A forgery crisis is quietly roiling the world’s gold industry. 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.

Four of the executives said at least 1,000 of the bars, of a standard size known as a kilobar for their weight, have been found. That is a small share of output from the gold industry, which produces roughly 2 million to 2.5 million such bars each year. But the forgeries are sophisticated, so thousands more may have gone undetected, according to the head of Switzerland’s biggest refinery.

“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.

High gold prices have triggered a boom in informal and illegal mining since the mid-2000s. Without the stamp of a prestigious refinery, such gold would be forced into underground networks, or priced at a discount. By pirating Swiss and other major brands, metal that has been mined or processed in places that would not otherwise be legal or acceptable in the West – for example in parts of Africa, Venezuela or North Korea – can be injected into the market, channeling funds to criminals or regimes that are sanctioned.

It is not clear who is making the bars found so far, but executives and bankers told Reuters they think most originate in China, the world’s largest gold producer and importer, and have entered the market via dealers and trading houses in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. Once accepted by a mainstream gold dealer in these places, they can quickly spread into supply chains worldwide.

Word of the forged bars began to circulate quietly in gold industry circles after the first half of 2017, when J.P. Morgan, one of five banks which finalize trades in the $10 trillion-a-year London gold market, found that its vaults contained at least two gold kilobars stamped with the same identification number, 10 people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Reuters couldn’t determine exactly where the vaults were.

J.P. Morgan declined to directly address questions about the fraudulent bullion, or comment on any of the details in this story. “It’s our standard practice to immediately alert the appropriate authorities and refineries should we discover mismarked gold kilobars during routine checks and procedures,” the bank said in a statement. “Fortunately, we have yet to have an incident resulting in a loss to the firm or a client.”

The Shanghai Gold Exchange, which regulates China’s gold market, said in a statement it was not aware of counterfeit bars being made in or transported through China. “The Shanghai Gold Exchange has established a thorough delivery and storage system. The process for gold (material) to enter the warehouse is strictly managed and in compliance with the regulations,” it said.

When others who store and trade such gold found forged bars, they returned them to the refiner concerned, some of whom have operations in Asia. Bars returned to Switzerland have been reported by refiners to the Swiss authorities who impounded them, refiners said.

Swiss Customs said 655 forged bars were reported in 2017 and 2018 to local prosecutors in Ticino, a region bordering Italy that contains three of Switzerland’s four large refineries. “In all cases the marking of the 1 kg bars were fake,” a Customs official said by email, without commenting further.

The public prosecutor in Ticino confirmed it had received three reports of gold bars with suspect serial numbers, but said it could not disclose more information. The police in Neuchatel, where Switzerland’s other large refinery is located, said neither it nor local prosecutors there had received reports of any forged bars. Switzerland’s Attorney General said its office was not concerned with the topic at present.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-swiss-fakes-exclusive/exclusive-fake-branded-bars-slip-dirty-gold-into-world-markets-idUSKCN1VI0DD?il=0&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter

Lol

So the gold is "fake" because it was mined in a third world shithole with terrible working conditions and they forged an SJW approved "legitimate refinery" stamp?

LOL who cares? Still gold.

So, it's still real gold, worth the same as any other gold.

Muh blood diamonds!

Like blood diamonds, I would want to purchase & give blood diamonds I think the whole maybe some guy in the Congo got his arm chopped off for it back story is cooler than the billions of years of heat & extreme pressure alone is responsible for this diamond.

I could be wrong about this, but I thought I saw something once about how they could fairly accurately determine the source of gold through some chemistry and/or metallurgy tests.

I wonder if that is how they're discovering the fake-marked bars.

real gold with fake markings? dont care... fake gold / gold plated steel bars? yeah, now we have a problem.

Not plated steel, they are using  Tungsten it's heaver

LOL.

If you buy gold in a store, ANY GOLD, it has blood on it.

Anyone else remember the fake gold bars with tungsten cores to match the weight that were circulating around 2012?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/26/the-drilled-gold-bars-filled-with-tungsten/#4419ae974e13

Gold is gold is gold.

One of the reasons I haven't gotten into PMs is because I wouldn't know if I got a fake or not.  (That, plus the easy tracking/record and sales tax).

So, conflict diamonds...

Just doing what was done when Bubba was POTUS.  Some Fort Knox bars were bought by China which got its money back and imprisoned the people involved. Those bars had Fort Knox provenance.

Gold is gold...silver is silver. It's the markings that they found to be faked in some of the gold in this case.

Most of the Gold ever mined is still in circulation, it’s been remelted, blended and RE minted countless times.
There was a thread about gold bars found hidden on a Tank, some tard was claiming..”ohhh ya...if that was stolen from Kuwait, they would Track you Down, using advanced metallurgy.....”.

It didn’t seem realistic to me, but I admit I’ve been curious ever since.
Might be possible to make a case that it was part of a larger lot, but no one’s going to do that, especially when you’re just melting down Grammas jewelry and selling it to pawnshops a thousand bucks at a time.

What the story there?  Got a link?

I'll buy those counterfeit stamped bars off them so they won't have to deal with them.  I offer 10 cents on the dollar.

I really wouldn't be surprised if most of China's "gold" reserves ended up being gold-plated tungsten.

So real gold with fake stamp? So....Remelt and restamp with their own logo?

