iStockphoto
Gold bars and coins in a forest
Scammers can get very creative when it comes to dreaming up ways to separate people from their hard-earned money, but there are many schemes that seem obviously fraudulent to the point where you have to wonder how anyone would fall for them. That’s the case with one that’s caused banks in Norway to issue a warning after multiple people willingly dumped sizable quantities of gold in the middle of a forest and were surprised to discover someone had stolen it.
People have been committing various forms of fraud for financial gain for thousands of years. The first documented cases can be traced back to ancient Egypt, where farmers and tax officials rigged scales in order to boost their take.
The art of scamming has come a long way since then, and we live in a world where there is no shortage of ways to get tricked into parting with your money thanks to the many tricks and technological tools bad actors have at their disposal.
It can be hard to blame people for falling for a fairly sophisticated scam, but that doesn’t seem like the best word to describe one that’s causing some issues in Scandinavia.
A bank in Norway had to warn people about a scam where clients were instructed to dump a bunch of gold in a forest
Gold has historically been positioned as one of the wisest investments you can make due to its status as a nearly universal currency and one that has been steadily rising in value since the international end of the gold standard in 1971.
There are some downsides that come with investing in physical gold. You need to have a place to store it, and it’s obviously susceptible to being stolen if you fail to opt for a safe and secure location.
There are some particularly paranoid people who stash their gold in an isolated spot in the wilderness where they can go to retrieve it if the apocalyptic scenario that frequently inspires them to go that route ends up coming to fruition.
It sort of goes without saying that you want to bury your gold and keep the location close to the vest if that’s the strategy you pick, but according to Bloomberg, some people in Norway have fallen victim to a fairly bizarre scheme that involves dumping stashes of the precious metal in nature.
Finans Norge, an organization that represents financial institutions in the country, recently put out a warning about a scam involving “several customers who have been victims of fraud related to so-called gold investments,” saying:
“They are persuaded to buy gold for large sums, with promises that others will store it safely while its value increases.
In several cases, victims have been asked to leave the gold in unusual places, including out in nature, so that it can be retrieved later.”
It’s not entirely clear how much gold has been stolen in the scam, although you have to imagine it’s a fairly lucrative one when you consider it’s currently valued at just north of $4,000 per troy ounce.