To: Chuca Marsh who wrote (4542 ) 8/9/1999 7:14:00 PM From: geoffreycs Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 5143
From lasers site "Several years ago, the Nevada Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) asked me to help them determine how one laboratory was apparently salting samples from a cinder-cone property that they were promoting by way of inviting people to invest in their project. After being unable to duplicate the results produced by the laboratory in question through umpire assays at other laboratories, the SEC visited the lab and videotaped their procedure for assaying samples. They then obtained, on my recommendation, a sample of all chemicals that were added to samples during the course of the assay so that I could check them for gold contamination. Had I detected contamination of gold in one of the chemicals (which I did not), it could have been argued that the "salting" was inadvertent and that we were dealing with mere incompetents. Results of my contamination check led to the conclusion that gold was being added covertly and intentionally and that an intentional scam was being perpetrated on investors. The SEC went so far as to have me duplicate exactly the assaying steps of the other laboratory, which included the unusual step of adding sugar to the sample at one point, to confirm that their slightly different procedure was not actually responsible for liberating some unassayable gold in the samples. Using their exact methodology and samples did not, of course, result in our being able to detect significant gold in their property's samples because they were covertly salting the samples in their laboratory during assaying. Even careful screening of the videotape of their assaying steps did not reveal at which step they were doing the salting, however. Unfortunately, the SEC determined that they had insufficient evidence with which to prosecute the con artists and reluctantly stopped pursuing the case. "