fake gold in hong kong, page-8

I find this very interesting and so i have put together a little page on the why's and wherefores of fake gold and both illegitimate and legitimate forms of it etc,

enjoy

L

*********************************************************



2009

Excerpt from:
http://viewzone2.com/fakegoldx.html


-In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanges between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holed are drilled into the gold bars and the metal is then analyzed.

Officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. They contained cores of tungsten with only a outer coating of real gold. What's more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years. There were reportedly between 5,600 to 5,700 bars, weighing 400 oz. each, in the shipment!

At first many gold experts assumed the fake gold originated in China, the world's best knock-off producers. The Chinese were quick to investigate and issued a statement that implicated the US in the scheme.

What the Chinese uncovered:

Roughly 15 years ago -- during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] -- between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.

According to the Chinese investigation, the balance of this 1.3 million to 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also gold plated and then allegedly "sold" into..."

**********************************************************


Dec 2010

Excerpt from: http://www.mysinchew.com/node/48923


"HONG KONG, Thursday 2 December 2010 (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..."


******************************************************
Dec 2010

Excerpt from:
http://www.livetradingnews.com/hong-kong-goldsmiths-scammed-29236.htm


"In one case, executives discovered a pure Gold coating that masked a complex alloy with similar properties to Gold. The fake Gold included a significant amount of bullion, about 51% of the total, alloyed with 7 other metals: osmium, iridium, ruthenium, copper, nickel, iron, and rhodium".



**********************************************************
Current from website
(Excerpt from):
http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/en/alloy11.htm



Tungsten Alloy for Gold Substitution:

Why tungsten alloy is used as gold substitution?

In theory, as its density is 19.1g/cm3, which is approximately 70% denser than lead, uranium could be used as material of making fake coin. However, it is weakly radioactive and not as dense as gold, so it does not appear to be a practical method.
Then people have discovered that tungsten is environmental-friendly, durable and hardness, the most important is that its density of 19.25g/cm3 is just about the same density as gold (19.3g/cm3), which bears the similar specific gravity. These advantages make tungsten enjoys the superiority to be the best substitute for the costly metal of gold or platinum. It is necessary to tell that alloying gold with tungsten would not work for several reasons but a coin with a tungsten center and gold all around it could not be detected as counterfeit by density measurement alone.

The appliances for tungsten alloy as gold substitution:

Nowadays, tungsten alloy is increasingly used in some field relevant to gold or platinum substitution, such as: jewelry, e.g. ring, ear ring, necklace, wrist chain, etc. Also, it is widely adopted in making souvenir coins, such as memorial crown and other application such as watch band.

Since tungsten alloy bears a special property of longevity and high durability, when it is utilized to make jewelry, it always implicate the love between lovers or couple could be everlasting. Its hardness makes it ideal for rings that will resist scratching, are hypoallergenic, and will not need polishing, which is especially useful in