Comment by DuckConference

3 days ago

One of the famous small canadian mining companies that went under was named something like Bre-X, somehow a lot of members of the general public had shares of it so it was a big scandal on the news when it went under. Also as it was unraveling a whistleblower at the company "fell" from a helicopter in indonesia, I don't recall if anyone was ever charged or convicted for that.

EDIT: Oh damn it was far sketchier than I recalled and he wasn't a whistleblower. From wikipedia:

The fraud began to unravel rapidly beginning on March 19, 1997, when Bre-X geologist Michael de Guzman reportedly died of suicide by jumping from a helicopter in Indonesia.[11][12] A body was found four days later in the jungle, missing the hands and feet, "surgically removed".[13] In addition, the body was reportedly mostly eaten by animals.[14] According to journalist John McBeth, a body had gone missing from the morgue of the town from which the helicopter flew. The remains of "de Guzman" were found only 400 metres from a logging road. No one saw the body except another Filipino geologist who claimed it was de Guzman. One of the five women who considered themselves to be his wife was receiving monetary payments from somebody long after the supposed death of de Guzman.[13]

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DuckConference

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skytwosea  2 days ago

I was born and raised in Vancouver, and have deep personal ties to the junior mining industry - I worked for two decades as an exploration geologist, and my Dad has been in the industry since the early 1970s.

Bre-X was brutal. I was barely into my teens, but I recall - and have spoken at length with my Dad and many others - about how he was out of work for several years after the scandal. Investment completely dried up. Industry recovery took years, and was accompanied by the implementation [1] of fairly stringent disclosure rules, which define reporting standards to this day. Nonetheless, scams are still commonplace, and pretty much everyone I know has a story or two of a shifty promoter pulling the rug out.

Mineral exploration is a tough business. You can't just sudo apt install a drill rig! The logistics and expense of even small exploration programs are a bit insane. Crews head out to some of the most remote corners the world has to offer, moving hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of heavy equipment, fuel, food, and camp gear on to site for just a few months of near-constant work, then moving (hopefully most of) it out again. Hundreds of tons of rock and soil samples are collected, by drilling, by walking the ground, by trenching; these samples are shipped out to processing and assay labs. Some properties have the benefit of road access - deep-wilderness, often decommissioned logging roads - but many are accessible by helicopter only. It's an adventure, but it is also very demanding and taxing. There is very little year-to-year consistency, even in bull markets.

Sixty to seventy years ago, the majors - mining companies with actual mines and annual revenue - did the lion's share of exploration work. Over the years, however, the majors have divested almost entirely from risky grassroots exploration, leaving it almost entirely up to junior explorers who must raise their capital from investors.

There are lots of fascinating tales:

- How to Get Rich in a Gold Rush: https://youtu.be/yW5iGLLgzRc?si=Pk_9eZF0vBEjF2f4 two-part youtube documentary on the VSE

- Gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_(2016_film) great movie starring Matthew McConaughey, loosely based on the Bre-X scandal

- The Big Score: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2370656) excellent book that covers the story of the Voisey's Bay discovery in Labrador

- Fire Into Ice: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1166624.Fire_into_Ice_Ch...

- Barren Lands: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22322947-barren-lands

[1] https://www.cim.org/news/2019/how-cim-helped-an-industry-roc...