Customs declaration on bringing cash into a country vs gold jewelry

Factual Questions
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If the gold chain is being treated as a monetary instrument (as Francis Vaughan suggests in post #9) and it’s worth more than $10,000 then you should have declared it when you left, and your failure to do so might be argued to suggest that you didn’t have it when you left.

But suppose it’s worth less than 10k and the whole “cash substitute” question is irrelevant; the only question is whether you are evading import duty on a item which you bought overseas and are now importing. If you bought an item of significant value you’ll have a receipt, surely? Or, you’ll have it itemised on your household insurance? Valuable jewelry is very stealable. Or, etc; they’ll expect there to be some evidence that you owned such a valuable item. So basically the customs will impound it and return it to you when you satisfy them that you bought it in the US and brought it out with you.

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Of course, if it’s serious bling you’re after, it’s not one gold chain, it’s a whole collection around your neck - no one item of which reaches the $10,000 mark individually. If you buy $10,000-plus of jewelry with cash, there will be a record when the jeweler deposits the cash. If you bought it on credit, or from a real jeweler, or have had it quite a while - receipts, past photos, insurance itemization, etc. The more the chains act like jewelry the better your case that it’s bling not bullion. Buying plain chain for the approximate value in gold weight is a good start to proving it’s substitute cash.

But yes, if you buy it at home and take it out… IIRC one of the early James Bond novels described this trick with India - metal items were disguised pieces of gold (i.e. the chair frame for a aircraft seat) since India in those days limited exports of money.

Still, $10,000 is about what, 8 ounces of gold; (actually, gold ounces are not real ounces… they are troy ounces, slightly heavier, but only 12 to a troy pound… which answers the question, which is heavier, a pound of gold or a pound feathers…) You would be sporting some serious gold dog chain-collar stuff to hit $10,000 let alone significantly exceed that. Either you dress the whole part of a bad rapper with bling, or stick out like a sore thumb. To export $100,000 would require 80 ounces of bling - about 4.5 real pounds of gold.

So again, what is your goal? To get cash from home into bank accounts abroad? How much gold chain are you going to carry out, and how often? Remember, you have to repeat the whole process over and over again to get that pallet of cash safely deposited in Zurich. Even so, Swiss banks now have tax evader reporting agreements with the IRS. You have to succeed in making the run every time - the customs people only have to catch you once.

(I assume the TSA people at the gates are also itching to report you to if they find your bling suspicious. Do they get rewards?)

Short answer, you can try - but the customs people can seize the stuff on any pretext. At that point it’s up to you to prove it is not a substitute for cash, since the fact what you’re carrying is seriously unusual is already a strike against you.

Presumably the fact they don’t do it often suggests it’s a known and watched avenue for money laundering. You might get away with it if you only do it once, but to export and launder the weekly drug profits, it will eventually generate a trail that can be followed.