Gold and Precious Metals IRA Enforcement Actions 2010-2026: CFTC, SEC, FTC and State Cases Tracked (38 Cases, With Outcomes)

SafeOunce tracks 38 CFTC, SEC, FTC, state and other government actions in precious metals fraud since 2010, and 12 of them target dealers who moved retirement savings into coins. Regulators found markups of up to 129.97% over the dealer's cost. The court orders to pay money that followed cover only part of what victims paid, often years later.

An enforcement action is a case a government agency brings. Most come from the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), the federal agency that polices fraud in commodities such as gold and silver; the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) appear too. A complaint states allegations, claims not yet proven; a finding is what a court or regulator decided.

The warning signs are on the gold IRA scams guide. This page records what regulators and courts found, and each row links to the press release or court docket. SafeOunce sells no metal. SafeOunce takes no money from any company named on this page.

Tracker last checked: September 29, 2026; CFTC press releases through No. 9304-26 (September 25, 2026).

Has Any Gold IRA Company Been Sued by the Government?#

Yes: federal and state agencies have brought 12 actions since 2020 against dealers that sold coins into IRAs and other retirement accounts. The largest, against Metals.com, alleges over $185 million taken from at least 1,600 people, over $140 million of it retirement savings.

A lawsuit by the government is not a verdict. Most of the 38 actions ended in court orders or settlements, and 4 are still open as of September 29, 2026: the Metals.com civil and criminal cases and Fisher Capital are allegations, and Crown Bullion's payment is not yet set.

A company name on this page is a data point, not a rating. Our list of gold IRA companies includes the ones that failed or were sanctioned, marked by status.

Which gold IRA dealers has the CFTC ordered to pay?#

CFTC cases since 2022 have ended in money orders or liability findings against 7 retail metals sellers: Safeguard, Regal, Red Rock, Argent/First State, Monex, Goldline/A-Mark and Crown Bullion. In most of them a federal court in a CFTC lawsuit, not the CFTC itself, entered the order.

Among dealers that sold directly into IRAs, apart from the First State/Argent vault case, the largest orders went to Red Rock Secured ($56,334,313.90 in 2024) and Safeguard Metals ($51.1 million in 2025). Safeguard's CFTC order is offset against its SEC order: money paid under one counts toward the other. A default judgment is entered when a defendant stops defending the case.

1. Safeguard Metals: final judgment September 30, 2025; $25,569,303 restitution plus a $25,569,303 penalty, offset against the SEC judgment of May 2, 2025.
2. Regal Assets: default judgments October 15, 2024; over $21.9 million restitution plus over $27.3 million in penalties, about $49.2 million.
3. Red Rock Secured: consent order April 23, 2024; $38,984,313.90 restitution, $5,100,000 disgorgement and a $12,250,000 penalty, $56,334,313.90 in all. Only the $12.25 million is a penalty.
4. Argent Asset Group and First State Depository: orders in June 2023; $112.7 million restitution plus a $33 million penalty, the largest CFTC order in the tracker.
5. Monex: consent order entered December 19, 2022 (announced December 21, 2022); $33 million restitution plus a $5 million penalty, no admission. The case is about metal bought partly with a loan from the seller, not about IRAs.
6. Goldline and A-Mark: CFTC order September 22, 2022; $627,801.78 disgorgement plus a $450,000 penalty over loans for buying metal on credit, April 2018 to June 2021.
7. Crown Bullion (Damien Moran): Moran agreed to a judgment of liability on September 5, 2024. The CFTC's request to set restitution and a penalty has waited for a ruling since March 19, 2025.

Two other 2025 CFTC orders, against a silver lease scheme ($18.4 million) and a trading pool ($2.1 million), sit in the tracker. What the CFTC can and cannot do for gold buyers is covered in our glossary.

Well-known gold IRA companies with lawsuits and settlements on record#

Five sellers that still advertise or advertised widely have a government record: Lear Capital, Goldline, Monex, U.S. Money Reserve and Rosland Capital.

