Fool's Gold: Giant California Nugget Turns Out to Be Aussie Hoax

WASHINGTON, Calif. -- A man who claimed that he found a giant gold nugget on his farm in California's Sierra Nevada mountains was exposed as a fraud when the specimen was found to be Australian in origin, The Union reported Thursday.

Jim Sanders sold the 8.2-pound specimen, dubbed "The Washington Nugget," for $460,000 in March, claiming that he found it on his land in Nevada County, Calif.

The chunk was described by the Holabird-Kagin Americana auction house as one of the biggest single pieces ever pulled from the ground in the area, which was part of the historic California Gold Rush.

Sanders also had his property assessed for sale by Holabird-Kagin, pointing to the discovery of the nugget as proof the land was -- literally -- a gold mine.

But when an Australian man, Murray Cox, saw the chunk in a trade magazine, he immediately recognized it as one that he and his partner dug up Down Under in 1987.

"There's no mistaking something like that," Cox told The Union. "We knew immediately when we saw the nugget in a trade magazine. We didn't have to do close photographic comparisons."

Cox told the San Francisco Chronicle that he sold the chunk -- named "The Orange Roughie" after a distinctive Australian fish -- to an Arizona buyer for $50,000 in 1989. How it came to be in Sanders' possession is a mystery.

Holabird-Kagin issued a statement Tuesday saying that Sanders and the rock's buyer "mutually concluded that the nugget was from Australia." The buyer was reimbursed for his purchase, and the chunk was sold to another bidder for a lower price.

The auctioneers are no longer marketing Sanders' property as an untapped gold field.

A woman who answered the phone at the Sanders property told the San Francisco Chronicle that Sanders had no comment about the incident.