Sisters Arrested For Selling 'Counterfeit' Gold

[Colabamumbai]

Those are not Women in the photograph. Someone is pulliing some ones "Bullion" or whatever but they are not women, never were, but could be at some time in the future for a few bars of gold.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Colabamumbai

[GentlemanJim]

Seems they only detected / proved it was fake when they melted it down, that's a pretty good forgery! The 2 different metals must separate under heat. I wonder how they did it in the first place?

This is actually going on on a scale that most here would find difficult to believe. There are forgeries going on and unless you are really really sharp you just wont know the difference. In China in particular they are producing masses of fake bullion bars, you can even order them. I asked on a freely available website (google is your friend) and got a quote, and a 1kg bar is 550 USD but that is low quality. They are using Gold plated Tungsten!! It is in bullion bars, coins and jewelry, and a jeweler with a pair of scales won't have a clue. Tungsten and Gold are almost identical in terms of density (to three decimal places). when you heavy plate a tungsten bar to the correct specifications, it will weigh precisely the same, it will sound the same if you drop it, it cannot be shown up on x-ray. A good way to check the bars is using a hydraulic pin or needle. This will punch a tiny hole into the bar but not lose the gold. In theory the pin would go straight through a 1kg bar, that is unless you have a bar of tungsten in the middle.

The bars can be engraved to be identical to swiss bank bars, antique bars etc etc. The even bigger scandal is that it is rumoured the fed have been working overtime producing the largest bullion bars of all. These bars sell around $400K each and there are many that are simply tungsten cores coated with around $50K worth of gold. So heavy heavy plate! But a nice return when you are producing a bar for $50500 and selling it for $400k. In the not to distant past (very recent), the US were paying China for something and sent around 400 million in Gold bullion as payment. the Chinese hydraulically tested the gold on arrival and it was the tungsten coated bars!!!! The Chinese quietly refused the shipment and it was quietly flown back to the states. The truth is out there somewhere Scully.....get researching. Any of you with 100g, 500g 1kg bars in your safe or bank boxes really do need to get it checked properly, and x-rays wont work. Coins and rings etc are also being made. They are sold as 'marketing pieces' for display purposes only and 'must not be sold on'...yeah right!

Now off you go, those concerned, your fingers have some research to input Good luck!

Edited August 29, 2013 by GentlemanJim

[tingtongteesood]

'Mr. Chaichana Prapruettipong, Managing Director of Gold Dealers Association in Nakhon Ratchasima, said that the fraudulent gold might have been manufactured abroad and smuggled into the Kingdom.'

And WHY did he say that ? Is he making up crap about foreigners to make us look bad hence deflecting the blame from the whiter than white Thais who would never ever do anything so bad and the poor honest sisters made an innocent mistake !? Or is there some proof behind this statement, and if so, what ?! Mr. Chaichana Prapruettipong may be a liar, give us proof

[Carrerakiss]

Apparently the fake bars were good quality workmanship.........so clearly not manufactured in Thailand

[geezer2]

Where's the picture of the suspects with the 10 arresting officers?

Ohhhhhhhh I thought the photo was the two sisters, but did query it a bit as they looked older and more manly, but you never know.

that is the sisters aint it BIB not pointing probably because they are more manly looking than them..

[Johpa]

I have often wondered why selling false gold was not more prevalent.

Oh, it is very prevalent. Try taking Thai "baht" gold out of the country and selling it at a gold shop. But inside the Kingdom, if properly stamped, you will continue to get locally posted prices. For the real hi-so Thais, well they know better and buy investment gold in Hong Kong.

[geezer2]

In a country full of fakes, even fake women no less, this raises not one of my eyebrows.

I buy my gold from the Royal Mint

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

and I buy mine by the ton from the gold mines in Africa

I only buy gold for my wife , not that often only when i upset her . and when i not have the money to buy it i go goldpanning in the klong , so she knows i put some effort in making up

Kuiburi you must be hard work to live with.. to upset a thai wife well I never..

[geezer2]

This is one of the reasons i have now stopped buying gold in any form,, i will keep the few pieces i have and get rid of the rest, they did well to re-melt the gold, intuition i suppose but it just goes to show, we get ripped off no matter where we are all over the world, the moral to my story,, stop put the money in the bank (offshore) where no one knows but you,, keep it secret as,,, (darling i have no money) and spend happily forever,, good luck everyone.

darling tank u 4 tell me wher OUR money is slep tight 2nigt

just kidding mate.. but you never knoe sorry bout me thi spell

[geezer2]

Those are not Women in the photograph. Someone is pulliing some ones "Bullion" or whatever but they are not women, never were, but could be at some time in the future for a few bars of gold.

or a few leos me thinks

[Rigs]

guys we're not taking this story seriously. what should 4 gold bullion bars be worth and was the buyer thinking I am getting a bargain here but I don't care where it came from as long as I make money

Spot on he thought he was getting a bargain and was going to make a large profit but got ripped himself. lol

[Bpuumike]

In a country full of fakes, even fake women no less, this raises not one of my eyebrows.

