In 1997, a gold shipment valued at $3 million USD went missing. The shipment originated from a placer mine in the interior of the country. It was reportedly shipped to a facility in London, England and then to a warehouse in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The shipment was then sent to Toronto, Canada where it ultimately was opened and the gold was discovered missing.

The shipment had been made in a collection of locked wooden storage crates. The loss was not noticed as the contents had been replaced by sand and iron ingots. The Canadian police were now faced with the task of determining where the theft occurred to establish jurisdiction. The boxes had been properly sealed and tagged at Canadian customs which assisted greatly in ruling out a switch on Canadian soil. However, the sand and iron were subjected to a forensic geological examination to try and establish provenance.

The iron was examined and determined to originate from Italy. The sand was examined and determined to have originated from a tropical/ sub tropical environment. The associated minerals, found in the sand and physical condition of the grains provided sufficient information to suggest that the switch would most likely have occurred in Ghana.