Gold Buying and Selling

There are many gold producing nations in Africa; each of them with their own laws, procedures, and licensure. Beyond Africa, there are even more countries throughout South America and the Middle East where there is gold business to be done, whether it be buying or selling, each with their own rules and procedures. This lack of standardization can be overwhelming to someone who is new to the industry and there are lots of bad actors who are looking to take advantage of the allure of gold to take advantage of this lack of knowledge and victimize investors and business people. Beyond the specialized situation from each country to the next, there is one general rule that applies to all gold buying in Africa and gold buying, selling or trading in general and that is that all gold buying must be done by a knowledgeable individual on the ground. This is not an industry for new people or remote deals; this is a specialized business, requiring specialized skills and experience. General business skills can help in this industry, but experience is absolutely required or you run the risk of getting scammed. Being scammed can take many forms in this industry, ranging from overpaying for inferior product all the way to sophisticated scams that are designed to bleed your cash reserves until you're bankrupt. For someone new to this industry, the best move you can make is hiring a specialist to assist you with any gold transaction. This is not just recommended, it's practically required to have any sort of good outcome in the gold industry. This will allow you to get up to speed with how legitimate transactions take place while also greatly reducing or even outright eliminating your risk of losing money or getting scammed.

Our staff can provide you with the experience, knowledge, and equipment necessary to be successful in your gold endeavors. By hiring us to consult for you or even directly conduct your gold transaction on your behalf, you will de-risk the transaction and avoid the pitfalls common in this industry. We guarantee any client funds we handle against loss to scam and in many circumstances and countries we are willing to utilize our own funding for your gold transaction. This is the biggest benefit of hiring us over others, is that we have the financial capability to come in and assist with transactions; this lets us provide for you both from an experience and knowledge standpoint and from the financial side as well. We provide consultation services for buying, selling, and transporting gold. For consultations we will provide one, or several, of our staff to evaluate your gold transaction, determine if it is legitimate or if it is a scam, and then provide independent assay services to determine the purity and weight of any product you are interested in buying or selling to ensure that what you purchase is what you were promised. We utilize Handheld XRF devices, Mettler-Toledo Scales for Water Density, and in several countries we are able to offer smelting and fire assay services. For proxy purchase, we can provide all of the same services as our consultations, but we will also buy the gold with our own funds for cash and carry purchases, saving you money and risk by hiring us to take the risk for you. The procedures for proxy purchase vary by country and are not available in all locations. Consultation services are available anywhere with a gold transaction that you wish us to assist you with, and we would be happy to discuss the exact nature of your transaction at any time.

There are three primary methods of acquiring gold in Africa.
- The first method is setting up a gold office; this requires a lot of time, capital, and licensure. You will then have to find sellers to routinely bring gold into your office.
- The second method is buying in the "bush" from small scale miners; this method requires going out to the mining villages and towns with testing equipment and cash and buying gold on the spot in the locations in which it is mined.
- The third method is by mining it yourself or operating a concession. This method also requires a lot of time, capital, and licensure. You also have to spend a lot of money to acquire a concession and take the risk that the plot of land you buy has gold underneath it.

These are the three most reliable methods for actually acquiring gold in Africa, individual transactions with people promising you gold are far lower on the list and always carry the risk of being scams. These individual transactions, in which some seller has acquired a significant amount of gold need to be vetted with full due diligence run on them, and this is something that cannot be done remotely, it cannot be done on the internet, it can only be done in person by a skilled professional with boots on the ground. This brings us to gold consultations, we provide the boots on the ground service to check out these individual transactions to determine if they are legitimate sellers with product or if they are scammers trying to steal your money.

