Collected by Chinatungsten Online- Federal agents are investigating the peddling of bogus gold bars in Midtown.

The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District.

The price of gold has risen more than 600 percent since January 2000, while the S&P 500 index is down 0.6 percent over the same period.

The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.

One gold dealer discovered that four of the 3-inch-by-1-inch gold bars he bought — worth about $72,000 retail — were counterfeit.

“It has the entire street on edge,” said Ibrahim Fadl, 62, who has been the owner of Express Metal Refining, a Midtown gold-refinery business, for the last 11 years. “I and the others on the street work off of trust; now that trust is strained.”

Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry, purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.

A second 47th Street refiner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was burned recently when he bought six gold bars that turned out to be mostly tungsten, with just a gold veneer. He would not comment, though, on who sold him the bogus bars.

Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it, a source tells The Post.

Fadl said he did his due diligence “by X-raying the bars to ascertain the purity of the gold and weighing the bars, and the Swiss markings were perfect.”

Tungsten is an industrial metal that weighs nearly the same as gold but costs a little over $1 an ounce. Gold closed Friday at $1,774.80 an ounce.

To quell his suspicion, Fadl then drilled into the bar and discovered the tungsten — whose silver color is distinctive from gold’s bright yellow hue.

Raymond Nassim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, the American arm of the Swiss firm that created the original gold bars — with their serial number and purity rating stamped clearly into them — said he reported the situation to the US Secret Service, whose jurisdiction covers the counterfeiting of gold bars.

He said his company “is supporting and cooperating with authorities any way we can.”

Nassim thought the culprit must be a professionally trained jeweler to have pulled off the caper.

“The forger had to slice the original bar along the side, hollow out the gold and insert the tungsten ingot, and then reseal and polish the bar, Nassim said.

At an industry dinner Thursday night hosted by Comex, the New York-based metals exchange, the room was abuzz with talk about the bogus gold bars, according to Fadl.

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The mainstream scrap tungsten price maintains steady. The transaction price excluding tax of domestic blade is ￥171.00-￥174.00/kg; imported blade is ￥181-183/kg; scrap tungsten bit still concentrates on ￥187.00-￥190.00/kg scrap pure tungsten block is ￥208.00-￥213.00/kg.

The price of the content of scrap tungsten grinding material which is more than 70W is ￥1.70 per kilogram tungsten, 50W-70W is ￥1.60 per kilogram tungsten, 30W-40W is ￥1.40 per kilogram tungsten, 10-20W is ￥0.80 per kilogram tungsten while 8W-10W is ￥0.70 per kilogram tungsten, which keep steady constantly.

The trend of downward in tungsten concentrate price becomes obviously, although tungsten suppliers are more willing to ship, real demand seems no improvement relatively. Under the support of short resource, scrap tungsten steel prices has been hold relatively, but small transaction volume has been realized. Scrap tungsten suppliers’ attitude becomes more cautious and more willing to wait and see. Tungsten traders feel no enthusiasm toward the scrap tungsten market, therefore trading operations are in active as well. Chinatungsten Online predicts scrap tungsten prices will keep steady generally but falling feebly.

Tungsten Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.chinatungsten.com
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With the coming of New Year vocation, the atmosphere of wait-and-see becomes stronger. Today, mainstream 65% tungsten concentrate price based on Ganzhou, Hunan focuses on ￥112,000.00-115,000.00/mt, scheelite concentrate quotation based on Hunan is ￥110.000.00-114.000.00/mt. The manufacturers from downstream almost stop enquiry, and some tungsten concentrate suppliers stop quotation either.

From the perspectives of Chinatungsten Online, with increasing rain and snow weather in the Chinese Mainland, no matter upstream or downstream, market activities reduces relatively. Constantly weak price of tungsten concentrate make suppliers lose their confidence that they have to get cash through accepting low transaction prices. It is also hard to improve the situation of imbalance between supply and demand since tungsten suppliers chose to stock up goods in the early days. Chinatungsten Online expects, tungsten products price and tungsten concentrate price will keep steady at the low level and will improve relatively after New Year vocation.

Tungsten Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.chinatungsten.com
Tel.: 86 592 5129696; Fax: 86 592 5129797
Email: sales@chinatungsten.com
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Core tips: Tungsten ore market is weak currently, the situation of oversupply is hard to ease; demand of ammonium paratungstate keeps low while ferro tungsten price goes down slightly to ￥173,000.00, the highest price could reach ￥180,000.00.

The situation of tungsten market: Tungsten ore market is weak currently, the situation of oversupply is hard to ease; demand of ammonium paratungstate keeps low while ferro tungsten price goes down slightly to ￥173,000.00, the highest price could reach ￥180,000.00. Likewise, the prices of tungsten carbide powder is easing as well, high level quotation is few. The tungsten concentrate and scrap tungsten steel prices moved down slightly in the recent days, but most of the consumers mainly consumed the stocks and were still inactive in purchasing materials. Chinatungsten Online forecasts tungsten metal market remains sluggish as New Year vocation is coming. 

Tungsten Manufacturer & Supplier: Chinatungsten Online - http://www.chinatungsten.com
Tel.: 86 592 5129696; Fax: 86 592 5129797
Email: sales@chinatungsten.com
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