• Lear Capital: $14.25 million across three public matters, no admission. That is $6 million to the New York Attorney General, $2.75 million to the Los Angeles City Attorney and a $5.5 million customer pool in its bankruptcy.
• Goldline: a 2012 settlement with the Santa Monica City Attorney, according to press reports, and a 2022 CFTC order with A-Mark.
• Monex: a 2022 CFTC consent order, $33 million restitution plus a $5 million penalty.
• U.S. Money Reserve: $5 million restitution under a 2011 Texas Attorney General assurance of voluntary compliance (a settlement with a state attorney general), according to Coin World's report.
• Rosland Capital: a Washington securities order of August 4, 2022 ($20,000; IRA metal shipped 33 to 168 days after payment). It filed a liquidating Chapter 11, a bankruptcy that winds the company down, on July 2, 2026.

Lear Capital operates today after its 2022-2023 Chapter 11. Its three matters and the Lear Capital lawsuits by customers are on its review.

Goldline and Monex are owned by Gold.com, Inc. (formerly A-Mark); Monex joined in January 2026. None of the regulator records above went to trial: each ended in a settlement or a consent order.

The 2011 Texas matter sits with the other U.S. Money Reserve complaints, lawsuits and Better Business Bureau (BBB) data.

Gold IRA companies with no enforcement action found#

SafeOunce found no CFTC, SEC or state enforcement action, as of September 29, 2026, against Augusta, Goldco, American Hartford Gold, Birch, Noble, Priority, Patriot, Preserve or Advantage.

That is not proof of fair prices. Our search covered CFTC press releases, SEC litigation releases and the state orders we could read; California's regulator site blocked our search. Private lawsuits against Goldco and American Hartford Gold appear in the lawsuits table below.

When you choose a gold IRA company, our 12 questions check the price you pay, not the company's reputation.

The Precious Metals Enforcement Tracker: 38 CFTC, SEC, FTC and State Actions#

The tracker lists 38 government actions against precious metals sellers, depositories and custodians from 2010 to 2026, with the docket or release number, amount, outcome and status date for each. It is a selection: the CFTC alone issued about 120 retail metals enforcement releases from 2010 to 2026, about 60 of them in 2012-2017.

A case gets a row when an agency acted against a seller, vault or IRA record keeper of retail metals and SafeOunce read a primary document; two older rows rest on press reports. The earliest filing is December 8, 2010.

1. Retirement-account dealer cases, 2020-2026 (12 actions)#

Twelve actions since 2020 target dealers that moved retirement savings into coins, and the six CFTC cases among them involve about $380 million solicited, as alleged or found. The pattern repeats: a rollover pitch, a switch to high-priced "premium" coins, and a self-directed IRA custodian that paid the dealer's invoice. A self-directed IRA is an ordinary IRA whose custodian lets you hold assets such as vaulted metal.

Why retirement money? Dealers push rollovers, the CFTC said in 2024 (release 8881-24), because "that's where most people have the bulk of their investing dollars."

In these rows, a statutory restraining order freezes a company's assets when a case starts. A cease-and-desist order tells a company to stop. A rescission offer means the company must offer to undo the sale.

2. Actions against established gold IRA sellers (7 actions)#

Seven actions hit sellers that were household names on TV and radio, and the five whose official papers SafeOunce read all ended in settlements rather than trials. The U.S. Money Reserve (2011) and Goldline (2012) rows rest on press reports.

A leveraged account is metal bought partly with a loan from the seller. A registration ban bars a firm from registering with the CFTC, here for 10 years.

3. Ponzi, non-delivery and storage frauds (15 actions)#

Fifteen actions involve sellers or vaults that never bought, never stored or later stole the metal, which is a worse loss than any markup. A Ponzi scheme pays earlier customers with newer customers' money. Non-delivery means you paid and the metal never arrived. A silver lease promises monthly "dividends" for lending your silver to the seller.

In the Rust, BullionDirect, US Coin Bullion and Tulving cases, statements sent by the dealer hid the losses. Ask the depository or the custodian for your holdings list, not the dealer.

4. Custodians, depositories and pools (4 actions)#

Three actions reached the record keepers around a gold IRA and one targeted a metals trading pool, and they show that a custodian or vault name on your paperwork is not a price check. A commodity pool collects money from a group of investors to trade. The Bank Secrecy Act is the federal anti-money-laundering law.

