The National Ethiopian bank was ripped off for a lot of money in fake, gold plated steel gold bars.
They tried to sell them to South Africa but were sent back when the South Africans relized that they were fake. Now the Ethiopians are arresting everyone involved in the sale and transfer of the gold. But what probably happened is that someone took one real bar a day and replaced it with a fake one. The biggest problem with faking gold is the weight. Gold is twice as dense as lead, which means it is unmistakenly heavy, so why didn’t anyone notice the weight when they bought it? Below is a recipe for realistic, x-ray passing fake gold…

“start with a tungsten slug about 1/8-inch smaller in each dimension than the gold bar you want, then cast a 1/16-inch layer of real pure gold all around it. This bar would feel right in the hand, it would have a dead ring when knocked as gold should, it would test right chemically, it would weigh *exactly* the right amount, and though I don’t know this for sure, I think it would also pass an x-ray fluorescence scan, the 1/16″ layer of pure gold being enough to stop the x-rays from reaching any tungsten. You’d pretty much have to drill it to find out it’s fake.”