Con Artists' Gold Scams: The Old Dirt Pile Con Game is Back

--The lure of gold hypnotizes ever on by way of this scam. A timeless pocket-liner for Con Artists

Magalia, California--Over many centuries man's fascination with gold has been (nearly) all-consuming. Why? The glitter? The everlastingness? The over-the-ages, proven store of value? It's real. People know it. Their friends know it. Investors everywhere know it. And, the con man knows it.

To illustrate how these scams work, Jack Payne, author of the legal thriller, Six Hours Past Thursday, puts it this way, in the form of a methodically unfolding, step-by-step scenario:

"So, you give in. You invest $10,000 to buy a stake in a quantity of newly mined, unprocessed dirt from a gold mine, "guaranteed" to contain enough gold to, at least, cover your investment. Goody, you think, I'm going to strike it rich because the independent assayer's report shows a much greater value.

"You then wait. You've been told this is a long-term investment, with many steps to be taken--transportation, storage, refining, processing--before you can cash-in. Approximately three years is the estimate.

"Two years later you grow impatient, because you've been told this type investment might be a scam. You call the sales office, located in another state from the mine. After several stalls, and ignored requests for return calls, you decide to check things out with corporate headquarters. You find these "offices" located in still another state.

"Quite antsy now, you decide to visit the site. You find a company "official" who assures you all is well. The reason the dirt hasn't been moved yet is due to either bad weather, labor force problems, equipment breakdown, environmental concerns slowing things down, or local authorities screwing things up (whatever excuse the "official" thinks you will buy). You are told to go home, and you will be kept informed, regularly, by mail, as to progress, which is about to step up now.

"You do. Over the next year you get regular letters with glowing reports of progress. (These are known as lull letters, designed to calm your anxiety, put you to sleep.) As reassurance, you're told to check back with the independent assayer's office. You do. And, sure enough, the report does just that: it reassures you.

"Now your three years are up. During these remaining days you've studied up on how dirt pile scams work, and you now realize that you have been had. You belatedly know how easy it is to file a mining claim, and salt an assayer's sample with a small amount of actual gold. You now know why the sales operation (read, boiler room) is in one state, the corporate "headquarters" in another, and the dirt pile itself in a third.
(To slow down and foul up law enforcement authorities, of course.) And, lastly, it now dawns on you: why three years? Because the statue of limitations on fraud prosecutions runs out in many legal jurisdictions in this time-span."

Payne concludes, "If forced to pick between two evils, choose the one you've never tired. That seems to be the quirk of human nature involved. Think of it, the nuttiness: multiple-state operations, a pile of dirt, no less. What more can be said about human gullibility?"