A joint alert from the SEC and NASAA, the state securities regulators' association, says: "Self-directed IRA custodians generally do not evaluate the quality or legitimacy of any investment in the self-directed IRA or its promoters." In plain English: the custodian pays the dealer's invoice; it does not check the price.

How Much Did Gold IRA Scammers Overcharge? The Markups Regulators Found#

Regulators found markups of 28.7% to 129.97% over the dealer's cost in resolved gold IRA cases. A pending case alleges 100% to more than 300% over market, while the CFTC says bullion usually sells 5% to 10% over spot.

Three measures appear in the case files, and each gives a different number for the same sale.

• Markup over cost: how much more you paid than the dealer paid. Red Rock's 91.89%-129.97% is this measure.
• Spread (SafeOunce's use): the share of your money the dealer kept, which can never pass 100%. The CFTC uses "spread" differently: the Metals.com "average spreads" of 91%-128% (Doc 911) and the "more than 300 percent" in its "10 Things to Ask" are markup-style figures that can run above 100%.
• Premium over spot: how far the price sits above the spot price. The CFTC's 5%-10% bullion benchmark uses this measure.

A 100% markup is a 50% spread: you pay $2 for $1 of metal, and the dealer keeps half of your money. How honest dealers set gold IRA markups and spreads is covered in the fee guide.

What the paperwork promised vs what regulators found#

In every major case the written markup range was either wide enough to cover anything or simply false.

The Metals.com numbers come in three forms, all alleged. The CFTC's 2020 press release says "100 percent to more than 300 percent" over market price. The complaint gives 116%-213% for the core coins, and single tenth-ounce coins reached 287% and 312%.

The coin that carried the markup was almost always a small "premium" or "semi-numismatic" coin, a modern coin sold as a collectible above its metal value. The CFTC and FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees stockbrokers) call "semi-numismatic" "a made-up industry term that really has no special meaning" ("10 Things to Ask", 2024).

What a markup does to $100,000#

A 64% markup, the Safeguard average, turns $100,000 into $60,976 of metal on the day you buy.

Red Rock customers paid over $69 million for coins worth about $30 million, so 56.5% of the money was gone on day one. A $100,000 rollover from the TSP (the federal employees' 401(k)) through Red Rock bought about $43,478 of metal.

The CFTC's 2020 advisory (8215-20) gave its own example: "nearly $150,000 in commissions and fees" on a $300,000 rollover. That is half the money, the same as the 100% row.

How many years gold must rise to earn back a markup#

A buyer who paid a 64% markup needs about 10 years to get back to the price paid if gold rises a steady 5% a year, and fees add more time. The growth rates below are illustrations, not forecasts.

Years = ln(1 + markup) ÷ ln(1 + growth), where ln is the natural logarithm. Custodian and storage fees add time.

The same math works for a spread. The rise needed equals the spread ÷ (1 - spread). A 10% spread needs an 11.1% rise, a 20% spread needs 25.0%, and a 33% spread needs 49.3%. The New York Attorney General's 2021 petition against Lear said the rise buyers needed just to break even was "often approaching 50%."

To test your own quote, work out how much metal must rise to cover the markup.

A real gold IRA invoice from a state order#

A Texas order shows one GSI Exchange investor paid $267,293.60 for 413 gold coins that cost the dealer $207,739.00. The numbers below for investor R.H. come from Texas State Securities Board order ENF-21-CDO-1844 (July 22, 2021).

The custodian's statement (your IRA account report), not the dealer's, showed the loss: STRATA's figures helped expose losses of up to 39% across GSI's investors. The case ended in 2023 with an offer to undo the sales and no admission of wrongdoing.

At a 33% spread, your first custodian statement shows about 67% of what you paid; at 20%, about 80%. A federal case shows the same pattern. The SEC's Red Rock complaint describes a $150,000 purchase of 4,000 coins that cost Red Rock $65,400: a profit of $84,600, or about 129% over cost.

What Do Precious Metals Fraud Cases Have in Common? 10 Sales Tactics and Pitches From the Court Files#

Ten sales tactics repeat across the court files, and the most common pricing tactic is the switch from low-markup bullion talk to "premium" coins sold at 90% or more over cost. The table orders the tactics by how many cases describe each one.

