Hollywood hit Gold digs up painful memories for Albertans

Friday'srelease of the movie Goldis stirring painful memories for Albertans who sunk theirsavings into the investment scandal that inspired the Hollywood drama.

Two decades ago, in 1996, Calgary-based mining company Bre-Xclaimed an unprecedented gold find in Indonesia and collected thousands ofinvestments.

In 1997, an independent assessmentconcluded the gold didn't exist. Someone had "salted" the drilling results by adding gold dust to the rock before it reached a testing laboratory.

• Hollywood takes on Calgary's 'mysterious and sexy'Bre-Xscandal

Margaret Helen and her late husband Bill lost $45,000 when Bre-X shut down that year.

This weekend, the 81-year-old who asked not to share her last name because of a recent identity theft shuffled through her Bre-X investment papers for the first time in 20 years.

"My husband kept some records here and it says, 'Why do you buy Bre-X shares?' And he says, 'Because of news in financial markets that this was the world's biggest find of gold. The stock broker told us that this stock would do well and that we could not lose,'" Helen reads from the document.

She pauses, looks up and swallows dryly.

"Not true. We lost everything."

Her husband was sick with cancer at the time, Helen said. The couple invested in Bre-X with the hope of bolstering their retirement fund in case he couldn't work again.

"It sounded so good," she said. "Everyone was in on it."

Looking back, Helen said she wishes they hadn't followed along.

"We would have had that extra money to pursue more medical help for him. That's the way I look at it," she said.

Her husband died one year after the scandal broke.

Worldwide, investors lost an estimated $3 billion.

The Bre-X bubble bursts in 1997

28 years ago

Duration 2:43

Bre-X shareholders are shocked to learn that there may be no gold in the Indonesian deposits that made company stock soar. Aired on March, 26, 1997 on CBC's The National.

A prolonged court battle ended in 2013 with a$5.2 million settlement divided between investors who joined a class-action lawsuit.

The founding membersofBre-Xwere not convicted and two of them have since died.

Helen said she never saw a cent of her investment returned.

"We bought into it with good faith and how they got away with it I'll never know," she said."But they sure shouldn't have. They should have been doing jail time."

@ZoeHTodd