S: Well, I hope that all the miners that were there illegally are gone. The series chronicles the continuing efforts of former real-estate dealers George Wright and Scott Lomu as they mine for gold in Ghana in an attempt to pay off the over $1 million debt they face in the wake of the real-estate crash. We didnt exploit anyone, Lomu told me. Within minutes, the team slipped through customs and boarded a 30-passenger jet chartered by Discovery. One day in Ghana is more dramatic than this entire freaking episode!. Jed Lipinski is a staff writer for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Etc. The next six episodes unfolded in similar fashion. But, you will find Ghana a fantastic country. November 23, 2012. It was a humbling experience. He found instead the two articles in My Joy Online ordering his arrest and accusing him of killing people. In April, Ensurge hired both men: Wright as vice president of public relations, Lomu as vice president of investor relations. The show is such a fake with the pretend dangers all around them meanwhile the camera-production crew is right beside them every second with security and back-up, oooh Im so scared! Lomu and Wright didnt head to Africa with dreams of reality TV stardom, and it seems having a camera crew around when youre trying to work is more of a pain than anything else. Desperate for cash, he recruited two men he thought would make enthusiastic gold dealers. Former real estate high-rollers George and Scott regularly turned over million dollar deals. According to Lomu, Raw had replied that Discovery could not pull the show from Ghana without pulling it from DStv altogether. Broke and demoralized, the three men abandoned their nascent mining operation in October 2010. Back at Discoverys headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, the channel was enduring its own crisis. His optimistic nature notwithstanding, Lomu saw more cause for hope in Ghanas relationship to Mormonism. But where? Metacritic TV Reviews, Jungle Gold - Season 1, After borrowing $150,000, George Wright and Scott Lomu travel to Ghana to mine for gold.. Jungle Gold, Discovery Channel's latest reality effort, follows two Americans on their quest to strike it big in Ghana, Africa.After losing hundreds of thousands in the real estate collapse, George Wright and Scott Lomu tried to find the silver lining actually it was more of . He was sawing into an overcooked hamburger patty when he glanced at the flatscreen on the wall. From left, Victor Kpah, Scot Lomu and George Wright of 'Jungle Gold' Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel. Viewers were shocked that Americans would broadcast illegal mining, and activists claimed throwing money at people unused to financial decision-making was a mistake. Scott Lomu: Because weve moved from Friday to Sunday it seems like our audience has gotten a lot younger. Wed put our last $50,000 into that site, Wright said. George Wright and Scott Lomu will risk it all to strike it rich as part of a golden plan to recover from losing everything in the real estate crash of 2008. Olivia Newton-Johns daughter has revealed how she keeps her connection to her mother alive months after her tragic passing. There are plenty of other channels. Can you tell us your secret at being perfect such as yourself. Within months of Jungle Golds U.S. premiere in October 2012, they had become the face of Ghanas foreign mining community, which many blamed for destroying the countrys environment and harming its people. He didnt even sound convinced himself when he said to the blonde Neanderthal that he was going back to Utah.for what? 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. To guarantee cell service in the bush, the company bought Raw a 30-foot antenna. We split the gold with the village, the farmers make a ton of money from us, we employ many, many locals, paying them 10X what they would normally make, we pay taxes, and contribute a ton to the local economy. This is a tale of our times the new American Dream set in the jungles of Africa, the introduction read. Theyre hoping things will be different this time. We were entirely without expectations, Wright told news.com.au. 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. That was hard, said Wright. Their dreams of getting rich in Ghana faded from view. Though vilified in the press, Tay said, the Chinese miners had improved the local way of life: installing electricity in thatched huts, building a public restroom with flush toilets, and putting dozens of unemployed young men to work in the mines. believe Ensurge has the potential to grow into a significant junior It's really frustrating because we have the same production company and we hear all sorts of stories about him, but all I know of him is the first tweet I sent to him when our show started was a thank you, "thanks for forging the way in gold show so that our story and show could have a shot, thank you!" S: That's a great question, we get it a lot. We do answer questions and stay in touch here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFDu1cQjqGaj-3wBYavW1Hg/videos. | December 22, 2022 Inusah Fuseini, minister of lands and natural resources, said the show portrayed Ghana as a jungle, vowing to arrest the Mormons. It was that simple. Villagers set up roadblocks and demanded hundreds of dollars. 