New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Throughout New Mexico's long history of mineral production thousands of mining companies, some successful, many otherwise, have come and gone. Regardless of their success or failure, the majority were aboveboard operations with noble intentions. A small portion, however, were based upon shaky foundations; a few of the more notorious were carefully planned, outright frauds.

In general the creators of these hoaxes were men of some intelligence with a flair for telling a good story. Armed with the knowledge that few of us are capable of resisting our gambling instincts, particularly when confronted with the vision of sudden wealth so vividly painted, the con artist/mineral promoter lines up the suckers as easily today as did his predecessors from the previous century.

This presentation focuses on a few of the more sensational promotions from the Ralston diamond hoax to the multimillion-dollar platinum-gold scams of the 1980's.