the diamond crystal would be extracted. With the addition or elimination of certain impurities under controlled conditions, diamonds of various color types could be produced. Since nitrogen is abundant in the atmosphere, the HPHT process was more likely to produce bright yellow diamonds than any other color (although natural yellow diamonds often have higher value than white diamonds). The yellow tint occurs when approximately five out of each 100,000 carbon atoms in the diamond crystal lattice are replaced with nitrogen atoms. Available in the purest Type IIa colorless and rare fancy yellow colors, the company's diamonds have basically identical chemical, optical and physical characteristics as the highest-quality mined diamonds and can also have the same type of cut, color and clarity for gemstone purposes. Company history 1996–2012 Gemesis was founded in 1996 by Carter Clarke, a retired United States Army brigadier general. In 2006, Stephen D. Lux became its chief executive officer. Lux had substantial prior experience in the diamond industry. The company announced in November 2010 that it planned to begin offering gemstone-quality colorless diamonds for sale on the internet, and ultimately launched its website to do so in March 2012. The business was not profitable, partly due to the high cost of developing the diamond production process to a point where sufficient production volume was feasible, and the original investors basically lost their entire investments. The company was heading toward bankruptcy in 2010 when diamond industry businessman Jatin Mehta stepped in with an investment of $US8.4M in exchange for a controlling interest in the firm. Mehta reportedly bought out the remaining shareholders in early 2012 and restructured the company, initially renaming it from Gemesis Corporation to Gemesis Diamond Company. Mehta also moved the company's diamond production operations from Florida to Malaysia and made moves designed to legally separate and protect the company's intellectual property. The company restructuring was sufficiently confusing that the well-known industry analyst Chaim Even-Zohar published a report in May 2012 entitled "The Mystery Of Two Gemesis Companies Under One Hat". 2012 incident involving undisclosed synthetic stones and Lux departure In May 2012, the news emerged that a parcel of 600 unmarked synthetic diamonds had been submitted by a buyer to the International Gemological Institute (IGI) diamond certifying agency for evaluation, without any accompanying disclosure that they were synthetic. The DTC Diamond Research Center issued an alert and said the undisclosed synthetics were "strikingly similar" in