Unbeknownst to the cast and crew, Aboagye requested that Ghanas National Security Agency investigate them. Greenhorn gold miners George Wright and Scott Lomu put everything on the line -- their lives included -- to hit pay dirt in the gold-rich and danger-filled jungles of Ghana. I'm honestly not a fan of Reality tv at all, I want to watch good scripted shows with compelling stories. Hes a gentleman whos a land broker. I feel like its actually underappreciated and underdemonstrated in any medium. Gold dealing, they concluded, was a scam. When we first came to Ghana, we knew our investment could change the lives of people there, Lomu said. Now, as he scanned his iPhone, Wright saw that he and his co-star, Scott Lomu, were also facing government accusations of illegal gold mining. Gold miners George Wright and Scott Lomu sit down with THR to talk about the mistakes they tried not to repeat and why they keep returning to Ghana despite the life-or-death stakes. For anyone who thinks their decision to pursue gold mining is utterly insane, they explained to me how they came to this conclusion in a way that sounds entirely logical. Yeah, I just about hate the leads of #JUNGLEGOLD 8 min in. Alerted to the situation by Raw, series producer Christo Doyle set up a "war room" as the cameras rolled. As he later told Wright, All it takes is a handful of guys with firearms to see the show and come looking for us.. We would like to show you a description here but the site won't allow us. But with the chaos of Season 1 fresh in mind, Discovery had imposed new conditions for Season 2. The heart and soul of this amazing piece of equipment are the people, Wright narrates. G: When the show gets edited they are continually making editing choices between our daily life choices and events. Additionally, Mr. Lomu has been appointed as Chairman of the Company . Season 2 of Jungle Gold airs Sundays at 10pm ET/PT on Discovery Channel. The next six episodes unfolded in similar fashion. A soaring Mormon temple, one of only three on the continent, sits in the heart of Accras commercial district, surrounded by European embassies. This was met with disappointment in the first 5 days of our trip to Africa because it's not even CLOSE to easy to get cheap gold in Africa, they know the price of Gold better than anybody! And yes, I have heard many of them are gone. Lomu responded by saying the things that happen on the show are 100% real, though he allowed that it's a tv show and things will get overly dramatized. But the robbery, which cut the season short at Episode 7, offered a convenient end to a story that was spiraling out of its creators control. Onscreen, an overweight guy with a wizardly goatee was struggling to fix the motor of an excavator. Yet, at the same time, Ghanas small-scale mining sector had grown increasingly chaotic. Phone calls from furious Ghanaian expatriates poured in. Sorry we ruined Discovery Channel for you. Snow-covered peaks rose in the distance behind him. Fri 1 Jul 2022 13.18 EDT. We are Scott Lomu & George Wright, We can't speak to other reality shows but are happy to share about ours and what it's been like. He also began investing in real estate, which was how he met Scott Lomu. English. I thank my parents. Back at Discoverys headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, the channel was enduring its own crisis. The people are very friendly and non aggressive. Two weeks later, before the commission had a chance to review the seven-page document, Aboagye said, Jungle Gold premiered in the U.S. During that time A rosy conclusion to Season 1 looked unlikely. It was the second season of Jungle Gold set in Ghana that the fans of TV shows about gold prospecting are still talking . is that truth, are they gone? Second Point, the amount of catastrophic failures the show incures is absurd, there are moments in the show a viewer can easily spot a setup. Runtime. So now I'm just leaving this thing open . One of the biggest lessons weve learned is dealing with people. We knew this was going to be a 5-to-10-year job on our part. Did Ghana ever try to arrest you two as indicated in this article on Ghana Web? Since completing the series, Lomu and Wright continue to Edit: added second related question. But where? We came to realize this was a perfect opportunity to show how foreigners can do business the right way in Ghana, Lomu told me. Afterward, the farmer said, people viewed them more cautiously. This season, Scott and George have family money on the line in the form of an investment from Scotts father-in-law and a new colleague, Dave Thomas, as they had back to Ghana looking for enough gold to pay off the debts and secure their families futures. Former real estate high-rollers George and Scott regularly turned over million dollar deals. First Aired. Weary of small-scale mining, the men enthusiastically agreed. We fell comfortable. What happens when a