[1]: 17–21 Arnold and Slack took their bag of jewels to the office of local businessman George D. Roberts, whom they convinced that they had found them in a previously undiscovered deposit.
[1]: 24–25 In the meantime, Ralston and the others sent a sample of Arnold's gems to New York City for inspection by Charles Lewis Tiffany, who set up a meeting at the Madison Avenue home of attorney Samuel Barlow, to solicit additional investors.
[1]: 28–31 Eventually, the investors demanded to visit the source of those gems and Arnold and Slack planted their diamonds on a remote location in northwestern Colorado Territory.
[1] On June 4, 1872, Arnold, Slack, and company finally reached the spot where they had previously planted some gems and encouraged the investors to begin digging.
[1]: 38–43 The hoax was not discovered until October 1872, when the United States Department of the Interior sent a survey team, led by that geologist Clarence King of Yale University, to inspect the site.
[1]: 107–111 In the meantime, Arnold took his proceeds from the scheme and bought a two-story brick house in his native Elizabethtown, as well as some five hundred acres of nearby farmland—all of which he had deeded in the name of his wife Mary.
[1]: 158–166 John Slack died 1896 in New Mexico[3] In the 1968 television series Death Valley Days there was an episode based on this fraud called The Great Diamond Mines.