credit suisse gold bar serial number checker

The counterfeits in these cases are subtler: The gold is real, and very high purity, with only the markings faked. And it still exists, and it still works.”įake gold bars - blocks of cheaper metal plated with gold - are relatively common in the gold industry and often easy to detect.

He said maybe a couple of thousand have been found, but the likelihood is that there are “way, way, way more still in circulation. are highly professionally done,” said Michael Mesaric, the chief executive of refinery Valcambi.

But the forgeries are sophisticated, so thousands more may have gone undetected, according to the head of Switzerland’s biggest refinery. That is a small share of output from the gold industry, which produces roughly 2 million to 2.5 million such bars each year. In the last three years, bars worth at least $50 million stamped with Swiss refinery logos, but not actually produced by those facilities, have been identified by all four of Switzerland’s leading gold refiners and found in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the major banks at the heart of the market in bullion, said senior executives at gold refineries, banks and other industry sources.įour of the executives said at least 1,000 of the bars, of a standard size known as a kilobar for their weight, have been found. The fakes are hard to detect, making them an ideal fund-runner for narcotics dealers or warlords.

Gold bars fraudulently stamped with the logos of major refineries are being inserted into the global market to launder smuggled or illegal gold, refining and banking executives tell Reuters.

Credit suisse gold bar serial number checker