Two New Yorkers tried to leave Brazil with 77 pounds of gold in their luggage

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From the link:

Just after 9 p.m. on Jan. 24, 2020, two American businessmen walked toward a customs desk inside the airport in Manaus, Brazil, a bustling city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.

Frank Giannuzzi and Steven Bellino were New York moneymen. Bellino, then 62, had worked as a Wall Street trader since the 1980s. Giannuzzi, then 39, was an equity trader before he launched a handful of businesses that ranged from financial service companies to an online auction platform.

With gold prices soaring in 2019, the two friends devised a plan to cash in, Bellino would later say in court papers.

Giannuzzi’s Brazilian wife connected them to a local gold trader. There was a meeting in São Paulo. One in New York.

 
"The officers were acting on “intelligence information” that the men were carrying irregular cargo, said Ricardo Livio, a geologist with Brazil’s federal police."

I wonder how they were 'informed'?

Probably should have sent it by mail... UPS?
 
71 lbs of gold in their luggage? Yea, like they weren't gonna notice that at all.
Sounds like someone(s) were too greedy to pay for a few more mules.
....or maybe these two were the sacrificial smugglers and the real mother lode walked through while security was busy with these two?
 
Apparently this happened in 2020 and has been an ongoing legal battle since.



 
What they should have done was what Streettips does with gold.
Turns it into sand-like pure gold powder before melting into bars.

Then you use the 'sand' as ballast in something that requires a stabilizing weight such as statues...?

4m
 
I'm surprised they didn't have it stuffed up their asses. HAHA
 
Agreed, it is no crime.

But the actions, to say the least, are SUSPICIOUS. Starting with, given our current environment, those bars would probably be safer and more useful IN Brazil.

So that tells me they're doing more than just toting their retirement wealth.

In all the PC Policing rot, and the Woking up of laws and law enforcement...we tend to forget what good policing looks like.

This is not, on the face, a crime. But it sure looks like it's an indication that a crime is being enabled.
 
I wonder where they keep it? I would not trust any vaults in the Americas. Where would you keep $5m in gold?
 
I wonder where they keep it? I would not trust any vaults in the Americas. Where would you keep $5m in gold?
In many places.

The odds that some of it would get stolen, is almost a dead certainty. But the odds that a MAJORITY of it would get stolen, would be pretty remote.

...not good enough? Well, it's better than what happened, isn't it?
 
So now that the illegal gold has been confiscated what do they do with it? Dump it in the ocean? Does it become legal gold now that the government confiscated it?
 
It sounds like illegal gold mining is damaging the Amazon ecosystem. Brazil developed a system to identify 'signatures' from different mining areas and that's how they caught the two New Yorkers mentioned in the OP.
More (long):

 
It sounds like illegal gold mining is damaging the Amazon ecosystem. Brazil developed a system to identify 'signatures' from different mining areas and that's how they caught the two New Yorkers mentioned in the OP.
as if McD's isn't changing the Amazon ecosystem....
 
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