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. The series chronicles the continuing efforts of former real-estate dealers George Wright and Scott Lomu . I can say that Parker is a cool kid, he's been supportive to us and so has Fred. He and his friend George Wright had gone to Ghana the previous summer to mine gold, and what he was watching on TV was ho-hum compared to the most uneventful day in Ghana. This show is 90% scripted, the laws they portray in the show are complete non-sense. In exchange, he asked Wright and Lomu to put up $50,000. Class acts the two of them. So, gold fever its addictive. Judging from locals reactions to them, the show may indeed have been on the road to redemption. 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. Life saving hugs or to provide tissues for his whiny wife? Element United is the first to market in bringing blockchain technology to gold + precious elements. A theatrical streak led him to join his high schools cheerleading squad senior year, and he wound up with a cheerleading scholarship to the University of Utah. We came to realize this was a perfect opportunity to show how foreigners can do business the right way in Ghana, Lomu told me. There were reports of armed robberies in Chinese mining camps as locals and foreign rivals fought for land. become affiliated with a public mining company. Gold miners George Wright and Scott Lomu sit down with THR to talk about what their wives think of their adventures, whether they watch "Gold Rush" and what they have to say to people w They toiled for 18 hours a day, travelling two hours from a nearby village to the mine, living in a mud hut and battling with storms, broken equipment and constant delays. 1975 ( MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1975th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 975th year of the 2nd millennium, the 75th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1970s decade. Then, in December 2014, they met Clint Mishleau. George Wright and Scott Lomu of Discoverys Jungle Gold (Sundays at 10:00 p.m. is that truth, are they gone? Edit 2: It's September 18th 2013, I just went through and caught up with most of the questions here. Fahiakobo was hit hard by the June 2013 crackdown. George Wright has been appointed as Vice President of Public Relations and Scott Lomu as Vice President of Investor Relations. To me, reality shows are like watching professional wrestling. Around the time Lomu saw himself on TV, Evans Mensah was channel-surfing in his Accra apartment when an image of bright green cocoa trees filled the screen. Akwesi was preparing to harvest his crops when the crew leveled them, he said. George Wright and Scott Lomu from Discovery's "Jungle Gold" visited the KCAL9 studios Friday to talk about season two of their hit show. The crew had received press accreditation from the Information Services Department, he said. That drippy wife should stop whining and deal with it while her husband a finally does a days work. In the May 29 midseason* premiere of Discovery Channels Alaskan Bush People, A Wolfpack Divided, the Brown family is ready to move into their new home when Ami requires immediate medical attention and must travel to a big city for surgery. Focused on the action, the show failed to explain the complicated licensing process, causing many to assume they were mining illegally. A fight breaks out and martial arts-trained angry George, as he was nicknamed, strangles the man until he passes out. G: Oh man if Scott sees this, he's gonna have hay day on this question. You were slightly mislead. The influx of Chinese miners had triggered a rise in armed robberies of Chinese mining camps. But like gold miners throughout history, a mixture of delusion, pioneering instinct, and financial desperation drove them to it. The following year, they tried again, on the land of a Ghanaian Mormon bishop. The Friday audience is a different audience. The production team swore to take a different approach to the second series. In the five years it takes a cocoa tree to fruit, he said, they often make poor decisions that cause them to be economically or physically displaced. The lure of foreign wages, he added, can incentivize village youth to drop out of school. Around 2.75 million viewers tuned in, making it the fourth most popular primetime cable show that Friday night. It was time to bail