The pitches also follow the news, and official warnings track them: financed metals in 2012, CARES Act rollover pitches in 2020 (advisory 8215-20), a joint campaign for retirees in 2024, the FBI's courier warning in 2024 and fake recovery offers in 2025.

Affinity fraud is a pitch aimed at members of a group the seller claims to share. Release 8881-24 says: "The scams also use common affinity fraud techniques, purposefully targeting people with specific political and religious beliefs." In plain English: a seller who talks about your faith or politics is not vouching for the price.

Who the victims were: IRA, 401(k) and TSP savers#

The victims were retirees: every CFTC dealer case filed from 2020 to 2023 describes customers as elderly or retirement-aged. The money came from IRAs, 401(k)s and the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan).

Averages divide the stated money by the stated number of customers. Where both figures are minimums ("over", "at least"), the true average may be higher or lower; for Safeguard, whose total is exact, it is lower.

In one U.S. Money Reserve case, a counterclaim (the other side's own lawsuit) alleges sales to a 94-year-old buyer. GSI Exchange investor B.R. died four months after buying, according to the Texas order.

Red Rock's "TSP Playbook" targeted federal workers considering a TSP to gold IRA rollover.

Where the sellers were based#

Eight of the ten largest retirement-account cases and failures since 2020 involved Los Angeles-area firms: Metals.com, Safeguard, Red Rock, Regal, Fisher Capital, Lear, Rosland and Oxford. The 2011-2017 cases over metal bought on credit were mostly against Florida firms. Location is a pattern in past cases, not a warning sign about any company selling today.

Why small silver and "semi-numismatic" coins carried the biggest markups#

Small fractional coins carried the biggest markups in these files, and buyers had no easy price to compare them with. A fractional coin weighs less than 1 ounce, such as a half-ounce or tenth-ounce coin. Silver dominated, but gold coins were not spared.

• Half-ounce silver Polar Bear (Metals.com): 4.1 million coins sold for over $102.4 million, 58% of phone sales, at 213% over market (alleged).
• Tenth-ounce Silver Spade Guinea and Silver Britannia (Barrick Capital, a Metals.com affiliate): 312% and 287% over market (alleged).
• Tenth-ounce gold coin (Metals.com): 106,123 coins for over $31.2 million, about $294 each (complaint para 52, alleged). Back-calculated with the CFTC's premium formula, the metal was worth about $133.60: the premium was 54.6% of the price, or 120% over spot value.
• Half-ounce silver Red-Tailed Hawk (Red Rock): over 1.3 million coins, over $40 million of more than $50 million in sales, at up to 130% over Red Rock's cost.
• Safeguard Metals: silver coins made up over 97% of sales.

Purity was not the problem in these files; the price was. How the switch to numismatic coin upsells works on a sales call is covered separately.

How Long Do Precious Metals Fraud Cases Take, and What Do Victims Get Back?#

A settled precious metals fraud case reaches a money order in about 12 months, and a contested one takes 3 to 6 years or more. Victims usually get back only part of the overcharge.

CFTC press releases warn that orders "may not always result in the recovery of any or all funds, as wrongdoers may lack sufficient assets." In plain English: a big order in the news does not mean a check in your mailbox. Restitution ordered is not restitution paid.

Time from filing to a money order#

Six resolved cases took from about 6 to about 63 months, and the middle case (the median) took about 12 months. Three open cases have already run 36 to 72 months.

The 4 fastest cases reached a money order within about 13 months; the 2 that were fought in court first took 44 and 63 months.

Restitution returns the overcharge, not your purchase price#

Court-ordered restitution in these cases pays back what you paid minus what the metal was worth when you bought it, not the whole purchase.

The average Safeguard customer paid at most about $148,775 and received metal worth about $91,955. At most about $56,821 was ordered back, if it is ever collected. Collections in the Safeguard and Red Rock cases are not public as of September 29, 2026. If a payment ever arrives for metal held in your IRA, ask your custodian where it must be deposited before you cash it.

Why headline fraud totals overstate what victims receive#

About half of a typical headline figure in these cases is a penalty paid to the government, not money for victims.

