Fake gold for sale?

[GregP507]

I find it hard to swallow that the following webpage is actually legitimate:

http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/gold-plated-tungsten-alloy-bar.html

It seems to be offering tungsten bars, salted with a coating of gold, to make them appear to be real gold bars. Since tungsten is roughly the same density as gold, and about 0.1% of the cost, it's plausible that someone might actually try to pass these off as real gold. However, I doubt any serious buyer of gold nowadays would sign a deal without assaying the gold to determine it's purity and authenticity.

[Xico]

yes this looks nice and dandy, but as the disclaimer reads:

Notice: Chinatungsten Online (Xiamen) Manu.&Sales Corp. is a very professional and serious company, specializing in manufacturing and selling tungsten related products for more than two decades. Our gold-plated tungsten bar andtungsten alloy golden bar are only for souvenir and decoration purpose. We can provide all kinds of tungsten alloy golden bar as your requirements. Here we declare:Please do not use our gold-plated tungsten alloy bar and tungsten alloy golden bar for any illegal purpose.

but it is possible that some will fall for that.... :(

[GregP507]

I love this part: "Notice: Chinatungsten Online (Xiamen) Manu.&Sales Corp. is a very professional and serious company..."

[Palinurus]

I recalled having read about these some time ago, so I did a search. Turns out there was some sort of a scare about 'fake' gold bars back in 2012.

Some examples:

_http://www.maxkeiser.com/2012/09/chinese-firm-markets-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-coins/
_http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/26/the-drilled-gold-bars-filled-with-tungsten/
_http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/25/the-problem-of-fake-gold-bars/
_http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-23/gold-counterfeiting-goes-viral-10-tungsten-filled-gold-bars-are-discovered-manhattan