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Smugglers melted and spray painted $10 million in gold to look like machine parts (www.popsci.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Go to all that work and then get found out by using shitty spray paint.

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[–] Vytle 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Why did they not just electroplate it

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Because gold weighs a ton due to its density, and they're idiots for thinking they could trick anyone weighing or x-raying the parts.

[–] Vytle 8 points 7 months ago

Fair, but that's an issue with the concept, not the execution. If they're going to go through all this effort to cast gold into machine parts, why would they use spraypaint?

Also I have no reference but I feel like if you plated this in tungsten you could get past customs. If they ask why its so heavy you could just say it needs to be heavy for a specific usecase so it's made of tungsten, though I admit I have no idea what tungsten plated gold would look like on an xray, or if tungsten electroplating is even possible.