the headline and "forgery" lede are a bit misleading, as the fraudulent gold bars bleeding into the market are in fact real gold. the purpose of counterfeiting in this case is to launder money by procuring and selling bars that look like they were produced at the world's major legitimate refineries.
the counterfeits are good enough that they've been found in the vaults of jpmorgan chase. i guess gold is pretty good for moving/laundering money after all!
LONDON (Reuters) - A forgery crisis is quietly roiling the world’s gold industry.
Gold bars fraudulently stamped with the logos of major refineries are being inserted into the global market to launder smuggled or illegal gold, refining and banking executives tell Reuters. The fakes are hard to detect, making them an ideal fund-runner for narcotics dealers or warlords.
In the last three years, bars worth at least $50 million stamped with Swiss refinery logos, but not actually produced by those facilities, have been identified by all four of Switzerland’s leading gold refiners and found in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the major banks at the heart of the market in bullion, said senior executives at gold refineries, banks and other industry sources.
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Fake gold bars - blocks of cheaper metal plated with gold - are relatively common in the gold industry and often easy to detect.
The counterfeits in these cases are subtler: The gold is real, and very high purity, with only the markings faked. Fake-branded bars are a relatively new way to flout global measures to block conflict minerals and prevent money-laundering. Such forgeries pose a problem for international refiners, financiers and regulators as they attempt to purge the world of illicit trade in bullion.
High gold prices have triggered a boom in informal and illegal mining since the mid-2000s. Without the stamp of a prestigious refinery, such gold would be forced into underground networks, or priced at a discount. By pirating Swiss and other major brands, metal that has been mined or processed in places that would not otherwise be legal or acceptable in the West – for example in parts of Africa, Venezuela or North Korea – can be injected into the market, channeling funds to criminals or regimes that are sanctioned.
It is not clear who is making the bars found so far, but executives and bankers told Reuters they think most originate in China, the world’s largest gold producer and importer, and have entered the market via dealers and trading houses in Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand. Once accepted by a mainstream gold dealer in these places, they can quickly spread into supply chains worldwide.
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“It’s a wonderful way of laundering conflict gold,” he said. “The gold is genuine, but it’s not ethically sourced ... They look completely genuine, they assay correctly, and they weigh correctly as well.”
The perfect appearance makes the bars highly effective. “Because gold is completely fungible,” Hayes said, “you can bleed it into genuine production. It’s very, very hard to control.”
J.P. Morgan supplies gold from major refiners for many of the world’s biggest banks, jewelers and investors, and the discovery of the forged bars in its vaults triggered a full review of the gold it held, market sources said. One said this sweep unearthed around 50 fraudulently-branded bars. Another said it found several hundred. J.P. Morgan did not comment.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gold-swiss-fakes-exclusive/exclusive-fake-branded-bars-slip-dirty-gold-into-world-markets-idUSKCN1VI0DD 