Consultation vs. Proxy Purchase

Clients frequently ask what a gold consultation entails and how it could apply to them or their transaction. In many circumstances, our clients have been referred to gold sellers through mutual contacts or through business connections. Unfortunately, the party who does the introduction doesn't have any real way to do due diligence or otherwise vet the situation. They are good at what they do, but what they do isn't gold. They rely on third party information and the promises of the people looking to do business. With no real way to determine if someone is a legitimate seller or a scammer, they still pass the connection onward to you, and will many times vouch for the person they are introducing even though they have not done any business with them. This is where we step in for gold consultation. Our staff can perform the due diligence on just about any situation involving gold. You would hire us for a consultation, and we would proceed to the country and location of the transaction. At that point we would perform due diligence. We would meet the people involved, check out the product, check out the story, verify peoples licenses as necessary, and otherwise validate and verify everything that you have been told. If at any point we determine that a situation is a scam, we will have saved you hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of dollars being lost to a scam. If we determine a situation is legitimate, or even potentially legitimate, we will put together a turn-key, step by step process for you to follow based upon the host country that will allow you to follow all of the proper procedures to close your transaction with little or no risk. Whatever process we recommend will come with a guarantee that if it is followed to the letter, or if we perform the steps on your behalf, that you will avoid loss. We can't guarantee that a transaction will close, but we can guarantee that if you hire us for a gold consultation, you won't lose money. If you speak with anyone who has been involved with gold for any length of time, they will all have a story about someone new to the industry who came in and lost a substantial amount of money because they didn't understand the nature of this business. Sometimes, this is due to direct scams or thievery but other times the loss can result just from getting bad information on how gold transactions should work in the country that you are in, bad information can cost you just as much money as a scammer if you get held up by African governments or bureaucracies.

The other question we are frequently asked is how is a proxy purchase different from a consultation, when both of them seem to involved almost the same steps. The major way that a proxy purchase is different is that you hire us to spend our own money, instead of you spending yours. How this looks in practice is if you have a transaction for example, for 10 kilograms; instead of you putting up over a million dollars of your own money, going through the purchase process while avoiding any problems, and then exporting to the destination country without any problems, you instead pay us to put up our money and deal with the whole process ourselves. This keeps your capital free, and all we ask, beyond the service fee for hiring us, is to participate in the transaction. We will go, and instead of just evaluating the transaction for you, we will perform all of the same steps as the consultation but upon determining a transaction is legitimate, we will personally buy the gold, complete the export and transportation to market, and sell the gold to our ready buyers. You will then receive your profit share off of the sale of the gold. This is fundamentally the only way to perform a "remote" purchase of gold, except the only person who is remote is you. We will travel on you behalf, perform the entire transaction on the ground, take the gold to market, sell it, and then wire your proceeds to your account of choice. Some clients also opt to take their payout in gold, which can be arranged for an additional transportation fee or it can be picked up in one of our destination markets. A proxy purchase will cost you some of your future profit margins, but it completely removes the chance of losing money on a deal. Many clients consider this a worthwhile trade as since we are spending our own money you will not have any tied up capital, you will not have to raise capital, nor will you have any money at risk during the entire transaction. Proxy purchase is not available in all countries or in all circumstances, please contact us to see if your transaction is eligible.

Gold Transportation

We also offer gold transportation services. If you already have gold, primarily in an African nation, and we have a license in that country, we will perform the exit customs, export, and transportation to your country of choice on your behalf. If you have acquired gold through an earlier transaction or other means and are looking for someone to reliably bring your product to market, we are available for transportation. Generally, this will involve a flat transportation fee as well as a small percentage payment for the usage of our licensure, this will ensure that you product is properly and legally exported from the host country and delivered to the destination. There are many circumstances where Clients acquire gold but don't have the infrastructure in place to perform the export and that is where we step in; so long as you gold can be put into our physical custody we will handle all of the paperwork, documentation, and transportation to your destination of choice. This cuts down on the time and difficulty of arranging logistics in a location where you may only have a one-off purchase. Contact us to let us know where your gold is, where you want your gold to go, and we will provide a quote for headache free, problem free, door to door transportation from pickup to delivery. We offer all-inclusive concierge transportation services which can be handled with our routine gold exports or we can do single-time or recurring transportations specifically for your product.

