Press Release
Acting Attorney General Mills settles with Jai Mahtani, the owner of “Gold Rush,” a Ketchikan Jewelry Store, over Misrepresentations to an Undercover Investigator
June 16, 2026
(Ketchikan, AK) –
Today, Acting Attorney General Mills announced a second settlement in recent weeks with a business purporting to sell Alaskan gold. Similar to Miner’s Gems, Jai Mahtani, the sole proprietor of the Ketchikan jewelry store known as “Gold Rush,” misrepresented his products to an undercover investigator from the Department of Law’s Consumer Protection Unit. Under the proposed consent decree filed in Ketchikan Superior Court today, Mahtani will pay $10,000 to the State of Alaska and be subject to a permanent injunction designed to prevent future misrepresentations.
“The many Alaskan businesses which sell their products honestly should not have to compete with products sold through falsehoods, and the many Alaska miners and artisans that actually mine or make products from Alaska’s abundant minerals should be protected,” said Acting Attorney General Mills. “We will continue to deploy undercover investigators in Southeast ports to protect consumers from deceptive sales pitches and to uphold a fair marketplace.”
When an undercover investigator visited Gold Rush in 2025, Mahtani greeted them by saying “all our product is locally sourced.” When the investigator asked him to show them “something Alaskan” he directed the investigator to jewelry which he described as “Alaska’s gold and Alaska’s gold bearing quartz.” He described the gold quartz as “totally Alaskan, totally locally sourced” and said that he got it from “Fairbanks or Anchorage.” But during the State’s subsequent investigation, Mahtani admitted that none of his jewelry was locally sourced and that he does not know if he has ever sold a piece of gold bearing quartz that was mined in Alaska.
During its investigation, the State reviewed footage from a 2023 undercover visit to Gold Rush and discovered that Mahtani had represented a white stone flecked with gold as being naturally occurring gold quartz. The State was now able to identify the stone as likely being fake gold quartz. When the State presented a picture of the stone to Mahtani during an investigative interview, he was readily able to identify the object as a German-made imitation of gold quartz. In 2023 he had represented the stone as gold bearing quartz that had been mined in Alaska. Mahtani even disparaged other stores which sold Chinese-made imitation gold quartz and told the investigator “mine is local.” The fake gold quartz which Jai Mahtani had represented to be naturally occurring gold bearing quartz that was mined in Alaska.
Under the terms of the consent decree, Mahtani is subject to a permanent injunction that, among other things, will require him to maintain records demonstrating that any products he represents to be “Alaskan” or “locally sourced” or as including naturally occurring gold quartz or gold nuggets are in fact as he represents them to be. The injunction empowers state investigators to ensure Mahtani’s compliance and the accuracy of his representations to consumers by auditing these records.
The State encourages any person who believes they were subjected to unfair or deceptive business practices to submit a complaint to the Consumer Protection Unit at https://law.alaska.gov/department/civil/consumer/cp_complaint.html.
# # #
Department Media Contact: Information Officer Sam Curtis at sam.curtis@alaska.gov or (907) 269-6269.
Due to resource constraints, we no longer post links to referenced records. Records filed in a federal court are readily available at Docket Search or PACER, and records filed in a State of Alaska court are readily available from the Alaska Court System (Trial Courts - Alaska Court System and Search for an Appellate Case). Contact Sam Curtis to request a referenced record that is not readily available from a court or on the internet, or contact law.recordsrequest@alaska.gov to submit a formal Alaska Public Records Act request.