The organization says it was ‘blatant fraud.’
The GIA reports that this 1.76-carat synthetic diamond was submitted with a fake GIA inscription (partially redacted for privacy) of an actual GIA report number for a natural diamond. Photos by Troy Ardon.
The Gemological Institute of America reports that a diamond it examined bore the inscription of a natural diamond when it was, in fact, lab-grown.
“Rarely do we encounter the type of blatant fraud described here,” the GIA’s Christopher M. Breeding and Troy Ardon wrote in an article posted on the organization’s website.
The stone, a round brilliant cut, was submitted for an updated diamond grading report. The organization’s Carlsbad laboratory found that its girdle was inscribed with a GIA report number issued in 2015.
The older report represented a natural, untreated diamond, according to the article. But the lab found that the specifics of the diamond they were looking didn’t match that report.
And further testing showed that it was, in fact, a diamond grown in a laboratory by the high-pressure/high-temperature, or HPHT, method.
“Aside from the observed discrepancies in weight (1.74 vs. 1.76 ct), color (D vs. F), and clarity (VVS1 vs. VS1), FTIR spectra clearly showed that these were not the same diamond,” Breeding and Ardon wrote.
And there was another red flag: The inscription on the diamond wasn’t in the font GIA uses, according to the article.
“It is important for the industry and public to exercise caution, because these types of misleading practices do occur,” the authors wrote. “We believe the submitting client noticed inconsistencies with the GIA report information and sent it to the lab for an updated report.”
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