Locations where we Buy and Sell

This is a short list of the countries where we commonly do gold business; if your country is not on this list please contact us, we may work there and it just isn't listed or we may be able to work there, this list is not all inclusive:
Ghana - Buy and Sell
Uganda - Buy
Sierra Leone - Buy
Tanzania - Buy
Kenya - Buy
Côte d'Ivoire - Buy
Peru - Buy
Colombia - Buy
Turkey - Sell
United Arab Emirates - Buy and Sell

Common Gold Scams

Gold Scams in Africa are far more common than legitimate gold transactions. While there are real deals to be found, there are many common scams to be on the lookout for. We always recommend at least a gold consultation where we put a dedicated member of our staff on the ground, in location, who represents your interests and will perform proper due diligence to determine the legitimacy of any gold transaction.

-- Advance Fee Scam -- This is a catch all title for a variety of gold scams in Africa. The advance fee scam is any scam where they ask you for fees and money for the transaction. This scam will generally start with you being contacted by an intermediary party telling you that they have secured gold in an African nation. Upon arrival, you will meet up with the scammers and they will give you some variety of story about why the transaction has to be secret or off books or it belongs to some deposed dictator or some former king. You will then be taken to their facility where you will be shown sometimes hundreds of kilograms of real gold. Before this happens, you may be asked for a "viewing fee" or they made need some sort of "transportation fee." After getting you on the hook they will just keep asking for more and more fee, such as "security fees" or "facility fees" or "customs fees" they may even ask you for more "viewing fees" or "transportation fees." Eventually they will ask you for "taxes" or some sort of "export fee" and then after paying that something will go wrong, the police will raid things, or it will be held up in customs, at which point you will be asked for more money. When you finally stop paying, or when you run out of money, they will disappear.

-- Robbery / Kidnapping -- This isn't so much a scam as an old fashioned robbery. In a number of places you will be brought in to do a deal and asked to bring cash or crypto. Once your cash or cryptocurrency is in place, they will have you come to their facility, warehouse, refinery, etc. Some facility in which they control. You will "do the deal" and be handed gold, at which point you will hand over your currency or crypto, thinking that everything is fine. Immediately after handing over the currency armed men will either rush the room or rush you at your vehicle, stealing the gold back from you. While you are busy with being attacked, the people with your money will flee the scene, leaving you with nothing. In the worse version of this event, you will be kidnapped and held for ransom. Kidnapping is more common in the interior countries versus in the coastal countries where you are more likely to just be robbed.

-- Refinery Scam -- This scam involves bringing you to a refinery where you watch the gold be assayed in front of you, sometimes using water density or sometimes doing a full gas or induction smelt. You will be asked to be pay for the smelting fees or the assay fees, typically about $100 per kilogram, and usually in amounts of 50 to 100kg, resulting in $5000 to $10000 worth of assay fees. After you pay these fees and watch the gold be tested and smelted, you will be asked to either pay for the gold in full or you will be asked to pay the "taxes and export fees" depending on how much money they think they can steal from you. You will be told that the gold will be held in safekeeping at the refinery until your payment comes through and then you can take title to it. The scammers will then have all of you leave the refinery, with the gold locked up in a secured box that they give you the key to or vault at the refinery, to take you off-site to pay. While you are paying them, their buddies will go back to the refinery and take back the gold. You will send a wire, or maybe pay with cash or cryptocurrency and then when you return to the refinery you will be told that you never had title to the gold and that they other party came back and withdrew it after saying you didn't pay. The refinery won't be directly in on the scam, but they will allow it to happen as the refinery keeps the smelting/assay fee, so it is a win for the refinery and for the scammers.

-- Gold Swap -- This is similar to the refinery scam in that you will go to a refinery and pay all the fees, everything will go down almost the same but the difference is that they will leave the refinery with the gold, instead of leaving it at the refinery. This scam generally involves smaller amounts of gold, usually less than 10 kilograms, with us commonly seeing it performed in the 3-5 kilogram range. They will lock the gold up in a locked box or in a locked pouch and they will give you the key, then they will put the pouch or box in a bag or a car, or they will distract you. As soon as your eyes are off of the gold, even momentarily, they will swap the boxes in their bag or vehicle or sometimes right in front of you. You will then be taken to another location to pay, and after paying they will hurry and leave. Later when you open the box, you will find out that there is no gold, usually it is rocks or pieces of metal. The other version of this scam involves them transporting or exporting the gold on your behalf; usually this is done with larger amounts, 50 kilograms or more. They will have you pay the fees, and then they will have you pay them for customs and transport and tell you that the box will be taken to the airport, they may even coordinate with you for your flight out, usually on Emirates because they will claim to use Emirates Air Cargo. Sometimes they will register a shipment, such as a box of rocks or metal parts, other times they will just disappear with your money while you wonder where your box is.

