Some unlucky Edmontonians had a crude education in trust recently when the shiny jewelry they purchased turned out to be fool’s gold.

In what appears to be the work of con artists, at least 17 people were approached in parking lots by men in urgent need of cash, exchanging it for seemingly valuable jewelry.

But when they entered gold buyer Sara Patterson-Robert’s store, they learned they had been duped.

“I often get fake jewelry in, but these were all the same type (of) pieces,” Patterson-Robert told CTV Edmonton, noting all 17 people came to her store within two days of one another.

Conning polite strangers can be relatively simple work with a flashy necklace and a heart-tugging narrative, she says. They’ll say they don’t have cash and need money to get home to their dying fathers, offering the jewelry around their necks.

“They literally take it off,” she said. “‘This is worth a couple thousand dollars. If you give me a couple hundred bucks, I’ll give you this. Just help me get home.’”

While Edmonton Police said they have not received any formal complaints about fake jewelry, the Saskatoon Police Service last Wednesday released a public advisory about fraudulent gold sales, noting they had received nearly a dozen reports earlier this month.

“The reports vary with women and men attempting to make the sale, sometimes on foot, other times from a vehicle with an Ontario licence plate,” the advisory read. “Like many fraud cases, the suspects play on victim’s emotions, stressing urgency to make the sale and/or using threatening language.”

Police are urging people to be polite but smart when you’re unsure in the face of a stranger’s heartrending stories. If you turn them away, consider donating to charities instead.

“There are so many ways to help,” says Edmonton Police Service Superintendent David Veitch. “Instead of helping that individual with that story that really tugs at your heartstrings that you want to support, look for volunteering opportunities. You can donate to a number of charitable foundations.”

As for the gold itself, Patterson-Robert makes the test for genuine gold look easy. Though you might not be carrying around magnets and acid testing kits to fend off the phonies, these simple tools do the job.

“Most of (the fakes) are magnetic -- real gold is never magnetic,” she says.

If the magnetism test isn’t sufficient, the “acid scratch test” can expose the con. This is done by scratching the jewelry on a testing stone service so it leaves a residue and dripping testing acid over the marks. “Fake gold turns dark blue and disappears under the 14-karot acid,” she says.

All the phoney gold jewelry brought into her shop failed the tests.

With a report by CTV Edmonton’s Nicole Weisberg