Carl, a scammer by choice.
Imagine you are being scammed of 50000 USD. That was what Carl was. He lost 50000 USD to clever scammers in an African country. Carl is a clever man. He speaks perfect Queens English. He has also a female friend with African origin and best of all a diplomatic passport.
Being in the gold business and knowing some of the tricks he made a proposal to his scammers. Carl got his money back by selling himself to the devil. He promised to get other buyers to come and buy from the scammers.
The set up was easily done. Carl stated that he was in contact with the supposedly owner of the gold, the female holder of a diplomatic passport. He let an American lady market the non existing gold.
Now I was introduced to the deal by one of my contacts that had got a very good impression of the American lady and all her offers.
The idea was that the gold was in safekeeping in a neighboring country. The buyer was supposed to come to the seller’s place of living and from there go to the gold and where it was under safekeeping. There the a sample of the gold was to be assayed at a government controlled refinery. Based on this refinery report the whole lot of gold was to be paid. The laboratory is just a laboratory and has very limited capacity.
The initial meetings has taken place and the details of the purchase was being negotiated.
Being in general positiv to verifiable gold we only demanded the whole lot of gold some 100 kilos was to be smelted and assayed at a refinery in the neighboring country.
As there was not gold the deal got stuck there.
Especially as we had already through our contacts had information that only 73 kilos of gold was available for sale in that country.
To avoid skillful scammers like Carl you have to have an on hand local knowledge.
That noone of the persons were willing to send their passports is also a very good sign but not essential. He may not even be a Carl in his passport. Nobody knows for sure. The diplomat is localized but we have no interest to frame her. Our interest is purely to buy gold in a safe and secure way.
