Pfizer loses a bucket-load of gold dust from lab

Drug companies have been known to have product stolen from plants or labs. And earlier this year Merck ($MRK) had intellectual property stolen by a contract lab employee. But a bucket-load of gold dust? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says police are investing the possible disappearance of gold dust that a Pfizer ($PFE) research lab in a St. Louis suburb last year paid $700,000 to obtain. A routine inventory pegged it missing and now the company and police are trying to determine if it was lost, stolen or used and not accounted for. Gold experts tell the newspaper that the purity of the dust would determine its volume but that much could weigh 30 pounds to 70 pounds. They suggested that it would be hard to unload, at least with gold dealers, but come on, this is gold. Pfizer declined to comment on how it was using the precious metal. Chesterfield Police Capt. Steven Lewis noted, "We're not even sure if they just didn't account for it and it was used naturally, or if it was stolen or misplaced. Some of it is gone and some isn't." Story | More