A businessman in Surat, India, has been charged with selling diamonds with GIA grading reports that accompanied gems of lower quality than those indicated by the report, according an Aug. 17 article in the Times of India.
R. K. Dhuliya, an inspector from the Mahidharpura police station, told the newspaper that the dealer allegedly “targeted comparatively less experienced businessmen and provided inferior quality diamonds with a certificate that had [the] description of a high-quality diamond…. He collected certificates of only high-value diamonds from well-known traders and then used [them] with inferior quality diamonds.”
Dhuliya also alleged that the businessman had his own inscription machine to make copycat GIA inscriptions.
GIA director of corporate communications Stephen Morisseau tells JCK: “This unfortunate attempted fraud reinforces why it is important, especially in any transaction where the buyer does not have a trusted relationship with the seller, to have the diamond grading report updated before completing a purchase. GIA’s Report Check service offers another method to verify that a GIA report and an accompanying diamond match.”
In May, GIA announced it was seeing more incidences of a similar, but perhaps even more serious, kind of scam: lab-grown diamonds bearing phony inscriptions linked to reports for natural gems.
Tom Moses, GIA executive vice president and chief laboratory and research officer, told JCK that the lab was working on an “imaging system where a dealer could take the captured image of the diamond and send it to the cloud, and, using artificial intelligence and algorithms, we would be able to say, ‘Yes, that is the diamond that we graded’ or ‘No, that is not the diamond we graded.’ I believe that will essentially make this issue go away.”
Neither the accused nor local Indian authorities could be reached for comment by publication time. The Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council and Surat Diamond Association did not respond to requests for comment.
Photo: Getty Images
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