You gotta read this. Here's a "how to" (well first, go to jail) be a gold smuggler. What does THAT have to do with fintech you ask? This is smuggling 2.0 because you don't have to lug the gold around anymore, you 'digitize' it. As our readers know (and have read, right?), the CME has a partnership with the UK's Royal Mint to facilitate that very process. So, no more sweats at the airport security line, no more pat-downs (unless you like them) and no more excess baggage fees. Smuggling 2.0. Fun read.
(Bill Taylor/CEO)
"As the minutes ticked by on the afternoon of April 28, 2015, Harold Vilches watched stoically while customs officers at Santiago’s international airport scrutinized his carry-on. Inside the roller bag was 44 pounds of solid gold, worth almost $800,000, and all the baby-faced, 21-year-old college student wanted was clearance to get on a red-eye to Miami. Vilches had arrived at the airport six hours early because he thought there might be some trouble—he’d heard that customs had recently seized shipments from competing smugglers. But Vilches had done this run, or sent people to do it, more than a dozen times, and he’d prepared his falsified export paperwork with extra care. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have any trouble. While he waited, he texted his contacts in Florida, telling them he’d already cleared customs.
The plan was to hand off the gold at the Miami airport to a pair of guards, who would load it into an armored truck for the short trip to NTR Metals Miami LLC, a company that buys gold in quantities large and small and sells it into the global supply chain. The modesty of its shabby office, where a receptionist sits behind an inch-thick acrylic barrier, belies the amount of business that goes on inside. U.S. Department of Justice investigators believe NTR Metals Miami has bought at least $3 billion in South American gold in the past four years, much of it from illegal mining operations, people familiar with the investigation say...."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-09/how-to-become-an-international-gold-smuggler