-- Police/Customs Scam -- In many countries it is illegal to do business on a tourist visa and/or without a gold license, but the scammers will tell you that it is no problem because they are licensed. Sometimes, they will just tell you they have a license, other times they will show you someone else's stolen license. After getting you in to do the deal, they will sell you however much product you are willing to buy, or they will charges you custom fees and export taxes once again, saying that you can take the gold to Dubai to sell it and then pay them the full amount after the refinery assay. However, after you pay them whatever has been agreed, you will be raided by the police. In most cases these will be actual police or government officers, just corrupt ones that are on the payroll of the scammers. Since you are doing something genuinely illegal by transacting on a tourist visa, the corrupt police have all the evidence they need to arrest you and shake you down. Even if you aren't doing anything wrong, they will claim that you are, either by making things up or in many cases by pointing out that you don't have a license to do gold business in their country. Given that you won't want to go to African prison, you will then usually end up paying more money to the police, after being shaken down, and then escorted to the airport and flown out. It is a win for both the scammers and the police, the scammers take your money and claim innocence due to the police raid that they arranged, and the police are paid by the scammers as well as by extorting you as they ship you out of country. We have even seen circumstances where clients are scammed again by the scammers, after sending them more money after they were deported by corrupt police, thinking that the scammers were innocent in the situation and that they still wanted to do business, or after the scammers claimed to have also lost money.

-- Fake Mining Concession / Office Investment Scam -- Another way to scam, that doesn't involve a direct gold transaction scam, is by getting people to invest in a fake mining concession or fake gold buying office. Many times scammers will pretend to be miners or concession owners, they will take you out to someone else's mining site or gold office, where they have friends, and take you on a tour and show you around as if it is their own operation. They will then ask you for money, either to invest in their office to buy more gold, or they will ask you for funds to buy another concession where they promise you 100% of the gold output, or they will ask you to buy more mining equipment or heavy machinery. These are all different versions of the same investment scam; they piggyback on people who are genuinely searching for investment into their legitimate operations, and instead divert your money into their scam. Sometimes, they will have you buy actual equipment and then they will resell it or actually just take it to a mining operation, but never give you any proceeds. Or, they will just steal your money in a classic investment scam rug pull. These are extremely hard to avoid without having someone who is intimately familiar with the specific country and location that the scam is taking place to perform due diligence for you, this is not something that an outside party can genuinely determine whether it is as scam or not. We have seen many situations where people have hired due diligence operations, and even the due diligence company was fooled because they did not specifically do gold due diligence, but just generalized due diligence. It is vital that you hire someone who specializes both in the country that you want to invest, and in gold in specific or you will run a high risk of still being scammed even after you believe that due diligence has been performed.

These are just a few of the gold scams in Africa. We have seen literally dozens more scams than this, as well as hundreds of variations of all of these scams over our years of doing business for ourselves and for our clients. If you think you may be the victim of a scam, please contact us and we will assist you if we can. Be aware that it is almost impossible to recover money losses after being scammed. The scam bosses are members of sophisticated criminal syndicates who do this every day to hundreds of people and by the time you have handed over your money it is gone and unrecoverable within hours. Most people do not even realize they have been scammed until their money is long gone. Please consider hiring us to provide you with gold consultation services before you are scammed. Spending the money to check out and perform due diligence on any potential transaction is far better than losing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to these sophisticated scams. These scammers do this daily and they know just what to say and do to win your confidence in the transaction if you don't have the experience to recognize the warning signs.