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Commission enforcement actions with attendant fines and bad publicity, and potential criminal prosecution and jail time.This article will review the evolution and current status of these legal requirements, from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guides and comparable U.S. state regulations to more basic factors such as liability for civil fraud. Anyone who deals in gem materials needs to be familiar with this often-complicated body of rules, and must know how to navigate through them without getting into trouble. (Note that this discussion is limited to United States law; rules in other countries may differ substantially.)Although some individuals and groups draw a distinction between treatment and enhancement (Proust, 2001), for simplicity, this article will use the term treatment to refer to any process that alters the natural character or appearance of a gem material.

been long periods, both ancient and modern, when diamond treatments were conducted in the relative open, and their practitioners were regarded by some as experts and even artists. Gem treatments, it must be recognized, are neither good nor bad in themselves-fraud comes about only when their presence is concealed, whether by intent or by negligence. This fact places a specific responsibility for full treatment disclosure on all those handling gem materials, and most especially on those selling diamonds, given their long and enduring value. That responsibility is one of knowing and understanding what happens as a result of treatment, having the expertise to recognize treated stones when they are encountered, and knowing when suspect stones should be examined by properly equipped gem-testing laboratories. This article is not intended to be a complete review of the history of diamond treatments, as such

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