Does the rise in gold prices lead to other dubious crimes?

[Anonymous]

Gold is up since 2000 from around $250/oz to $5000/oz. Gold outperformed the stock markets.

It's difficult to steal stocks, houses and somewhat... cars, but stealing jewlery or robbing a coin store is easier. The gold is difficult to trace.

Gold can be "frauded" by drilling it out and filling with other materials... fraud.

The other form of theft of gold is white collar... the markets that own paper gold being "Enron"... fraud, lies or outright confiscation by government.

Do you think such reality leads to more dubious crimes... home invasions, assaults on rich women justified by the poor in the community, stock marketers whom defraud investors causing billions in losses.

[WindAtMyBack]

It wouldn't surprise me if there are more gold thefts than before.

I was dabbling in silver in the early 80s when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the market. There was still a lot of silver coins in circulation. I was grabbing up as many silver coins as I could, then cashing them in. I have no doubt that a lot of the coins being sold and melted down were stolen. There was no way to know, and no way to track it. Silver coins got scarce real quick.

[Asker]

It all probably ended up in India!:)

[exitseven]

Years ago I worked for a company tht made trophies. We made trophies for the NHL. It was a walnut plaque with a gold hockey puck on it. The puck was made of real gold when it was $32/ ounce. A few years ago one of those hockey players was interviewed and he remarked that he really should put some of his trophies in a safe deposit box. I thought of that gold hocky puck. It is probably worth 100K by now.

[Asker]

I had a 4runner with a real gold plated emblem. sold long ago. gold was once cheap. now the flakes have value.

[exitseven]

thanks for the MHO😎

[msc545]

There are many ways to verify, but weight and dimensions, I think, is a good initial screening method. If a bar of gold is the correct weight, correct dimensions, and correct volume, then It should calculate to ~19.3 g/cm³. If It does not , then it has been tampered with. This method will catch most but not all cases of tampering. For further verification, the bar can be tested with a magnet. Gold is non-magnetic, and so the magnet should not react with attraction. If there is some magnetic metal that the bar has been adulterated with, then the magnet may be attracted, and again the bar should be rejected as fraudulent. In extreme cases, you can do an ultrasound examination and look for inconsistencies in density. Or, at the most extreme, you can do destructive testing and drill a core sample of the bar and examine it.

[slatyb]

The increase in the price of gold is not going to drive more people to steal.

[jamesgoldman]

The crimes always happened
It's just more lucrative now

Alchemy has tried to make gold for millennia on account of fraud