I buy my gold from the Royal Mint

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

and I buy mine by the ton from the gold mines in Africa

I just buy the mines

As in their stocks/shares? Otherwise would be happy to meet you and learn how you do it?

[hawker9000]

Seems they only detected / proved it was fake when they melted it down, that's a pretty good forgery! The 2 different metals must separate under heat. I wonder how they did it in the first place?

This is actually going on on a scale that most here would find difficult to believe. There are forgeries going on and unless you are really really sharp you just wont know the difference. In China in particular they are producing masses of fake bullion bars, you can even order them. I asked on a freely available website (google is your friend) and got a quote, and a 1kg bar is 550 USD but that is low quality. They are using Gold plated Tungsten!! It is in bullion bars, coins and jewelry, and a jeweler with a pair of scales won't have a clue. Tungsten and Gold are almost identical in terms of density (to three decimal places). when you heavy plate a tungsten bar to the correct specifications, it will weigh precisely the same, it will sound the same if you drop it, it cannot be shown up on x-ray. A good way to check the bars is using a hydraulic pin or needle. This will punch a tiny hole into the bar but not lose the gold. In theory the pin would go straight through a 1kg bar, that is unless you have a bar of tungsten in the middle.

The bars can be engraved to be identical to swiss bank bars, antique bars etc etc. The even bigger scandal is that it is rumoured the fed have been working overtime producing the largest bullion bars of all. These bars sell around $400K each and there are many that are simply tungsten cores coated with around $50K worth of gold. So heavy heavy plate! But a nice return when you are producing a bar for $50500 and selling it for $400k. In the not to distant past (very recent), the US were paying China for something and sent around 400 million in Gold bullion as payment. the Chinese hydraulically tested the gold on arrival and it was the tungsten coated bars!!!! The Chinese quietly refused the shipment and it was quietly flown back to the states. The truth is out there somewhere Scully.....get researching. Any of you with 100g, 500g 1kg bars in your safe or bank boxes really do need to get it checked properly, and x-rays wont work. Coins and rings etc are also being made. They are sold as 'marketing pieces' for display purposes only and 'must not be sold on'...yeah right!

Now off you go, those concerned, your fingers have some research to input Good luck!

Silver coins & bars being faked as well. Funny how this works to the advantage of the Feds kind o' wanting to keep the dollar-value of gold under control, as well as the Chinese not really wanting to see their US debt become worthless as well. 'Took a page right out of the counterfeiter's guidebook. Who woulda' thought you could actually counterfeit gold?!

[Thormaturge]

Ozyjon

A bank is fine until the government decides to "tax" bank deposits. Let Cyprus be a wake-up call, the next government may not back down.

[Replogle]

Use common sense when investing in any asset class, including American currency!

Fake gold is easy to detect. Stick with reputable dealers if you're worried. One-baht gold bars, one ounce gold coins and small jewelry are nearly impossible to fake. Large one kilogram bars may contain tungsten or perhaps alloyed with some other metal (unlikely). Either way, simple tests can reveal the phonies.

[hawker9000]

Use common sense when investing in any asset class, including American currency!

Fake gold is easy to detect. Stick with reputable dealers if you're worried. One-baht gold bars, one ounce gold coins and small jewelry are nearly impossible to fake. Large one kilogram bars may contain tungsten or perhaps alloyed with some other metal (unlikely). Either way, simple tests can reveal the phonies.

I don't think this is true, and is out-of-date. In recent years counterfeits have been appearing in increasing numbers which are NOT so easy to detect. Maybe not easy for you & me to fake, but the Chinese are now making quite a business of it, and that most definitely includes 1oz gold & silver coins. At $1300+ a pop, there's plenty of incentive there for the resources required to manufacture quality fakes. But very good advice to only use reputable dealers (though I'd even ask THEM how they're ensuring against it).

[kannot]

I often wonder where all this "stuff" ends up after confiscation????????

[kannot]

I AM THE LAW!!! Okay, I give up now

I just buy the mines

and I buy mine by the ton from the gold mines in Africa

I own the country, you have to pay me rent and a percent of the finds in them there hills.

I own the rights to all supernova in this and all the multiverses

[DefaultName]

Why was the buyer heating the gold to 3,000 °C, gold melts at 1,064 °C ??

[hawker9000]

Hmm. Tungsten melts at closer to 3000deg C - 3442deg actually...

[bander]

"Mr. Chaichana Prapruettipong, Managing Director of Gold Dealers Association in Nakhon Ratchasima, said that the fraudulent gold might have been manufactured abroad and smuggled into the Kingdom."

Of course it's from abroad, Thai's never make counterfeit, it have to be a falang mastermind behind this crime?

Wouldn't be surprised if the BIB found the counterfeiter and finger pointing him in the next couple of days

[TheGhostWithin]

These look like Suisse Pamp bars. Wish I had a close up. Good on the dealers for picking this up. I expect this kind of swindling is more common than reported, as some may attempt to recover lost assets "their own way" as a point of speculation.

