Scam victims leave gold in forest in growing Norwegian fraud

Scammers in one of the world’s richest countries have a brazen new tactic: persuading people to hide gold in forests and other public places so it can be collected for safekeeping.

Several bank clients in Norway have spent large sums buying gold and then left it out in nature, following promises that “others will keep it safe while the value rises,” according to the country’s banking lobby group, Finans Norge. The precious metal was subsequently stolen.

The first case was registered in the spring, Gry Nergård, the group’s director of anti-fraud operations, said by phone Thursday. The con, mostly targeting older people, has been reported in Oslo, nearby towns and in Bergen on the west coast, she added.

The scheme usually involves a telephone sales pitch from someone claiming to represent a precious metal retailer, Nergård said. After buying gold, victims are told a courier will take delivery of the metal. They are later informed the courier can’t show up and they should leave the gold in a public place.

Besides raising public awareness, “there is not much the banks can do,” Nergård said.

Higher bullion prices in recent years have fed global interest in the precious metal, and also drawn the attention of scammers in countries such as the US and China. 

A spate of “gold bar scams” in New York has cost more than $100 million in two years, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in August. Police have investigated more than 100 cases, in which fraudsters trick seniors into converting life savings into gold bars that they then hand to scammers.

One Norwegian precious metals dealer said it had seen an upsurge in fraud, but hadn’t heard about people being duped into leaving gold out in the wild. The dealer, Tavex Gull og Sølv AS, has dealt with about 20 cases in the past couple of years where customers were defrauded of their gold, said Ronald Sookael, the company’s general manager. 

“It’s usually older people, over 60, and they are looking to buy specific coins,” Sookael said in an interview. “And then they come back and tell us they just handed everything over to someone and have nothing left. It’s a very sad story.”

Norwegians usually invest in physical gold by buying coins, not bars, to avoid a 25% consumption tax.

Swindlers have persuaded victims to buy as much as 20 ounces of gold coins and hand it over to fraudsters, who promise large returns and then disappear, Sookael said. With gold trading at slightly more than $4,000 a troy ounce, a 20-ounce stash is worth more than $80,000.

In recent months, Tavex has lowered purchase limits for clients where it identifies potential fraud indicators.

Another bullion dealer said it hadn’t encountered such problems. The firm, K.A. Rasmussen, hasn’t come across any cases of gold fraud, spokesman Erik Kleven said.

Overall, Norwegian banks and their clients lost 962 million kroner ($100 million) to financial fraud, last year, Finans Norge said. The lenders stopped more than 3.5 billion kroner of attempted fraud.

The lobby group publicized the forest scam as part of a broader anti-fraud information campaign that it is running with the country’s banks.

(By Ott Ummelas)