Median of the 8 orders with restitution: about 49%. Computed by SafeOunce from CFTC releases.

Double counting inflates headlines too. SEC and CFTC orders for the same conduct are offset: money paid under one counts toward the other. Safeguard's SEC disgorgement and penalty and the CFTC's restitution and penalty are each $25,569,303, but they overlap rather than add up. Counted once, with the SEC's $4,821,263 of interest, the two orders total about $56 million at most, not $107 million.

Metals.com victims: 11 cents on the dollar so far#

Metals.com victims have received about 11 cents per dollar of approved claims, 4 years and 7 months after the case was filed, according to the court-appointed receiver's reports. An approved claim is a loss the receiver has accepted; an interim distribution is a partial payment made before the case ends.

• $8 million interim distribution: mailed about May 1, 2025.
• 11.07% of $72,260,999 in approved claims: the receiver's figures.
• About $65,107 per claim, about $7,200 per check: the average approved metals claim against the average interim check (receiver's figures; SafeOunce computation).
• 93 claimants died while the case was pending: about 9% of 1,043 approved metals claimants, according to the receiver's report of May 2026.

Heirs can still be paid. The receiver sends checks to "the executor or executrix or beneficiary of the estate", and the receiver's reports say 59 checks worth $259,827.86 were never cashed.

The civil trial is set for March 1, 2027. The civil claims are unproven allegations, and the defendants in the criminal case are presumed innocent.

Criminal restitution can be 5 times the civil order#

A criminal case can order far more restitution than the CFTC's civil case: Atlantic Bullion & Coin's owner was ordered to repay $57,401,009, 4.98 times the CFTC's $11,530,000. The CFTC gained power over this kind of sale only on August 15, 2011. Its case covered the last months of a scheme that ran from 2001; the criminal case covered all of it.

Two other owners received long prison terms. Rust Rare Coin's owner got 228 months and a $153,073,328.32 restitution order on March 8, 2022. First State Depository's owner was sentenced on June 17, 2025 to 65 years. In plain English: a criminal court can order the whole loss repaid, but a prison sentence does not create assets to pay it.

Gold IRA Lawsuits and Class Actions Brought by Customers#

SafeOunce documents at least 15 private cases over gold IRA and precious metals sales, most brought by customers, and most are either pending or were sent to private arbitration. The list also includes one seller's suit and one competitor's suit.

In a private lawsuit, a customer, a group of customers or a competitor sues, and any money goes to them after fees. Law firms also advertise "investigations" naming long lists of sellers; an investigation is not a lawsuit.

The TCPA is the federal robocall and text law; the Lanham Act covers false advertising between competitors. AAA (American Arbitration Association) and JAMS are private arbitration services. Every pending row is an allegation as of September 29, 2026.

Class actions that name the IRA custodian#

Four customer cases also named the IRA custodian, not just the seller. Two are class actions: Theriault (New Direction and Mainstar, over First State Depository) and Short (Equity Trust, over Oxford Gold). Leight sues Equity Trust over Colonial, and Cravens, against New Direction, ended in 2022.

New Direction administered more than half of the IRA accounts at First State Depository. The custodian formerly called New Direction IRA now operates as New Direction Trust Company.

Custodians point to their limited role: they pay invoices and keep records. In 2016 a judge dismissed the SEC's case against Equity Trust, finding the custodian did not cause the promoters' fraud.

For the Theriault losses, the receiver's accountants estimated $56.8 million to $110.4 million missing; the criminal case speaks of about $76 million. The three custodian cases filed since 2023 are pending, with nothing decided on the merits as of September 29, 2026.

Short grew out of Oxford Gold Group's collapse: customers forced the company into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy (an involuntary Chapter 7) on August 28, 2024. That customer-filed bankruptcy is covered with Oxford Gold Group and the Equity Trust lawsuit.

Can an arbitration clause stop a gold IRA lawsuit?#

Usually yes: an arbitration clause, the contract term that sends disputes to a private hearing, sent Mathys, Patterson and Ireland out of federal court. A Kansas court refused in 2025, because the custodian added its clause by an emailed amendment nobody agreed to.

