Fake gold bars in Bank of England and Fort Knox

Fake gold bars in Bank of England and Fort Knox

www.daily.pk

Background
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 sh

(visit the link for the full news article)

I remember seeing the original story a couple of months or so back, which very quickly seemed to disappear and never gained any traction in the mainstream press, unsurprisingly given the possible implications.

I know the gold issue and Fort Knox holdings has been a matter of speculation before, but of course it is not the sort of thing that your ordinary Joe can investigate. However, if this does gain traction in the blogospere, it may percolate up to the mainstream if the word spreads.

Maybe that could be one reason there is so much oposition to audits of the FED and financial systems?

www.daily.pk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Do you have any other sources at all? I'll look for my self a little later on... I just don't know how much I can trust a site with a .pk suffix when talking about something like that...

Very serious story if true though - very worrying. - Still at least I know how to make fake gold bars now - mental note, tungsten much cheaper than gold, same density to 3dp it's just the wrong colour and too hard - 1/16th" coating of pure gold should sort that out - I need to get me loads of tungsten and a bit of gold.

[edit on 14/1/2010 by Now_Then]

I read about this a couple of months ago. The global gold market is flooded with these tungten salted gold bars.

The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and 5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars [roughly 60 metric tonnes].

This was apparently all highly orchestrated by an extremely well financed criminal operation.

Within mere hours of this scam being identified – Chinese officials had many of the perpetrators in custody.

And here’s what the Chinese allegedly 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. I know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox. The balance of this 1.3 million – 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten cache was also plated and then allegedly “sold” into the international market.

www.marketoracle.co.uk...

You want a source?

I'M your source.

I actually work at the Bank of England and I worked in the Bullion section for 8 years before moving offices, trust me, the bars in our vaults ( all @ 370,000 of them) are real .
I should know I've handled and weighed practically ALL of them.

There has been an issue lately were some ( mainly the old @Fed' bars were of low quality , before the LBMA said a gold bar has to look and be a gold bar, the Feds were full of holes, some of which had sawdust in them from when they were sent here to the B of E vaults. They used to be stored in boxes of 3 filled with sawdust, before being sent here on wooden pallets, whereas some other refiners had other issues, bobbles, bumps and cracks.
The whole lot of the Fed bars have been scanned ( due to LBMA regulations and request) and some , not all have been found to have faults ( about 30% or so), but they had been made in the 20's and 30's , before quality control even existed.
The ONLY fake ones in the Bank of England are the ones on display in the museum 'pyramid', you can tell that if you ever get here by checking the numbers on the bars, there are 3 sets of ranges, but about 30 bars in the display, ALL the real bars we stamp with its own unique number in a machine that compresses the number into the bar at a pressure of 4 tonnes, if the bars were tungsten I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take the pressure and squash or flatten the bar..

Mind you the article doesn't mention the Bank of England by name either, but for your information we ARE the second largest custodian of Bullion in the world AFTER the Fedral Reserve in New York.?.?

[edit on 14/1/10 by DataWraith]

Originally posted by DataWraith
You want a source?

I'M your source.

I actually work at the Bank of England and I worked in the Bullion section for 8 years before moving offices, trust me, the bars in our vaults ( all @ 370,000 of them) are real .
I should know I've handled and weighed practically ALL of them.

There has been an issue lately were some ( mainly the old @Fed' bars were of low quality , before the LBMA said a gold bar has to look and be a gold bar, the Feds were full of holes, some of which had sawdust in them from when they were sent here to the B of E vaults. They used to be stored in boxes of 3 filled with sawdust, before being sent here on wooden pallets, whereas some other refiners had other issues, bobbles, bumps and cracks.
The whole lot of the Fed bars have been scanned ( due to LBMA regulations and request) and some , not all have been found to have faults ( about 30% or so), but they had been made in the 20's and 30's , before quality control even existed.
The ONLY fake ones in the Bank of England are the ones on display in the museum 'pyramid', you can tell that if you ever get here by checking the numbers on the bars, there are 3 sets of ranges, but about 30 bars in the display, ALL the real bars we stamp with its own unique number in a machine that compresses the number into the bar at a pressure of 4 tonnes, if the bars were tungsten I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take the weight and squash or flatten the bar..



