# Preventing Theft By Diamond Miners? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 28, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835 "2011-09-28T02:24:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/21 "2011-09-28T20:06:43Z")
> [@Teufelblitz](#): > > Imagine having to recover the stones from that. Talk about a shitty job. This takes me back to my working days. I worked in a prison so we had a whole procedure for recovering contraband that people had swallowed. It specified how many hours a person had to be watched and how many times they had to defecate before they could be released. (It’s trickier than you’d think. For example, there was a minimum time involved - otherwise, a person could swallow something and defecate without worry for several hours while the contraband was working its way through his stomach and intestines.) Surprisingly, one thing that wasn’t outlined in the procedure was how you searched the feces. So different methods were developed, from the merely unpleasant to the truly god-awful. I’ll spare you the details. Me, personally? I was a supervisor. My part of the procedure was assigning somebody else to the job and then calling them up every few hours to see how things were going. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/22 "2011-09-28T20:43:38Z")
> [@Hypno-Toad](#): > > I believe that it \*was \*several hours they had to wait while they had a meal and R&R before being let out, on top of the hours spent on shift. Also, a toilet may be designed like an outhouse with a long drop so that you can’t reach anything. But that’s a WAG. This is working from a poor, distant memory. Re: how long it takes for an ingested item to travel the length of the GI tract to one’s anus, I was under the impression it was [on the order of days, not hours.](http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/bowel-transit-time?page=2) A miner could work a 12-hour shift, and he’d still have to hang around for a couple of days to assure he didn’t smuggle any diamonds out. It’s a different matter, I suppose, if the miner is inserting them in his rectum instead of his mouth. ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/23 "2011-09-29T02:06:07Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > This isn’t the case in the Namibian paleobeach and marine diamond extraction operationsIt _really_ doesn’t take a lot of training to tell the real thing. Scratch and wetting tests are easy to perform anywhere. And diamond miners are trained to spot the real thing, so they don’t accidentally feed a very big but slightly flawed stone to the crushers where it will become two less big stones. > > And the term of art is “rough” diamond, not raw. > Again, this might be the case in some areas, but in the Namibian operations, around 98% of production is gem quality. That’s because all the other stuff has been winnowed out by alluvial and marine working. A lot of the other diamond mines in the world aren’t the stereotypical deep, dark, noisy mines either. They’re frequently open pit workings.Do you have any idea how much money that is to a 3rd World person? Oh ok, I was extrapolating from gold mining. You mean people walk out of diamond mines with rough stones, not pieces of rock? Either the mines are smaller than I thought, or diamonds are much easier to find. What’s an easy way to distinguish a diamond from a worthless stone? ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/24 "2011-09-29T02:15:00Z")
I think in the cases you mention, marine and open pit mines, the work is more mechanized and less unskilled labor, so stealing is harder. For one, there’s less human contact with the mined material. Also, if the mine isn’t dark and noisy, people are going to get suspicious if someone starts swallowing rocks. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/25 "2011-09-29T03:11:01Z")
[mini-hijack] > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > This takes me back to my working days. > … \*\*Nemo \*\*- Have you retired? I missed that. If so, congrats. If it was a layoff, I’m sorry. [/mini-hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/26 "2011-09-29T03:13:42Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > I think in the cases you mention, marine and open pit mines, the work is more mechanized and less unskilled labor, so stealing is harder. For one, there’s less human contact with the mined material. Also, if the mine isn’t dark and noisy, people are going to get suspicious if someone starts swallowing rocks. The story I linked in post 8 is from 1999 but is clear that the Namibian beach mines rely heavily on laborers and that theft is (was?) rampant. At Alexkor, officials openly said theft was at 30 percent, or $15 million per year. And Alexkor was small potatoes compared to Namdeb, a rough estimate of the theft there was up to $160 million a year. Again, the article is 12 years old, maybe they got the security figured out since then. > [@](#): > > Let’s say a miner spots a diamond. He may glance around to make sure that security guards are looking the other way, and press the diamond under his fingernail for later transfer to another receptacle, such as his mouth. In the event that members of the security force have been corrupted (always a possibility), he needn’t be that careful. The next step is to get the diamond out of the mining area. In one scheme workers smuggle trussed homing pigeons out to the mining areas in lunch boxes. They fit the birds with harnesses, load them with rough, and set them free. Sometimes the thieves are too ambitious. Security officials at Namdeb caught one thief when they found his pigeon dragging itself along the ground, its harness loaded beyond takeoff capacity. > > Another time a thief smuggled in the pieces of a crossbow, later sending a volley of hollow bolts freighted with diamonds arcing over the fence, for retrieval by a confederate. This scheme ended when an unlucky shot fell to earth in front of a security jeep. Diamonds are dropped into the gas tanks of machinery leaving the beach, and inserted into razor cuts in tires; collaborators remove them later. Miners wedge diamonds behind sweatbands, tap them into ears, and insert them in other orifices. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/27 "2011-09-29T04:47:10Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > [mini-hijack]\*\*Nemo \*\*- Have you retired? I missed that. If so, congrats. If it was a layoff, I’m sorry. > [/mini-hijack] I’m retired. It’s been almost two years now. It was part of the financial crisis. New York was hit hard. Government departments were told to reduce their budgets and those of us who were eligible to retire but had chosen to keep working were strongly “encouraged” to retire. Which didn’t really save the state any money. The Department of Corrections reduced its budget because it could replace us old-timers with newer people who had lower salaries. However those of us who retired all started collecting our pensions (but pensions aren’t counted as part of the DOC budget). ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/28 "2011-09-29T07:42:17Z")
> [@AaronX](#): > > Oh ok, I was extrapolating from gold mining. You mean people walk out of diamond mines with rough stones, not pieces of rock? Yes. In the Namibian works, what they’re mining is essentially ancient gravel beaches. The diamonds are one kind of pebble in the gravel, but the stuff isn’t consolidated into rock yet. > [@](#): > > What’s an easy way to distinguish a diamond from a worthless stone? Scratch something hard with it. Crystal watch face, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/29 "2011-09-29T14:57:07Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Re: how long it takes for an ingested item to travel the length of the GI tract to one’s anus, I was under the impression it was **on the order of days, not hours.** A miner could work a 12-hour shift, and he’d still have to hang around for a couple of days to assure he didn’t smuggle any diamonds out. > > It’s a different matter, I suppose, if the miner is inserting them in his rectum instead of his mouth. Bolding mine. Anyone who claims this has never had 5 pints of lager and a chicken vindaloo. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/30 "2011-09-29T18:00:11Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > True but it makes recruiting new employees more difficult. If they’re slaves, you just go round up some more poor people. > [@psychonaut](#): > > I’m skeptical. For one thing, most people can easily go several hours without taking a dump; to be reasonably sure that the employees are passing the stones the waiting period should be much longer. Second, even if some miners do pass the stones, what’s to stop them from recovering the rocks from the toilets, washing them, and reinserting/reingesting them? Probably being closely monitored during this process. Lot easier to watch 1 toilet in a room than watch a field full of people scattered about. ---
**Author:** ![AndyLee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@AndyLee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndyLee)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2011, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835/31 "2011-09-29T21:49:05Z")
Forget about stealing diamonds, I want to know why I can bring my lunch to work and mark it with my name and it still gets stolen out of the fridge 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preventing-theft-by-diamond-miners/597835.md?page=1)