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        Last September, a New York City gold dealer spent $72,000 on his worst nightmare: counterfeit gold bars. The four 10-ounce counterfeits have all the features of genuine gold bars, including serial numbers. This is pretty scary when you consider how many people own gold—or think they own gold.
        I’ve been a fan of fake gold since writer Damien Lewis wrote my name in his 2007 spy thriller The Golden Cobra. My alleged experience with creating fake gold is pure fiction, but I am still considered a source on the subject. I decided it was time to call my bluff and create some real fake gold bars.
        Instead of casting 10 oz bars, I cast a 2 kg (4.4 lb) cake model, about the size of a layer cake. A layer cake that weighs over four pounds? Yes, gold is very dense, even denser than lead. A good fake should have the correct weight and only one element, dense like gold, not radioactive and not expensive. This is tungsten, which costs less than $50 per pound.
        To create a convincing counterfeit, fraudsters can douse the tungsten core in molten gold. The weight of the gold bars is almost perfect, and when drilling shallow holes, only real gold can be found. A two-kilogram gold bar thus produced sells for approximately $15,000 and is “valued” at approximately $110,000. Since I had to work within PopSci’s modest budget and I’m not a criminal, I settled on a knockoff with about $200 worth of material.
        I encased the tungsten core in an alloy of lead and antimony, which is about the same hardness as gold. This way it feels and sounds right when touched and tapped. I then coat the alloy with real gold leaf, giving the bars my signature color and shine.
        My fake won’t fool anyone for long (your fingernail can scratch the gold foil), but it looks and feels great, even compared to my real 3.5 oz solid gold bar. Or at least I think it’s true.
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