government shuts down an illegal camp is it basically displaces 80-100 local young men who no longer have a job. But in Ghana, as in other former colonies, a strong aversion to neocolonialism endures. Wright and Lomu have a plan for a new reality show, about mining and selling gold and their home lives. When the captain took off the seatbelt sign, they roamed the cabin, high-fiving each other and cracking cans of beer. This show is 90% scripted, the laws they portray in the show are complete non-sense. When I watch the gold mining shows (especially the Alaska one) it seems no different to me than simply taking the money to Vegas and playing blackjack. Oh my word, they think I killed him, he said. I got a chance to talk with the pair about how the show came about, how they feel about those that accuse them of faking and what their wives really think of what theyre doing. A month after the Jungle Gold evacuation, the Ghanaian government conducted a nationwide crackdown on illegal foreign miners, causing thousands of Chinese nationals to be deported. Language. Though it was never confirmed who the men were or why they had attacked the miners, Wright and Lomu quickly concluded that the militia was looking for them. In the most cases they also have children. His own face stared back. According to Lomu, Raw had replied that Discovery could not pull the show from Ghana without pulling it from DStv altogether. TV-PG. these comments make me laugh, if show is that bad stop watching it. Jungle Gold achieved a worldwide audience exceeding 60 million But as the cast and crews Land Rovers pull out, a pile of logs impedes their path. During a layover at JFK, he checked his voicemail and found it full of condolences from friends and family. He is from the United States. As the coastline faded in the distance, Wright leaned across the aisle. They have hatched a radical plan to turn things around; mining for gold. While Ghanaians in the diaspora were railing against Jungle Gold online, members of Ghanas Minerals Commission were quietly fuming about its existence. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Wright and Lomu step out to investigate. But none of them seemed That was hard, said Wright. Just that fast, he blocked me and Scott and never gives an ounce (no pun intended) of support. Bering Sea Gold, a new offshoot, was averaging 3 million viewers a night. (Raw refused to comment on Aboagyes claim.) When Lomu suggested removing the miners by force, a chief replied: If you attempt it, they will kill you! The crew captured everything on film and loved it. At any moment, a police vehicle, a military car, can come in and stop this plane, Lomu says in the finale. Watch the Run For the Border episode. Youre doing this all for your families. The program reports on currently classified intelligence seized during the May 2, 2011, raid on bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan (pictured above the day after the raid), and is narrated by NBC News correspondent Harry Smith. Scott Lomu: Because weve moved from Friday to Sunday it seems like our audience has gotten a lot younger. The little gold they found went directly into equipment costs. Laborers were shown polluting water bodies with mercury, which is used to recover gold from other minerals. We didnt exploit anyone, Lomu told me. Scott Lomu and George Wright, hapless heroes of Discoverys Jungle Gold, finally had to flee the country by plane to escape arrest and the armed militia who seemed to be pursuing them. It was a humbling experience. Scott Lomu is VP:Investor Relations at Ensurge Inc. See Scott Lomu's compensation, career history, education, & memberships. He had no idea George is an experienced MMA fighter, the shows gravel-voiced narrators says. In June, they produced a series of short videos to show prospective investors. I have never seen this dude, Marie remembers thinking. Interview from the Chicago Resource Expo with George Wright & Scott Lomu from Discovery Channles hit show Jungle Gold As the crew debated alternate plotlines, Lomu went out to dinner in Obuasi. What we finally realized after discussing it was people werent saying they wanted to literally go to Ghana to do gold mining but rather they wished they could do whatever it is their dream was, whatever it is they hoped to be able to do be it open up a restaurant, or open up their own salon or become a writer. He had some access to some land that Scott and I were needing, if we can come up with the money, so we had to come back home and figure out how were were going to do that. