ROSEVILLE, Calif. — A pawn shop in Roseville says they've been seeing a spike in fake gold jewelry.
They believe people all over Roseville and Rocklin have been falling victim to something fishy.
"This is nuts!" Spencer Martinez, a victim said.
There's a bit of a fake gold rush in Roseville and it's been rushing into the Loyalty Pawn shop for quite awhile, at least 10 times a week.
"A long time, we've seen them for at least five or six months," Brittany Walker, an assistant manager for Loyalty Pawn said.
But Walker says all of that gold can be a bit deceiving.
"Some of them, they're just a yellow gold coloring, made with other medals, so unfortunately, they are worth nothing, absolutely nothing," she said.
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Spencer Martinez was only the latest to fall for it.
"It was worth a gamble, it was definitely worth the chance to try it," Martinez said.
Martinez says he stopped at a 76 gas station off of Rocklin Road and I-80, when he was approached by another man asking for gas money.
"I need cash, I'm going to Sacramento, I just came from Canada, you know that's kind of funny because he was dressed all nice and he had gold, and then you need cash, everything just happened so fast and I got bombarded," Martinez said.
He says the man offered up this gold ring for $30 and Martinez gave him what he had, $80, under pressure.
"To me, when I held it, it seemed like kind of a gamble," Martinez said.
That's when he brought it here, to the Loyalty Pawn shop in Roseville.
"I really just want to know if it was real," Martinez said.
Only to be a bit disappointed…
"Just don't be of trickery, don't be tricked, I got tricked," Martinez said.
It's a story familiar to this pawn shop, because they've heard it before.
"There are people going around, they're selling them at the casinos locally, gas stations, just on the sides of the roads, anywhere that they can find people, they look desperate, they have their entire families with them, their kids and even the kids unfortunately are telling people that these items are real," Walker said.
They say, they can tell if gold is real or fake in less than a minute, first testing with magnets.
"You can see it's sticking to the magnet itself, so that's completely 100 percent fake right off the bat," Walker said.
And second, with acid.
"We do a very small etching on the item, real items when we do the etching, we add acid, it has absolutely no effect," Walker said. "If the item is fake, it will bubble up green, it will fizz, it will have a smoky green look to it as well."
They say you can usually tell by the color and smell of the product too, but more often than not, they recommend trusting your gut.
"If it sounds too good to be true, it really is," she said.
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