CHEAP, low-grade diamonds could easily be disguised as high-quality gems in a
process developed by South African diamond giant De Beers. But De Beers won’t be
selling the diamonds—it will use the phoney gems to find new ways for
jewellers to spot fakes, as rapid advances by counterfeiters make it more
difficult to identify them.
“I can categorically assure you that no treated low grade diamonds leave our
labs,” James Evans Lombe of De Beers told New Scientist. But some
counterfeiters are already using a similar technique, he says.
“So far the diamond trade has been lucky,” says Stephen Kennedy, director of…