out. Theres something to be said about that allure. Am I supposed to feel bad for their debt as they exploit Africans? If so, what do you think of those guys up in Alaska? The spinoff series follows the miners from the jungles of South America, to the mountains of Alaska, to the Klondike. (The news site had failed to provide attribution for the murder accusation.). Patchy reception made it hard to hear, but a few words registered clearly: Wallys dead. That morning, Macias had driven into the mountains outside Kanab and shot himself with a rifle. According to Wikipedia, Forbes, IMDb & Various Online resources, famous American Football Player George Wright's net worth is $1-5 Million at the age of 72 years old. Taxis that once passed every 10 minutes, shuttling miners to work, now came a few times per day. Last modified on Sat 2 Jul 2022 00.15 EDT. We have a full Biography, Photos, Theatre Credits, and more! It brought back a lot of stressful memories, Wright said. He is from . As it happened, Akwesi was the brother-in-law of the landowner, who had cut him out of the $5,000 the show paid in compensation for the cocoa crops. The reality stars of Jungle Gold on the Discovery Channel (DStv 121) face fines, arrest and even possible imprisonment over charges of alleged brutality and illegal mining in Ghana, with the Ghanaian government which now wants to see Scott Lomu and George Wright apprehended and arrested. 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. They whine at how poor they are, yet no wife works (the husbands hardly do either) they live in big mansions, drive fancy cars? It's Africa's second largest gold-producing country, so finding the precious metal isn't the hard part. Press J to jump to the feed. Months after the evacuation, I found him playing cards beside one of Wright and Lomus $2,000 canvas tents, which hed been living in since they left. 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. But the sight of two white guys standing by as a half-dozen Ghanaians labored in the heat created a disquieting visual reminder of Ghanas years as a British colony. Season 2. But they had not received permission from the Minerals Commission to film mining lands. Most assumed they were mining illegally. these comments make me laugh, if show is that bad stop watching it. When he and other commission officials watched clips of the show online, they were appalled by its depiction of Ghana. Comments: I hate Todd fat arse lazy Hoffman because hes a total tool, I cant hate these guys, I just scratch my head at their stupidity and hope Discovery will stop insulting our intelligence and cancel this ridiculous show. S: George is a little wordy, here's the short answer. How is the discovery of Autism an emergency? Phone calls from furious Ghanaian expatriates poured in. Stars of Jungle Gold, George Wright and Scott Lomu, join MSNBC's Alex Witt to talk about their show. BLOCK! Laborers were shown polluting water bodies with mercury, which is used to recover gold from other minerals. Theyd spent the past year trying to dramatize their daily lives for the cameras. The Mormon miners submitted a proposal to Raw TV, the British company that produced the program, and waited. Sorry we ruined Discovery Channel for you. As the crew debated alternate plotlines, Lomu went out to dinner in Obuasi. The kids autism is just another excuse for the idiot to stop working and run home. Hes a gentleman whos a land broker. Only the most coldhearted, inhumane person could spend more than an hour in Ghana and think to do that.. The two Americans will be tracked down and arrested, a Ghanaian official declared. Alerted to the situation by Raw, series producer Christo Doyle set up a "war room" as the cameras rolled. What would they film if the stars couldnt mine? 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. Back home at 21, he got married and landed a spot on the Utah Jazz Stunt Team. Unbeknownst to the cast and crew, Aboagye requested that Ghanas National Security Agency investigate them. Season 2 of Jungle Gold premiered in the U.S. on Aug. 11, 2013. According to Wright and Lomu, a top Discovery executive told them, Your show is so real it's unreal.. Then the Joy News team got ahold of Inusah Fuseini, Ghanas minister of lands and natural resources. Filming at home. Genre Man vs. I am guessing season two would have already been recorded when this article came out. We were like, This is the kind of operation we want to be a part of! Lomu said. The robbery scene was intense but definitely felt like the video was pulled off a little too well. I have never seen the show. It begins now, Wright wrote. Fearing another attack, the Jungle Gold cast and crew evacuated Fahiakobo and holed up in Raws Domenase compound 20 miles away. 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. 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