If you’re reading this after a phone call, the useful question isn’t whether the company on the other end is a criminal enterprise. It probably isn’t. The useful question is what you’re being charged, and whether the person explaining it wants you to know.
This page describes the patterns that show up in enforcement records and complaint files, and the checks that let you verify a dealer yourself in about twenty minutes. We’re an affiliate site and earn commissions from some of the companies we review, which is disclosed on every page. That’s a reason to read this sceptically, and also the reason we publish the fee data that makes the arithmetic below checkable.
Pattern one: the premium coin upsell
This is the mechanism behind most documented losses, and it works because it doesn’t feel like a scam.
You call about a gold IRA. The conversation is friendly and informative. At some point the salesperson steers away from ordinary bullion toward something described as exclusive, limited-mintage, proof, or collectible. The reasoning sounds plausible: better long-term appreciation, more upside, less correlation to spot price. What actually happens is that the markup goes from roughly 3–8% on standard sovereign coins to 30% or more, and in enforcement cases considerably beyond that.
In CFTC v. TMTE / Metals.com (2020), overcharges averaged 100–300% over market price. In the Safeguard Metals action, markups averaged 51–70%. Customers in those cases received genuine metal. The fraud was in the price.
The recognition signal: any steer away from standard bullion. American Gold Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, and approved bars carry tight, checkable spreads. When someone explains why you’d want something else, the explanation is the product.
Pattern two: the home storage IRA
Marketed as a way to hold your IRA metal at home through an LLC you control. It doesn’t work, and the consequences are documented rather than theoretical.
In McNulty v. Commissioner (2021), the Tax Court held that an IRA owner who takes physical possession of IRA-purchased coins has taken a distribution. Roughly $400,000 was treated as taxable income in a single year, plus penalties. The citation is 157 T.C. No. 10.
Companies still market this structure. Our full explanation covers the mechanics and the one question that ends the conversation: ask for a written legal opinion, addressed to you, that the structure survives McNulty.
Pattern three: manufactured urgency
Limited allocation. Prices about to move. A window closing. This one is worth naming because it’s the pattern that most often precedes a decision someone later regrets, and because it’s specifically prohibited under the compliance policies that reputable dealers in this industry operate under.
There is no version of a retirement account decision that needs to be made this afternoon. A rollover takes two to four weeks to process regardless. If the pitch requires speed, the speed is for their benefit.
Pattern four: bonus metal that isn’t a bonus
Free silver on qualifying purchases, sometimes running into five figures. You do receive the metal. What you’re not told is where its cost sits, which is in the spread on the primary purchase.
These offers aren’t fraudulent and several established companies run them. They do make price comparison harder, which is often the point. The counter is in the verification section below.
Pattern five: fake authority signals
Claimed government affiliation or endorsement, invented industry awards, and testimonials that can’t be traced to a real person. Regulators have also warned about implied affiliations with veterans’ organisations, religious groups, or political causes, which is why reputable dealers’ compliance policies now prohibit that language outright.
Check any award or accreditation against the issuing body directly. The ones that matter are verifiable in a search.
How to verify a dealer in twenty minutes
Five checks, in order of usefulness:
- Ask for the all-in round trip in writing. If I invest $50,000 today and sell it back tomorrow, what do I receive? One number, in an email. This single question exposes the spread better than any fee schedule, and the reaction to being asked tells you as much as the answer.
- Search the CFTC and FINRA enforcement records for the company name. Both publish actions publicly and both are searchable.
- Read the BBB complaint narratives, not the rating. The rating is a summary; the complaints describe what actually goes wrong.
- Confirm the custodian and depository independently. Both should be named, and both should be verifiable as separate businesses. Call the custodian directly if anything is vague.
- Compare the fee schedule against published figures. Ours are at gold IRA fees, with the verification level marked for each number so you can see which we confirmed with the company and which come from third-party reporting.
What a normal, legitimate transaction looks like
Worth stating plainly, because a page like this can leave the impression that the whole industry is rotten. It isn’t. A straightforward gold IRA looks like this: a named custodian, an approved depository, standard bullion at a spread in the single digits, annual costs between $180 and $300, a buyback policy you can get in writing, and a salesperson who answers the round-trip question without friction.
That transaction is available from several companies. Our comparison by account size covers who serves which bracket, and the individual reviews document each company’s drawbacks alongside what it does well.
If you think you’ve been overcharged
You can file a complaint with the CFTC, with FINRA where a broker is involved, and with your state’s securities regulator or attorney general. Metal already purchased at an inflated price generally can’t be unwound, which is why the round-trip question matters before the purchase rather than after.