The three, all PRC nationals, had claimed that they had found a lot of gold hidden in an urn while digging at a construction site here.
They had taken the fake gold to a businessman and offered to sell it to him at a low price of $120,000.
They had previously prepared one of the fake ingots by sawing it in half and placing a real gold strip in the middle so that they could pretend to cut open the ingot and give a piece from the middle to the potential victim for testing.
The three were caught after police were tipped off about their scam by their potential victim, a 60 year old businessman.
The potential buyer had considered the deal after verifying that the strip was real gold after realising that the offer was simply too good to be true, he lodged a police report and police arrested the two suspects.
After investigations, they also arrested a third accomplice and seized over 200 small gold-coloured ingots as well as the supposed old will and six golden-coloured mini Buddha statues.
The three were all sentenced to 20 months in jail. For cheating, they could have been jailed 10 years and fined.
http://therealsingapore.com/content/three-prcs-jailed-20-months-trying-cheat-businessman-fake-gold