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=273569. Proof: https://twitter.com/JungleGeorgeVI/status/365907125215576064 https://twitter.com/JungleGoldScott/status/365907460332068864, Edit: We are going to keep this open. George Wright in 'Jungle Gold' Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel. I can say that Parker is a cool kid, he's been supportive to us and so has Fred. But their return to Ghana was to be even more troubled than round one. RELATED: GOLD RUSH SEASON 4 PREMIERE DATE In Gold Rush South America, premiering Aug. 2 at 9pm ET/PT, Gold Rush crew leaders Todd Hoffman, Dakota Fred and Parker Schnabel take their operations to find new, gold-rich ground in preparation for Gold Rush Season 4, which Discovery says will premiere in the fall. understanding of conducting mining operations in underdeveloped In a surreal scene, Lomu jumps in the car with a gold bar he says is worth $75,000, before a masked man runs out of the jungle firing a machine gun, steals the gold and runs off. Ref: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1124.html It was shown because it's the main way of gold recovery in Africa, what they didn't show in the show was us trying to get our workers to wear gloves, our seeking for other separating methods that ultimately we didn't have money for at the time etc. According to Wright and Lomu, a top Discovery executive told them, Your show is so real it's unreal.. (Both Discovery Channel and Raw, which was acquired by Discovery in 2014, declined to comment for this story.). Comments: Despite the possibility of work in Accra, hed stayed in Fahiakobo after the cast and crew fled, guarding the stars tent and praying for their return. To guarantee cell service in the bush, the company bought Raw a 30-foot antenna. It was that simple. What is behind the allure of gold mining? Hopefully you guys get some good stuff, so everyone can benefit, she responded. We hope it's a win-win. And George and I think as a direct result of the show there are a lot of government and military raids on illegal mining camps, and there are a lot of robberies happening. What sort of feedback do you get from viewers about the show? George Wright and Scott Lomu of Discovery's "Jungle Gold" (Sundays at 10:00 p.m. I think it would shock a lot of people to hear how encouraging they are, and how supportive they are. It described how miners were regularly killed or injured thanks to unsafe practices, with 150 dying when one unlicensed mine flooded, and how cyanide, lead and mercury, used to extract gold then dumped in rivers poisoned communities. Whose the stupid ones ? The new reality show Jungle Gold started broadcasting across Africa on MultiChoice's DStv from the . Whether the Information Services Department had instructed Raw to seek the commissions approval is unclear; the permit protocol for foreign documentary film crews in Ghana was somewhat vague in 2012. Channel. Scott and I know we could have done better. Interview: Scott Lomu and George Wright of "Jungle Gold". But after Missing the warning signs of a real estate market about to crash and burn, both men lost everything. A task force created by President John Mahama had flushed dozens of Chinese miners from the area, leaving many of the villages men unemployed. Their timing was perfect. Messrs Lomu and Wright starred in the popular television show Jungle But what you do with that really defines who you are.. I believe its God who brought them to me, Alan Tay, who served as a handyman for Wright and Lomu during the Season 2 shoot, later told me. Only the most coldhearted, inhumane person could spend more than an hour in Ghana and think to do that. In November 2011, two things happened. Fearing another attack, the Jungle Gold cast and crew evacuated Fahiakobo and holed up in Raws Domenase compound 20 miles away. We encountered a lot of stuff thats never been shown on TV. Back in 2009, Scott Lomu and George Wright, two clean living Mormons, were trying to find a way to make money after suffering huge losses when the housing bubble popped the year before. We really liked the people of Ghana, the people we worked with. A lot of questions have been asked in Ghana about how, and why so many illegal miners were allowed to mine in Ghana without paperwork for so long. In one of the shows most-watched episodes, an excavator for Lomu and Wright is tearing up cocoa trees when an angry farmer approaches with a machete. I guess this is what your generation who grew up in a fancy world is all about. Is this show supposed to be a comedy? But the incident changed the dynamic in the village. Inusah Fuseini, minister of lands and natural resources, said the show portrayed Ghana as a jungle, vowing to arrest the Mormons. He is from . One op-ed, titled Jungle Gold: A Case Study in the Exploitation of Africa, captured the collective indignation that greeted the series. Once the show ended, they pursued a few of the offers, but nothing came of them. No way. We say, Yeah, we travel back and forth between here and West Africa. And then they always said the same thing which I felt there needed to be some deciphering after theyd say it theyd always say, I wish I could do that. And I said, Well, I dont think you understand what youre saying.