Interesting Details of Exposed Gold Fraud (Density x2 Lead)

KGC4Dixie

Jr. Member
Sep 13, 2009
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How to Make Convincing Fake-Gold Bars, by Theo Gray http://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/how-to-make-fake-gold-bars.html
Dec. 16, 2009

On Wednesday, the BBC reported that millions of dollars in gold at the central bank of Ethiopia has turned out to be fake: What were supposed to be bars of solid gold turned out to be nothing more than gold-plated steel. They tried to sell the stuff to South Africa and it was sent back when the South Africans noticed this little problem.

This is an amazing story for two reasons. First, that an institution like a central bank could get ripped off this way, and second that the people responsible used such a lousy excuse for fake gold.

I consider myself something of an expert on fake gold (I'm not really, I just think I am) ever since I was asked to give advice on the subject to the author Damien Lewis for his recent thriller, Cobra Gold. I worked out in detail for him how you could make really convincing fake gold, and ended up as a minor character in the novel, where I am known as "Goldfinger Gus".

The problem with making good-quality fake gold is that gold is remarkably dense. It's almost twice the density of lead, and two-and-a-half times more dense than steel. You don't usually notice this because small gold rings and the like don't weigh enough to make it obvious, but if you've ever held a larger bar of gold, it's absolutely unmistakable: The stuff is very, very heavy.

The standard gold bar for bank-to-bank trade, known as a "London good delivery bar" weighs 400 troy ounces (over thirty-three pounds), yet is no bigger than a paperback novel. A bar of steel the same size would weigh only thirteen and a half pounds.

According to the news, the authorities have arrested pretty much everyone involved, from the people who sold the bank the gold, to bank officials, to the chemists responsible for testing and approving it on receipt.

The problem is, anyone who so much as picked up one of these bars should have known immediately that they were fake, no fancy test required. The weight alone is an instant dead giveaway. Even a forklift operator lifting a palette full of them should have noticed that his machine wasn't working hard enough. I think they must have been swapped out while in storage: Someone walked in each day with a new fake gold bar and walked out with a real one. If they were fake on arrival then everyone who handled them in any way must have either had no experience with gold or been in on the scam.
 

This after the news of tungsten filled "gold" bars. Makes you wonder how much real gold is actually held by the governments.
 

DigginThePast said:
This after the news of tungsten filled "gold" bars. Makes you wonder how much real gold is actually held by the governments.

DigginThePast,

I wonder if the entire fraud were really exposed just how much of an impact on banking it would be? Nowadays the banks regulate what the value of paper is and gold rises because of its real and solid value. (Disclaimer: I do not sell gold.) I know why the old timers were always biting the stuff. Makes sense now :coffee2:.

Here is a related story about when gold was part of monetary circulation.

--- In [email protected], "Jay L" <jay_longley@...> wrote:

From: "Confederate Agent: A Discovery in History" by James D. Horan, published by The Fairfax Press, 1954, pages 88 & 89. I hope all members will read this quote carefully as I believe it explains a tactic that explains how the KGC was able to use a modified version of this gold strategy to accumulate much of the wealth that the Knights of the Golden Circle deposited in "marker caches" and depositories many years after the War's end. ~Jay~ ***

"...While Hines rounded up the escaped prisoners of war to form his tiny "squadron," as he would call it in later years, Thompson set out for Niagara Falls to contact "potent men of the North" to learn how they felt about peace. Leading Copperheads like Fernando Wood, ex- mayor of New York City, and ex-governor Washington Hunt of New York, met with him at the Clifton House. New York and the East were

THE FOX AND THE COPPERHEADS 89

not ready for peace or an uprising, they told Thompson. War manu- facturers there were too powerful and were on the alert to "neutralize" any peace efforts.

Thompson next turned to Secretary Benjamin's favorite project: trying to create a financial panic in the North by buying up gold and smuggling it out of the country in order to weaken the gold security for the Union dollar. A Nashville banker named Porterfield, who was living in exile in Montreal, was selected by Thompson as the proper man to set this in motion.

Porterfield was furnished with fifty thousand dollars. He went to New York, opened an office under a fictitious name and began to purchase gold, which he exported to England and sold for sterling bills of exchange. Then he converted the sterling bills into dollars which he used to buy more gold. The transaction was a costly one, showing a loss due to the cost of operations, trans-shipment, etc. Porterfield continued until his losses were twenty thousand dollars. By this time he had exported five million dollars in gold, "and had induced others to ship much more [gold]." His buying up gold and sending it out of the country began "showing a marked effect/' as Thompson said in his official report to Richmond, when the Federals cracked down.

A former partner of Porterfield's was arrested by General Ben Butler for exporting gold, and thrown in Lafayette Prison in New York Harbor. Porterfield fled back to Canada* However, he still retained the twenty-five thousand dollars remaining to continue the exporting of gold through "fronts" in New York.

By the first week in June, 1864, Hines was in touch with his Copper- head friends in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and in communication with Vallandigham, who was now living in Windsor. A meeting was set for the 14th to plan the Copperhead uprising and the release of the Rebel prisoners in Camps Douglas, Morton, Chase and Rock Island.

Hines and Thompson met with Vallandigham on the afternoon of the 14th in a dim front parlor of a boardinghouse in St. Catharine's, Canada. Vallandigham, now a man without a country, detailed for Hines the strength of the Copperheads. Membership totaled about 300,000. Illinois had furnished 80,000, Indiana, 50,000, Ohio, 40,000 and Kentucky and New York State, the rest A "feeling of fatigue" was sweeping through the North, Vallandigham told them, following Lincoln's draft call for 500,000 more men..."

Gary
 

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