[edit on 14/1/10 by DataWraith]

Tungsten is harder than gold and less malleable. So it could take the weight and would in fact squash less than gold.

Thanks for your post mr source.

[edit on 14-1-2010 by watcher73]

Fort Knox hasn't been audited in OVER FIFTY YEARS!
www.bullionbullscanada.com...

I wonder why?

[edit on 14-1-2010 by Signals]

reply to post by watcher73


Is tungsten the same weight as gold? or the same density?
Just a question and NOT a snide remark.

reply to post by DataWraith


Really? Wow, small world, I worked at the BoE, Spent most of my time in KAYs during the renovations some years ago.. Hohum, interesting time and I do beleive the gold there is real (that's just a gut feeling since I was not allowed close enough to see if I could hold one or two ;-)

Sorry to derail but do you still have watchers???

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
reply to post by DataWraith

 

Really? Wow, small world, I worked at the BoE, Spent most of my time in KAYs during the renovations some years ago.. Hohum, interesting time and I do beleive the gold there is real (that's just a gut feeling since I was not allowed close enough to see if I could hold one or two ;-)

Sorry to derail but do you still have watchers???

Ahh the good ol' days , I remember KAY's , good restaurant and great bar, no wonder most of the staff came back from lunch drunk ( before the Bank realised it didn't have a liquor license and couldn't legally sell alcohol
Watchers? no , we have a security force, but other than that, no watchers, watchers finished before I started , now its 'A' panel and 'B panel' with security force authorisation to open vaults, cameras do all the watching these days.
There IS a real one in the Museum, that you can pick up, but its in a barely larger than a bar perspex box that has a hole in the side, only large anough for your hand to go in, but the box has 'blockers' on the sides of the bar so you can't turn it round. That was because many moons ago (Bank urban legend ) a young kid tourist asked " is it real?" to a pink guard ( The doormen wear pink jackets) and the guard said " If you can take it out you can keep it", the kid had small fingers and managed to turn the bar around and slide it out, he got to the door before having a pang of guilt, he handed it back and the poop hit the fan, hence the 'blockers' now.



[edit on 14/1/10 by DataWraith]

Originally posted by DataWraith
reply to post by watcher73

 

Is tungsten the same weight as gold? or the same density?
Just a question and NOT a snide remark.

Tungsten has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it.

reply to post by DataWraith


Thanks for the info, didn't mean to derail.. Yer well you can see how long ago it was I worked there (contract PM for the premises division) my first 3 months I had my own watcher (armed guard) who watched me, even waiting outisde the toilet, which is very disconcerting (my projects were over multiple areas of the bank, but mostly as I said in KAYs) Great job you have, the vaults are awsome I can't imagine the gold would be fake.

Countries used the building all the time, in and out with their deposits (I assume deposits) it would be pretty hard to scam them with fake gold given the level of footfall I saw back then. It appeard to me everyone wanted their own little tour of the buildings.

Edit to add: The issue I would have is that I do not know what use Fort Knox is put to! do people/countries actually do business in Fort knox as they do in the BoE (at least they did in my time) is Fort Knox a gold vault or fully functioning bank? A secluded vault perhaps could get away with more than a fully functioning bank that is under scrutiny, again I don't know the answer. But that would be my question.

[edit on 14/1/10 by thoughtsfull]

This news on fake gold not only reported by original poster's suggested .pk site.

It is everywhere on the net. Google "fake gold bars in bank of england". Luckily, Google hasn't suppressed it yet.

News being kept low profile by mainstream media but spread among brokers and investors.




[edit on 1 14 2010 by wisdomnotemotion]

There was also a whole lot of gold and other important metals missing from the Canadian Mint. Found during an audit.

Later they quietly came out saying it was essentially clerical mistake.

To which I say, Horse#. I read the reports, which can be found here,
www.mint.ca...

And while they say they are satisfied, I notice that it never addresses WHY very clearly.


that being said.

They do YEARLY audits, and used to do TWICE yearly audits.

How is that the US hasn't done one in FIFTY years???? That's INSANE.

[edit on 2010/1/14 by Aeons]

Banks have ALWAYS said that they have more than they acctually have.

What do you think has just happened ?

