BRE-X MINERALS LTD.

Process of salting core samples with gold. This is one of the largest mining frauds and scams any company in Canada had orchestrated. Former stockbroker David Walsh formed Bre-X Minerals in 1988. At the behest of Walsh’s partner, geologist John Felderhof, the firm conducted gold exploration near the Busang River in Indonesia in 1993. They tapped another geologist Michael de Guzman as the exploration manager. The company estimated the Busang property had 47 million ounces of gold and its market capitalization exceeded C$6 billion in 1996. A year after, the scam was uncovered quickly after the report de Guzman fell to his death from a helicopter in the Indonesian jungle. Freeport-McMoran said its research showed only insignificant amounts of gold at the property. As a result, Bre-X plunged on the news and was removed from the list in 1997, wiping around $6 billion for its investors.