Interesting that they state the fraudulent bullion may have been smuggled into the country. Are Police stating that Thai customs are not doing their job properly? Another point is that Thailand is a major industrial nation more than capable of producing fraudulent bullion all by itself. Considering it was a Thai peraon selling to a Thai jeweller, I would suggest this is an attempt to pass the buck on and divert attention from the fact that such fraudulent bullion is made in the face of passive policing in Thailand.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[TheGhostWithin]

Use common sense when investing in any asset class, including American currency!

Fake gold is easy to detect. Stick with reputable dealers if you're worried. One-baht gold bars, one ounce gold coins and small jewelry are nearly impossible to fake. Large one kilogram bars may contain tungsten or perhaps alloyed with some other metal (unlikely). Either way, simple tests can reveal the phonies.

It comes down to knowing what you are buying. I often wonder how many people purely rely on "reputable" dealers and do no other checking when they buy bullion. I wonder how many rely on assay certs which can also be faked.

Lehmans, Fanny May and ford were all "great" certified viable financial businesses to many relying on financial advisors in recent years to those that were happy to earn and invest their money but did not understand the functions they were investing in.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Edited August 29, 2013 by TheGhostWithin

[GentlemanJim]

Use common sense when investing in any asset class, including American currency!

Fake gold is easy to detect. Stick with reputable dealers if you're worried. One-baht gold bars, one ounce gold coins and small jewelry are nearly impossible to fake. Large one kilogram bars may contain tungsten or perhaps alloyed with some other metal (unlikely). Either way, simple tests can reveal the phonies.

I really don't think you are reading either the posts here or the articles in the news. This is not fake Gold! It is real Gold that passes any Gold test. This is tungsten coated Gold. As I tried to inform you in an earlier post, it does not matter how much common sense you have, Tungsten weighs the same as Gold to 3 decimal places. When it is heavy plated you cannot tell by x-ray, you cannot tell by chemical tests. It is not impossible to make the smaller bars or coins. Just do some basic searching and find out. I am not going to post a link on here as it would likely be removed but it is VERY easy for you to find the link I am talking of if you type in 'Gold plated Tungsten' in a search engine.

What is the point of sticking with reputable dealers when reputable dealers are involved in these 'fakes'. These bars are turning up in banks. Fort Knox is full of the 400 oz bars, they even tried to sell them off to the Chinese and were found out. Anyone owning physical Gold bullion needs to be very concerned and get it checked out.

Watch and be worried if you buy bullion:

[technologybytes]

I'll stick to buying bitcoin.. it's harder to fake and easier to verify authenticity!

[GentlemanJim]

I'll stick to buying bitcoin.. it's harder to fake and easier to verify authenticity!

To be honest, I am surprised this has only just come up in Thailand. The fake bullion bars in the OP are just the absolute tip of the ice berg. If someone were so inclined they can go online now, call a number in China and order fake bars that would appear to the value of 70 mill baht for 25000 USD, that is a fact. The only common sense defence in any of this is don't buy any bars unless you have access to sophisticated technology to indicate the provenance of a bullion bar or heavy gold piece.

Edited August 30, 2013 by GentlemanJim

[gemini81]

In a country full of fakes, even fake women no less, this raises not one of my eyebrows.

I buy my gold from the Royal Mint

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

and I buy mine by the ton from the gold mines in Africa

I just buy the mines

I own the country, you have to pay me rent and a percent of the finds in them there hills.

Its usually determined by pick up trucks with 50 calibers.

[Monkeyrobot]

In a country full of fakes, even fake women no less, this raises not one of my eyebrows.

I buy my gold from the Royal Mint

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

and I buy mine by the ton from the gold mines in Africa

I own a gold mine in Africa

[Monkeyrobot]

Why was the buyer heating the gold to 3,000 °C, gold melts at 1,064 °C ??

Well they were dumb enough in the first place to buy it.

[smotherb]

guys we're not taking this story seriously. what should 4 gold bullion bars be worth and was the buyer thinking I am getting a bargain here but I don't care where it came from as long as I make money

What an easy answer: the worth of four gold bars would greatly depend upon weight and purety; and, of course, the dealers thought they were getting a deal.

[Replogle]

Use common sense when investing in any asset class, including American currency!

Fake gold is easy to detect. Stick with reputable dealers if you're worried. One-baht gold bars, one ounce gold coins and small jewelry are nearly impossible to fake. Large one kilogram bars may contain tungsten or perhaps alloyed with some other metal (unlikely). Either way, simple tests can reveal the phonies.

It comes down to knowing what you are buying. I often wonder how many people purely rely on "reputable" dealers and do no other checking when they buy bullion. I wonder how many rely on assay certs which can also be faked.

Lehmans, Fanny May and ford were all "great" certified viable financial businesses to many relying on financial advisors in recent years to those that were happy to earn and invest their money but did not understand the functions they were investing in.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Well then in that case then don't invest anything, or anyone with a mouth perhaps.