They decided to call it "toxic debt" and blamed it on "over enthusiastic hedge fund managers"

Would I place a bet on the quality of the gold in the Bank of England ?

NO !

Do I think the "quality" is better than 10 years ago ?

YES !

Did the UK sell their gold reserve at it's lowest price for NO reason back between 1999 and 2002 - I think not ! ( www.timesonline.co.uk... )

I've been waiting for this one to hit the fan with all "OUR" savings for a while.

This will be part of "disclosure" when it comes about.

I worked in the (go ahead and bash me) FRB between 78-88, There was talk even then about the purity of gold, but I also remember that all gold was removed from Fort Knox, and placed in the FRB New York.

But who knows, if the gold was faked, and came out of the Fed, it would have been changed somewhere, so who has the real gold? And who would have the knowlege of where and when to change it.

Great concept for a Hollwood script...

And I also dont blame anyone for testing it.

Possibly another reasonfor 9/11?

Didn't a lot of gold disappear from WTC1? What if that "gold" was actually bogus? That would be a pretty good way of getting rid of the evidence.

Originally posted by apacheman
Possibly another reasonfor 9/11?

Didn't a lot of gold disappear from WTC1? What if that "gold" was actually bogus? That would be a pretty good way of getting rid of the evidence.

This is what immediately came to my mind. Without being inordinately paranoid, the issue of cui bono is critical to any understanding of such events.

Originally posted by DataWraith
You want a source?

I'M your source.

I actually work at the Bank of England and I worked in the Bullion section for 8 years before moving offices, trust me, the bars in our vaults ( all @ 370,000 of them) are real .
I should know I've handled and weighed practically ALL of them.

There has been an issue lately were some ( mainly the old @Fed' bars were of low quality , before the LBMA said a gold bar has to look and be a gold bar, the Feds were full of holes, some of which had sawdust in them from when they were sent here to the B of E vaults. They used to be stored in boxes of 3 filled with sawdust, before being sent here on wooden pallets, whereas some other refiners had other issues, bobbles, bumps and cracks.
The whole lot of the Fed bars have been scanned ( due to LBMA regulations and request) and some , not all have been found to have faults ( about 30% or so), but they had been made in the 20's and 30's , before quality control even existed.
The ONLY fake ones in the Bank of England are the ones on display in the museum 'pyramid', you can tell that if you ever get here by checking the numbers on the bars, there are 3 sets of ranges, but about 30 bars in the display, ALL the real bars we stamp with its own unique number in a machine that compresses the number into the bar at a pressure of 4 tonnes, if the bars were tungsten I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take the pressure and squash or flatten the bar..

[snip]
[edit on 14/1/10 by DataWraith]

I was just about to agree but then after a bit of thought it would seam unlikely for professionally made counterfeits to be that easy to detect.You have to think if the counterfeiters have all of the same tools to detect fakes and know how they work etc the chances for simple mistakes like this is low.For example it would be unlikely to be thinly plated tungsten so that when you would compress your numbers it would not distort differently.
Not hard to do if its over 1/4 inch thick plating I would amuse.

Where you mention scanning is this something that would detect a tungsten core.What if the tungsten were in divided form such as small balls suspended and of some idealized size. Could you tell us if its an ultrasound scan?
Interesting point is that I have in my collection some actual tungsten silver alloy so I suppose it might be possible with gold as well.Not sure how this could be used to fool the type of scanning you mention but its an extra possible point to think about.

However for example a thermal or electrical conductivity test would reveal a tungsten content.
I have read about some vending machines either made or considered that were able to detect silver and could not be fooled because no other material could match silvers room temperature electrical conductivity.Really do not remember now if they were actually used or not as I only remember reading about them and forgot those details now.

[edit on 18-1-2010 by ultarnerd]

[edit on 18-1-2010 by ultarnerd]

reply to post by ultarnerd


It was ultrasound scanning they did , I'd left just as they were starting to get the equipment and training together, I couldn't see the way it was done, but from what I DID see it measured depth and 'consistancy' of the bars, the feds ones were truly horrendous as they had huge holes, gaps and cracks in them, not all but some.
Its possible that some of them could be , but they would have to have been fairly recent ones, and the majority of thebars in the BofE vaults have been down there decades.
The BofE's processes haven't really changed over the years so who's to say?