Smugglers melted and spray painted $10 million in gold to look like machine parts
Go to all that work and then get found out by using shitty spray paint.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/gold-smugglers-fake-parts-cargo-plane/Open linkView original on real.lemmy.fan
42 replies
Now that's good. I wonder how they got caught.
Yeah somebody snitched. Airport security isn't going to disassemble an air compressor and start hitting things with a hammer.
You haven't seen how they've inspected my guitar and a shitload of imported things over the years lol
Eh, your fault for having a guitar made of gold
Hong Kong, it's outgoing cargo. I have no idea.
It probably looked odd on the x-ray scan so they looked closer, it was probably more the tied on parts than the bad paint that drew initial attention
You'd think the first clue would be that gold is 2.5x heavier by volume than steel and is 7x heavier than aluminum.
I did the math lower down:
Probably don't notice when you're using a forklift.
My math says that's 133 kg of gold. Not all that much. If you replaced the metal volume, the additional weight is approx 81 kg.
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A kg of gold is worth ~75,500.
You're saying a kg is worth $60 million.
reading that hurted my brain... just say denser 😣
They found $5 million in gold, how weird.
I wonder if 2.5 million in gold with be enough for prosecution.
Gold? Looks like machine parts to me. If they're just laying around like that, they're obviously scrap and we all know recyclables go out on Wednesdays so let me just haul those out to the curb for you.
I mean it's $1 million in gold that's plenty illegal.
Exactly, 500k is a very serious crime!
And to think that the total of 250k weighs only just above 3kg. Hope that doesn’t dosappear is some pockets.
Yeah, I'm sure any judge would convict you for smuggling half a million in gold.
Reading the article, the paint was the last thing they tested after all of the other indicators. Not sure how a more expensive/higher quality of paint would have made any difference at that point.
It's the fact that used it as part of the ruse that makes it newsworthy
They even put the parts back in the original air compressor. Hilarious.
This is the first time I hear about such a case. Imagine how many times it actually did work in the last decades. More effort and this would have gone through like the others.
Yeah, customs doesn't inspect every single item going though. Wonder is they considered just labeling it as lead bar and spray painting, although that would rely on regular shipments of lead bar going from HK to JP and inspectors not looking too closely as lead bar shipments.
I don't know if gold smuggling is actually a big thing. Compared to all the other stuff that's actually plentiful and smuggled a lot.
Isn't gold also heavy?
It is.
They screwed up making them look like machine parts. They should have made them look like tooling. Tungsten carbide cutting tools and inserts are almost the same density as gold. They are frequently coated in titanium nitride, which is gold-colored.
This guy smuggles gold
Finally, an end mill that won't break!
A shipping crate gets mislabeled. A box of "tungsten carbide" drill bits gets routed to a warehouse, then distributed out to various Harbor Freight locations.
People buy them, and they get dull and break upon use, and the people throw them out and swear they'll never buy Harbor Freight junk again.
I'll try next time when I smuggle my gold.
Probably don't notice when you're using a forklift.
My math says that's 133 kg of gold. Not all that much. If you replaced the metal volume, the additional weight is approx 81 kg.
Is iron not heavy?
Gold is 2.45 times heavier than iron by volume. https://www.theworldmaterial.com/density-of-metals/
I mean, recently someone found the mother of all software vulnerability attacks because their login took half a second longer than it should. Steel being 2.5x heavier than usual sounds like an easy spot compared to that.
Did not know that. Thanks!
Tungsten carbide and gold are about the same density. Tungsten carbide is about 3 times as dense as iron/steel. Steel is about 3 times as dense as aluminum.
If you're expecting a steel part and come across a gold (or carbide) one, you'll know it immediately, just as you'd know a steel part from an aluminum one.
Not compared to gold. Gold is about 3 times heavier per unit of volume.
I done learneded. Thanks!
Why did they not just electroplate it
Because gold weighs a ton due to its density, and they're idiots for thinking they could trick anyone weighing or x-raying the parts.
Fair, but that's an issue with the concept, not the execution. If they're going to go through all this effort to cast gold into machine parts, why would they use spraypaint?
Also I have no reference but I feel like if you plated this in tungsten you could get past customs. If they ask why its so heavy you could just say it needs to be heavy for a specific usecase so it's made of tungsten, though I admit I have no idea what tungsten plated gold would look like on an xray, or if tungsten electroplating is even possible.
They did a variant of Goldfinger's smuggling technique?