A Warning

[cartel]

Keith if you ever need anything in the US just call me I'll pay for it with my American Credit Card shipping it to an American address so if it turns out to be fake it's just a simple charge back on Visa

[bertvorgon]

Thanks for the offer Mike!! Really appreciate that.

Here is another of my stories to read while you have your morning coffee. Enjoy.

The World of Gold Scams

It always begins with a phone call. The person’s first question is how much gold we can handle. A lot I say. I will ask what do you have. Then, the magic number of either: thirty, sixty or one hundred and twenty kilos comes out. This right away makes me ask, is this from off-shore? Yes!

This is how most of these initial contacts begin, which of course prompts me to go through my spiel of why this is a bad idea. In this case, the person, let’s call him Mr. Bruce, has a line on gold in Kenya, which is where some of the scams are run out of. This fellow is also from Alberta, like our Mr. Gabriel. Must be something in the air from the tar sands, that scrambles their brains. He says he is going over to Kenya, to set up a buying situation, so he can guarantee this will be ok. When I ask him for some details, he of course gets real vague, like he really has nothing setup.

He heads over to Africa in June of 2014, even phoning us at one point that the deal is just about done. I warn him to NEVER let the gold out of his sight, should he actually see some, and, to determine that it is real.

Let me digress for a moment here. Many years ago I received a call from a person purporting to be a Jazz Airlines pilot, fine mind there I thought. As his commercial flying took him all over the world, he asked me if I could take gold from Africa, Ghana to be exact. Oh, I thought, here we go again. I warned him of all the pitfalls that I could think of, mainly, never let the gold out of your sight once you determine that it is real. He said no problem; he had a lady friend there who would witness the whole operation. A few weeks after the first call, he shows up at my door with a nice sample of gold, which I assay. Yes, turns out to be 98% pure. That alone is weird, as I have never seen placer/alluvial that high, from anywhere. He says he will be careful, and leaves, stating he will be back in a month.

Sure enough, a month later, he shows up on my door early in the morning. I must admit I was quite shocked. He had some placer gold with him, a kilo to be exact. I opened the bag, and sure enough, it looked like placer. I weigh it in and fortunately, he could stay and watch the melt, as his flight out was later in the day. Now, this is where it gets crazy. I have likely had in excess of 3,000,000 million ounces of placer gold go through my hands, so I thought I could identify placer no problem, his looked just fine, even my partner at work looking at it. I put it in the furnace and we sit down to chat while it melts. In twenty minutes it’s ready to pour. I pour it into my kilo mold, we let it cool for ten minutes. I bump it out of the mold onto the table...IT’S SILVER......!!!!!!!!! To say my jaw dropped would be an understatement. It’s a silver bar. The Jazz pilot is in total shock, I thank the BIG guy that the pilot stayed for the melt. He stammers and stutters, his lady friend witnessed the sampling and assay, never letting it out if her sight.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Three things here, as I saw it. Number one, they are not stupid in Africa. They were able to create a particle size and shape that duplicated the look of real placer gold, around #12 mesh. Then, they were able to put a flash coating of gold or something that had the PERFECT patina of placer gold. It sure fooled me and my partner! Third, and this is where they got the pilot and his lady friend, was in the assay lab itself. Unfortunately, there are a lot of business’s set up there, just to expedite the scam process, being shipping companies, assay labs, etc.. In this case, after asking him EXACTLY what did his lady friend do, I saw that the scam was finished in the assay lab. Having done assaying myself in my career, they switched samples in the assay furnace. Here is how they did it.

She witness’s the gold from the so called alluvial miners given to her, BUT, this is the bad gold. She takes it to the lab, where she takes a sample out, and sees that go into the assay furnace. Unbeknownst to her of course, the assayer is in on the scam. When he takes the sample out of the furnace, it is a sample that was already in there, which of course gives the substantiated assay of 98%. She would not be thinking that this so called government lab might be dirty. Assay cupel’s are small, so she would not even remotely even notice that there may have been an extra one in there, or the lab was just doing an assay run, so there could have been a dozen in there, the “salted” one already there.

Mr. Jazz pilot has just lost $27,000.00 U.S. of A. dollars.

So, even keeping the so called gold in your sight is no guarantee that you may bring back the real stuff, the reality being you never will.

In July, I get a phone call from our Mr. Bruce; there is a box with 42 kilos of gold in it coming our way! I must say I’m shocked, yet all my alarm bells are going off. What is really coming? It is to arrive in Vancouver on a Friday, where we will just put it into our vault till he fly’s in on Monday, to witness the opening. There is no way we wanted to open whatever was here, without the person being here too.
Friday rolls around and I get a call from a Courier.....A COURIER...bringing 42 kilos of gold! WHAT......? No armoured car, no military escort, not even a rent a guard.