In Theriault v. New Direction IRA (D. Kan. 2:23-cv-02477-JWB), Judge John W. Broomes held a bench trial, a trial with no jury, on March 4-5, 2025. His order of March 31, 2025 (Doc 115) found the clauses added in April 2019 "embedded in the middle of other boilerplate language" (standard fine print). The website link to the documents was dead on the day the notice went out. Under Kansas law, silence was not agreement.

A California appeals court reached a similar result in Dennison v. Rosland (2020). It held a clause unconscionable, meaning so unfair a court will not enforce it, for an 82-year-old buyer. Consumer filing fees are capped at $225 (AAA) and $250 (JAMS) as of September 2026.

The steps to get your money back from a gold IRA company, including arbitration, are on the recovery guide.

Is the CFTC Still Bringing Precious Metals Fraud Cases?#

The CFTC is still finishing older precious metals fraud cases, but SafeOunce found no new CFTC complaint against a retail metals dealer in the 36 months to September 25, 2026. A complaint here is the court filing that starts a case.

The CFTC polices fraud in metals sales under 7 U.S.C. 9(1) and Regulation 180.1, its main anti-fraud rule. That rule bans "any untrue or misleading statement of a material fact" in a commodity sale (17 C.F.R. 180.1(a)(2)). In plain English: lying about the price or hiding the markup breaks federal law.

The CFTC does not license dealers. The CFTC and FINRA wrote in 2024: "Retail metal dealers are not regulated at the federal level." So a blank result in a CFTC registration search is normal for a gold IRA dealer and proves nothing either way.

No new CFTC case against a retail metals dealer since September 2023#

The last new CFTC complaint against a retail precious metals dealer that SafeOunce found is Regal Assets, filed September 27, 2023 and announced the next day. That is 36 months without a new case of this kind.

Metals releases since then announce the end of older cases, such as Safeguard, Red Rock, Regal and National Coin Broker. The gap is about retail dealers, not all metals fraud: a commodity-pool case involving leveraged gold and silver contracts, SimTradePro, was filed on September 30, 2024 and resolved in 2025.

In plain English: you cannot assume someone is checking the dealer you are talking to.

How we checked: every CFTC press release from February 2025 to September 25, 2026 (up to release 9304-26), plus the CFTC's full "precious metals" listing before that. Releases 9268-26 to 9304-26 contain no precious metals, bullion, coin or IRA item.

The court fight over CFTC authority over gold and silver#

For now the CFTC can police gold and silver sales: a federal judge in Texas ruled in 2025 that it could not, then reversed himself on August 3, 2026. He was bound by a 1978 appeals court precedent, a ruling lower courts must follow.

In the Red Rock case, the judge had ordered the CFTC on April 1, 2024 to justify its authority (an order to show cause) before the case settled. In Metals.com, the individual defendants asked on September 24, 2026 (Doc 1048) for the August 3 ruling to be reconsidered or appealed early; that request is undecided as of September 29, 2026.

Which agencies brought the 38 actions: CFTC, SEC, FTC and states#

The CFTC brought 22 of the 38 actions, state and city officials 8, the SEC 4, federal prosecutors 2, the FTC 1 and FinCEN 1, each under a different law.

States can also sue under the federal commodity law itself (7 U.S.C. 13a-2(1)), which is why "CFTC + 30 states" appears in the Metals.com row. Seven CFTC rows also had parallel criminal cases: Atlantic Bullion, Rust, BullionDirect, Blue Moon, US Coin Bullion, National Coin Broker and SimTradePro.

Who oversees what, and the gaps between the CFTC, SEC, FTC, state regulators, is explained on its own page.

Where Each Gold IRA Company Named in These Cases Stands Now#

Of the 18 companies in these cases, lawsuits and related failures, 10 have failed, closed or been renamed as of September 29, 2026. Five still sell metal: Lear, Goldline, Monex, U.S. Money Reserve and Colonial Metals Group; the other 3 are sanctioned or have open cases.

A receivership puts a company under a court-appointed manager. A liquidating Chapter 11 winds a company down.

Each status word (failed, closed, renamed, sanctioned, operating) carries a date. Midas, Capital Gold Group, Gold Alliance and Oxford Gold Group have no tracker row: they are business failures, not government actions, and Oxford appears through the Short lawsuit.