I wouldn't be surprised if most of ours turned out to be the same.

Gotta regulate that supply.

My assistant is always prepared to deal with thieves that attempt to sell fake gold bars to me.  

I dont know of anyone who scrooge mcducks gold bars in their private pool.  Pretty much from what I know (limited knowledge) only state parties and or large banks use these.  Wouldn't the solution to pirated foundry markings be to have a chain of custody?  the bars already have from what i understand a serial number?  each time a bar changes hands it is logged and then verified on the receiving end and once it is secured on the other side the sending party can remove it from their inventory?  and if the "fake" bars are actually real gold all the way through with the same purity and found to be so, just send them to a foundry to be melted down again and then put back in to circulation as a authentic bar and then treated the same as all other certified bars.  All of this is just virtue signalling like conflict diamonds were, and the only people that benifited from those was debeers, since they hold almost a monopoly on diamonds and to them, less in circulation means what they have in their vaults is worth more due to scarcity, even though diamonds are quite plentiful and not uncommon.

This is true.

Maybe.  Generally speaking, gold gets that level of analysis before it hits the refinery and gets the seal.


Which is where the real problem lies.  Whether or not the gold is "real" is irrelevant, this has the potential to undermine the confidence placed in gold that is produced in these refineries.

I would love to visit the bullion storage facility at fort Knox where I could practice my echo effect in the cobweb filled empty vaults

Not if it fucks with the artificially inflated politically approved gold market.  It is worth more to some people, less to others.

Think:  diamond market.

This is what I could find in a pinch but I remember when it happened in 2009.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread538188/pg1

It isn't true.  Once the gold has been turned into a bar it has already gone through the refining process.  During the refining process the refinery throws a bunch of gold together, removes impurities down to 99.90-99.99% purity, then makes it into usable product.  That product may be wire, sheet, flat stock, coins, grain, bars, or whatever a customer will buy.  The gold from a mine might be mixed in with a bunch of gold from a pawn shop and a dentist's office, or anywhere else during refining.  Determining origin from the little bit of trace element after refining would be impossible.

Just rewind back to WW2 when Germany looted the national treasuries of the nations it conquered.  The gold they looted with through their refineries and received the German national mark.  After the war we were still able to determine what gold belonged to what country and repatriate it.

What you call "impossible" is actually 1940's era tech.

LOL

You know that Auric and Odd Job are behind this. Buying “bad” gold for pennies on the dollar then making the fake bars. It’s brilliant.

Gold and silver both have purity levels.  It cost money to refine the gold to a higher purity.  When the bar is substandard but frauduently marked as something better then you get ripped off.

It says "counterfeit branded or fake branded".  If you paid $300k for a Ferrari that was made from all Ferrari parts but later found out that it was not assembled in the Ferrari factory would you not feel ripped off? Companies spend a years, decades etc developing a brand that people rely on or count on.

China the king of counterfeiters and they need to be stopped.

"LOL" indeed...

I'd be willing to bet blood diamonds some refineries are quietly doing just this.

Ferraris to hunks of metal is an even bigger stretch than apples to oranges

I bet if they're willing to fake logos they're willing to fake purities as well

"The counterfeits in these cases are subtler: The gold is real, and very high purity, with only the markings faked."

So it's logo theft? Other then the logo, it's the same damn thing. I wouldn't care if the mulch I bought from Lowes had a fake logo on it.. its mulch...

LoL, post the story of Nazi gold.

Not really,
These bars are supposed to be .999 fine 24 Karat pure gold. If they were for instance, 23 carats or even less like 18 karat, then the Forger is skimming a small amount off each bar to increase his profit. I do not know if this is the case in this instance. But I did work a few cases of forged South African krugerrands that were a little over 16 carat gold.

Except the logo is supposed to be indicative of accuracy and purity per the company standards.

The fake bar is betting you'll buy Brand X bars because you know they are spot on for weight/purity and have been independently tested.

Fake X uses that logo because they're trying to launder gold and knows you won't buy some rando bullion but they're aren't going to refine it as much ore be as precise. Plus they have money to gain cutting it

Go back and read what I wrote.  Gold isn't refined from one source anymore.  Most of the gold in existence today is refined from gold that has been in circulation for a long time.  I'll stick with my assertion that it can't be traced to origin.

This. I thought this was common knowledge, human history and the quest for gold being what it is.

A lot of the gold being refined were old bars from London.  They were being recasted from 400 oz (Western standard) to 1 kilo (Chinese standard) bars.  That's how we know there's hardly any stuff left as the East continues to drain the West of its gold.  Both China and Russia are secretive about what they hold and we know that they both have more than they claim.  Want to know what tiny country has 60% gold backing for their currency?

Kazakistan is stacking as fast as they can.  The US should have been since it's a major player in price suppression, but we have superior central banking and fiat!

Satiate the inner satan.   Blood gold best gold.

This was my first thought. Same shit DeBeirs does in the diamond market to drive up prices of their "Certified" gems.

If the gold can be fingerprinted, the the entity producing fake marks can also add the impurities in the right amounts to fake the finger printing.

This isn't rocket science

I doubt this is a major problem anyways, who actually takes receipt of bars? These days everybody buys paper gold.

Metals are artificially suppressed in the effort to promote the illusion that currency has value and is a store of wealth.   I for one am grateful for the downward manipulation of metals.