Now, 42 kilos of gold in July of 2014 was worth 1.8 million CDN $ approximately, which is now coming our way via Courier. This courier is beyond frazzled; his dispatcher has an open line to him, and is talking to him the whole way. I’m thinking something is wrong here!

The courier arrives and proceeds to unload a ratty cardboard box, wrapped in a torn garbage bag. The air way bill says it came through Lufthansa and it has obviously cleared customs no problem, which is another red flag, as 1.8 million dollars in gold is a whole other customs ball game. It is hard to make out what the description is on the waybill.

On Monday, Mr. Bruce arrives at the plant, movie camera in hand, to film the opening of the box. I throw the box onto our cart and proceed to cut open the top. As the top peels back, my brain can’t quite process what I am seeing, long, yellowish bars. I lift one out, then I just split a gut laughing, there are 42 by 1 kilo bars of soap. SOAP!! I then re-look at the way bill, and now realize that it describes the soap company.

That is why it got through customs with no issues; it is just a lousy, low end industrial hand washing soap.

Our Mr. Bruce just shuts off his camera, says someone is going to die, and leaves the building.

He had given them $60,000.00 U.S.of A. Dollars.

We made a nice stack of the soap bars, took some pictures, and then I delivered the soap to the Downtown United Church, for good use by the street people, keeping one for our collection.

If anyone is interested, I have a good deal on a bar of soap, $1,428.57. ($60,000.00 divided by 42.)

Keith Law

June 17, 2015

[510rob]

...just don't send your gold via Air Canada!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67097117

[bertvorgon]

I did see that Rob, I tend to follow most of the gold type heists around the World.

People would be shocked of they actually knew how lax some so called security areas really are, that you pay big dollars for. At one point when I dealt with Air Canada, they just had a wire cage that was really nothing.

Here is a story I wrote about my experience with an issue with Canadian Pacific Airlines, when they were our main shipper out of WhiteHorse, before Air North expanded.

SHOW TIME

Our gray shipping box came sailing over the steel mesh fencing, out of the dark, carving an arc that just cleared the top of the fence, landing in the deep grass, unnoticeable if you did not know it was there.

The R.C.M.P officer sitting next to me said…..”Show Time!”

In the mid 80’s, Canadian Pacific Airlines was still in business, and was our main carrier for our placer shipments, to and from the Yukon.

At the time, we used a gray, rectangular box, some 6”deep, 18” long and 12” wide for shipping our placer gold. At each corner 4 security seals were attached and then the box was steel banded. On occasion we could have up to almost 1,000 troz in them, but for the most part we tried to keep the weight to a manageable level.

Sometimes, depending on the placer season’s start and end, we would have only one box containing a very small amount of placer gold.

Our procedure was to take our armored van to the airport and pick up our box(s) from Canadian Pacific. Then we would transport the shipment back to our secure loading bay.

It was during this time that we were contacted by the R.C.M.P. who asked if we would participate in a sting operation!

We were not the only ones that shipped valuable items from the Yukon and of course Canada. Jewellers, diamond brokers, other refiners, both from the Yukon and across Canada shipped through Canadian Pacific Airlines…as did our Royal Canadian mail.

As we sat and talked with the R.C.M.P officer that came to the plant, we were made aware that a LOT of things had started to go missing upon arrival at YVR Canadian Pacific Airlines freight terminal. At first he said there were some small items that of course were thought to have been shipped by mistake to another airport, so, lost in the system. Then, some other larger items of value went missing over the months.

It did not really take that long to see a pattern developing that suggested there was a major issue INTERNALLY at Canadian Pacific Airlines and, for all intents and purposes, it was looking like an inside job.
Right before our meeting with the police, one of our competitors at the time, DEGUSSA, lost a small placer shipment from the Yukon.

According to the Officer, jeweler's had lost some substantial lots of jewellery and, there were other concerns he did not elaborate on, but said that they were serious.

Now, onto the PLAN! I could not believe I was going to be involved in something like a plot from a movie.
What they entertained doing, with our co-operation, was putting a 10.000 troz fine gold bar, taped into the bottom of the box, AND…inserting a radio transmitter in there that would trigger when the box was opened!! The gold bar was there to get the value of the theft above $5,000.00 CDN, as this would put the thieves into a whole different category.

We as a company would then ship the box from the Yukon, hoping whoever would take the bait. An R.C.M.P officer would take the box up to the Yukon and give it to our agent. It would then be taken into the Whitehorse Canadian Pacific Airlines office as per normal operations, so as not to arouse any suspicions. At this time, the whole staff at CPA that had access to the freight was under suspicion.

My part was to go to the airport as usual and pickup the shipment being tracked. In those days, the flight did not get in till late, so it was always dark.

The R.C.M.P brought one of our boxes back, that we had given them. In there was this radio transmitter, battery, and a micro switch for the lid. Into that I put a ream of paper (for weight) and then taped a 10.000 Troz Engelhard fine gold bar to the paper. We made an agreement with the R.C.M.P. that we would get the bar back ASAP. I signed an affidavit that I put the bar in there and pictures were taken.