Name-confusion traps when you search a company's record#

Seven similar names can send a search to the wrong company, so check the full legal name and city on the court or regulator document.

• Fisher Capital: the CFTC defendants are Fisher Capital LLC and AMS Consulting Solutions doing business as Fisher Capital (E.D.N.Y.). Fisher Precious Metals is not named in the complaint's defendant list.
• Barrick Capital: Barrick Capital, Inc., a Metals.com affiliate, is not the mining company Barrick Gold.
• Midas Gold Group: Midas Gold Group LLC, the failed dealer, is not Midas Gold, Inc., an Idaho miner.
• Capital Gold Group: it is not Landmark Capital Gold Group of Phoenix.
• Colonial Metals Group: it is not Colonial Metals Co. of Pennsylvania.
• Goldline: Goldline is not Goldline Brands Inc.
• Metals.com: Metals.com, Inc. in a 2000 Delaware bankruptcy is unrelated to TMTE's Metals.com.

What to Do If Your Gold IRA Dealer Appears in One of These Cases#

Start by getting your latest statement from your IRA custodian. Then use the page below that matches your situation.

The case files show three kinds of harm, and each calls for a different speed.

Where to report a gold IRA company#

Report a lie about price or markup to the CFTC (866-366-2382 or cftc.gov/complaint) and to your state securities regulator. Report advice to sell your stocks to the SEC at sec.gov/tcr.

Two hotlines serve older victims like those in these files. The FINRA Securities Helpline for Seniors is 844-574-3577. The Justice Department's Elder Justice Hotline is 1-833-372-8311 (1-833-FRAUD-11).

Questions readers ask about gold IRA fraud cases#

These six questions come up most often.

Who regulates gold IRA companies, and is the SEC one of them?#

No federal agency licenses gold IRA dealers: the CFTC polices fraud, the SEC steps in when a seller gives advice about securities, and states enforce their own laws. Your IRA custodian is supervised as a trust company or bank. It still does not check dealer prices, as the SEC and NASAA warn.

Can you lose your IRA in a lawsuit?#

In federal bankruptcy, IRA money is protected up to $1,711,975 for cases filed on or after April 1, 2025 (11 U.S.C. 522(n)). Money rolled over from a 401(k) does not count toward that cap, so the cap does not limit it. Inherited IRAs are not protected in bankruptcy (Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. 122 (2014)). Whether state law keeps a gold IRA protected from creditors outside bankruptcy is covered separately.

Does a complaint to the CFTC get your money back?#

No: a tip to the CFTC can start an investigation, but the CFTC's own claims program (reparations) covers only registered firms, and most gold IRA dealers are not registered. Reparations claims must be filed within 2 years, and a faster summary procedure handles claims up to $30,000 (7 U.S.C. 18(a)(1)). A whistleblower can receive 10% to 30% of the sanctions collected in actions over $1 million (7 U.S.C. 26(b)(1)).

Is someone offering to recover your gold IRA losses legitimate?#

Treat any offer to recover your gold IRA losses for a fee as a likely second scam. The CFTC warned on May 14, 2025 (release 9075-25) about imposters posing as its Office of Inspector General, the agency's internal watchdog. Real recovery comes through a court receiver, a bankruptcy trustee or your own lawyer.

What happens to your gold IRA order if the dealer goes bankrupt?#

Your paid order becomes a claim in the bankruptcy. In the Rosland case, customers who paid and never got metal are unsecured creditors, owed money with no asset set aside to pay them. Rosland owed about $60.8 million to about 617 customers and held $212,661.60 in cash on August 6, 2026.

File a proof of claim (the form stating what you are owed) and tell your custodian in writing. What customers are owed in the Rosland Capital bankruptcy is tracked on its page.

Is the gold bar courier scam one of these cases?#

No: the gold bar courier scam is a different crime, where impostors posing as officials tell people 60 and older to buy gold and hand it to a courier.

The FBI's public service announcement I-012924-PSA (January 29, 2024) put losses at over $55 million from May to December 2023. It adds: "The US Government and legitimate businesses will never request you purchase gold or other precious metals."

How gold bar courier scams work, and who to call, is covered separately.