Police Eye Cash for Gold Industry

In an ad run during the Super Bowl, Ed McMahon and MC Hammer showcased the fast-growing business of selling your old gold jewelry for cash by mail. Now, police are cracking down on the business to keep crooks out.

Inside Cash4Gold's Fort Lauderdale, Fla., warehouse, workers open up to 5,000 envelopes containing gold every day. It's measured, a check is mailed to the seller and then the gold is melted down. The current rate is about $900 an ounce. But unlike the pawn shop industry, selling precious metals by mail is unchecked, raising concerns by cops that it's fast become the best way for criminals to sell stolen merchandise quickly.

Florida's legislature just passed a bill requiring buy-gold-by-mail businesses to photograph each item, post it on a national database viewable by police and not melt it down until 10 days after the sale. Florida's governor is reviewing it, and Cash4Gold's CEO supports it.

As it is, this industry, in this economy, is an unregulated gold mine.