We must remember that back then bar code scanners had not come into play, whereas today, each step and person that handles a shipment, is documented.

The R.C.M.P. left with the box to fly to Whitehorse, and then that box would come down the following day.
The R.C.M.P. would then wait in the freight office area, parked on the edge of Miller Road, close to the Air Canada Hanger. The suspicion was that somehow the stolen freight was getting out of the ramp area and NOT through the Canadian Airlines Offices.

I of course would go to the Cargo office and get our freight and if the box made it, I would hand it back off to the R.C.M.P., who would then fly it up to Whitehorse again the next day, to repeat the process during our next shipment. We would have to advise our police contact as to when the shipment was to arrive.
They would come and sit at the airport again.

This procedure went on for just over a month, until…..I went to pick up our box…..and it was not there! A waybill had been generated so we knew that it got checked in, in Whitehorse, BUT, where was it now!? I waited for 20 minutes, as they supposedly checked the freight carts, etc.. NOTHING!
So, off I went to the R.C.M.P. surveillance van and passed on the info. The two policemen invited me inside to see what was going on and to wait to see what, if anything was going to happen. I wish I could say it was filled with a ton of high tech stuff but it was pretty basic, just this receiver that would beep a signal and flash a red light when the lid was opened.

I sat with them for just over an hour and I was getting pretty tired as it had been a long day already. Then, off in the distance one of the officers spied a small airport style tow tractor, no lights on, with a single person on it. They were heading across the Air Canada hanger lot, making a beeline for the fence area.
There was no conceivable reason that tractor should have been there.

The person pulled up right alongside the fence, stopped, jumped off, reached onto the back of the tractor, grabbed the item, then, swung it up and over the fence……OUR BOX! He then quickly jumped on the tractor and motored quickly back out past the Air Canada hanger and obviously back to the Canadian Pacific freight area. The officer with the binoculars put them down and said; “SHOW TIME!”

I was quite excited at this point and wondered: “What is going to happen now?”

The police plan was of course to just sit, assuming SOMEONE would be coming to pick the box up. I was allowed to wait with them, but, as I was soon to find out, that was as far as I would be able to go. Forty five minutes later, a large Ford sedan showed up, a fellow jumped out, ran quickly to the target area, picked up the box, ran back to the car and drove off.

The R.C.M.P. had already been on their radio when the box came over the fence, talking to some of their compatriots in ghost cars, sitting at all the exits for the Airport. They gave a description of the car and then told me it was time to go.

The rest of this story was given by the officer in charge of the sting, who regaled us over coffee with it.
An R.C.M.P ghost car was waiting at the Moray Bridge, which back then led right into the North of Richmond. They followed the suspect for a bit, and then handed it off to another ghost car, which followed the car to the suspect’s residence. They parked just down the street. Meanwhile, once I was out of the van and the suspect vehicle down the road, they took off to head to the residence.

They too upon arrival just parked down the street, waiting to see what would happen next. Apparently, an hour later, the person from Canadian Airlines showed up and went inside.
This is when I sure wish I could have been a fly on the wall! The R.C.M.P officer in the van said it was about 20 minutes after the Canadian employee arrived that they opened the box, the light and buzzer announcing the deed was done. Five police stormed the house, banging on the door.

Can you imagine the look on those two guys faces when they cut the seals and opened that box. POWEEEE!!!!

They arrested those two individuals as well as some others at Canadian Pacific Airlines. Seems it was rife with a very bad group.

The man who came in the Ford and owned the house turned out to be the owner of a very profitable and well known custom exhaust and muffler shop in Richmond. The “stash” they found in the house was a huge cache of stolen goods. More incriminating evidence involved the discovery of bags of CDN mail…..nobody messes with the Post Office!! There was apparently a whole mix of odd goods that had no real value, they just grabbed stuff when it seemed like a box might contain something of real value.

As it was such a large “inside” job, the bad guys had a good idea who the shippers were and what the packages to be grabbed should be, that would have serious value.

The airline employee who directly took the box was charged with theft over $5,000.00. The muffler shop owner was charged as an accessory and in possession of stolen goods, plus a separate charge of having that CDN mail. A few others were fired from Canadian Pacific, after a fight that was put up by the union. It was hard to deny that it was an organized team in there stealing a very significant amount of freight.
That they thought they would get away with this over time was beyond stupid.

After that we never had any major issues, other than that some silver anodes for a plater went missing from Canadian Freightways which never did turn up. Again a crime of opportunity where a person, or persons, thought the system was weak enough to not lead to them. Things are so different now, with the level of tracking so improved, that anything going missing is a rarity.

In 1987 Canadian Pacific airlines passed into the history books and another chapter in my journey through the precious metals world was closed.

Keith Law October 25, 2019