IBM when your 100% IBM compatible Acer 386 had issues, and Acer selling it as an IBM would similarly be wrong to use a historical example.
3) No, again misrepresenting the product. Assuming second hand local store and not a new suit, "Elvis-era suit without confirmed ownership chain that may have been worn by Elvis during his appearances on the Ed Sullivan show" would pass and caveat emptor would apply, but then I'm steeped in modern ad-speak.
4) Why was someone allowed to use slave labor in a war zone? So, as indicated no. Because they aren't that firm and so should not use that logo. I'm not sure it shouldn't be trademark infringement instead of counterfeiting though, especially if it's found that the claims and product are up to the required purity standards.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 29 2019, @11:31PM
That, exactly.