Stealing Gold

STEALING GOLD THE BIGGEST HEISTS OF GOLD IN HISTORY TIMELINE OF HEISTS 1850 WESTON GOLD ROBBERY THE GREAT GHAN GOLD ROBBERY 1860 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF NAZI GOLD 1870 1861 1880 1935 1890 1945 1900 GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS GOLD HEIST 1910 BRINKS MAT WAREHOUSE HEIST GUINNESS 1920 ORLD RECOR 1930 1976 1983 1940 1950 BRE-X GOLD MINE SCAM GOLDEN DOOR JEWELRY CREATIONS GOLD HEIST 1960 1970 BREX MINERALS GOLD NUGGET SCAM 1980 1983 1995 1990 2000 2010 HONG KONG GOLD MARKET SCAM 2010 YREKA GOLD HEIST 2012 2010 2012 AMOUNTS $TOLEN 6 Billion 3 Billion 50M 26M 11M 460K 3M 280K 486K 27K HEIST DETAILS WESTON GOLD ROBBERY One of the earliest gold heists is also an invaluable part of American history. In June 1861, the union army seized gold coins valued at $27,000 from a Weston BANK bank. They then transported it to Wheeling where it was used to help fund the Reorganized Government of Virginia. This organization was formed by Virginians who were against succession from the union. Eventually the state of West Virginia was created and it was due, in part, to the stolen gold. GREAT GHAN GOLD ROBBERY One of the most mysterious gold heists in history happened in May 1935 when a mailbag was mysteriously stolen from The Great Ghan, an express train in Australia. The train was traveling between Alice Springs and Quorn when the registered mailbag disappeared from the brake van of the train. Inside it was a parcel containing gold ingots that weighed 34 pounds. The gold has never been recovered and no one has ever been identified as responsible for the heist, though many theories persist to this day. NAZI GOLD DISAPPEARANCE During the reign of Hitler, it is estimated that more than $3 billion in gold bars were amassed. Just prior to the end of his dictatorship, the gold disappeared from the private Swiss account where it had been held. A Safehaven file document states that Swiss banks actually aided in the disposal of around $600 million of the gold by helping to invest it in private Swiss banks or in other countries. Only a small fraction of the gold has been recovered. GUINESS WORLD RECORDS HEIST The Guinness Book of World Records lists this gold heist as the largest safe deposit box robbery in history. It all began in January of 1976 when guerrilla group Force 17 blasted their way into the British Bank of the Middle East vaults, located in Bab Idriss. It is estimated that they got away with a total of $50 million in gold bars, jewelry, currency and stocks that had been kept in the safe deposit boxes in the vaults. GOLDEN DOOR JEWELRY CREATIONS HEIST North Miami, Florida gold smelting and jewelry company Golden Door Jewelry Creations was the target of a heist in 1983. The two masked gunmen walked away with an estimated $11 million in gold. BRINKS MAT WAREHOUSE HEIST Considered to be the largest gold heist in the UK, six robbers dressed as members of the warehouse security team got the surprise of their life when they found that the $3 million in cash they intended on stealing was overshadowed by a treasure that included ten tons of gold bullion, worth about Ax£26 million. Though four of the six men were eventually caught and some of the gold recovered, the other two men and three tons of the gold are still missing. BRE-X GOLD MINE SCAM This gold scam is a prime example of the classic "salting the mines" scam commonly used in old prospecting days. In this old time gold scam, con artists would salt a non- producing mine or dig site with gold dust and even a few gold nuggets in order to make it appear to be a lucrative site. Then eager İnvestors would be lured in with promises of overnight wealth, and encouraged to "act now" in order to beat the rush of investors. This gold scam tactic was applied in the case of Bre-X gold mine in 1995. The mine site had been salted with what turned out to be grains of gold from rivers located elsewhere in the world, gold jewelry shavings and finely crushed ore. Despite locals never finding gold in the river, Bre-X announced to the world in 1995 that it had hit the mother lode and used their salted mine site as evidence. As a result, thousands of investors were duped by the scam. ---- --- GOLD NUGGET SCAM This gold scam is a variation on the salting the mine scam. News broke in 2010 that a man in California had stumbled upon a 98 ounce gold nugget while using a metal detector on his property. The nugget was then used as bait to get investors for a development on the property of the Lost Scotchman Mine. When the nugget was sold at auction for $460,000 it made news and got the attention of Murray Cox who identified it as the Orange Roughie Nugget, which he had sold in 1989. Because it was named for its distinctive fish shape, which the auction nugget shared, and had the exact same weight as the auction nugget, the scam broke wide open. -- ----T HONG KONG GOLD MARKET SCAM The Hong Kong gold market has been the target of some very sophisticated gold scams involving hundreds or even thousands of ounces of fake gold making its way into the marketplace. The fake gold is of such high quality that even some pro- fessionals have been fooled. This batch of fake gold is not detectable by sight, which much of the older forms of fake gold have been. This batch of fake gold has required testing in order to be identified as fake because of the amount of real gold bullion, up to 51%, used with other materials to make it appear to be real. YREKA GOLD HEIST Thieves in northern California made J 00ত off with millions of dollars in gold from a local courthouse. Surveillance video showed the men using a metal bar on what was supposed to be unbreakable glass. Yreka authories have posted a $15,000 reward in the case. The total value of what was taken was still being calculated, but initial estimates quoted the loot at about $3 million, according to Siskiyou County Treasurer Wayne Hammer. Police in California are still looking for the theives. WESTON ROBBERY E GREAT GHAN ROBBERY NAZI GOLD DISAPPEARANCE GUINESS WORLD RECORD HEIST GOLDEN DOOR JEWELRY HEIST BRINKS WAREHOUSE HEIST BRE-X GOLD MINE SCAM GOLD NUGGET SCAM HONG KONG GOLD MARKET SCAM YREKA GOLD HEIST