Пересказ: The Great Gold Scam

In 2025, the price of gold blew up. In a single year, one ounce of gold went from $2,700 to $4,300. That's a 62% increase in 12 months. Why did this happen? A lot of factors, but maybe the biggest was the decline of the U.S. dollar. And for years, the biggest names and conservative media have predicted this. They knew it was going to happen. You hear me every night talking about the value of having gold in your portfolio. Folks, inflation is proving unstoppable. Stock volatility is reaching new heights. A recession is inevitable. I've been doing business with Goldline for, gosh, over 15 years. It seemed like a good deal buying gold to their viewers. It was an obvious bet, but it wasn't. We spent months looking into the gold IRA industrial complex and its relationship with conservative media. What we found shocked us. In exchange for huge payouts, some of the most famous names in conservatism have consistently, over years, directed their viewers to gold companies that exploit them. In some cases, these companies were outright scams with outrageous terms and shocking margins. The primary target of all of this is the elderly. But these companies and their advertising strategies are so effective that people from every walk of life have been lured and have lost millions. We spoke to the victims of this, and we spoke to the insiders. This is the great gold scam. My name is Dale Whitaker. I am an accountant and I am the author of "The Gold Grift" and "The Whistleblower."

Whitaker spent years as an accountant for Augusta Precious Metals, which offers gold-backed IRAs. So, I was there about three and a half to four years. And the way that I realized that this wasn't as kosher as it seemed in the beginning was there was a gentleman who wanted to sell back 5,000 coins. So, we would sell a client a coin and we would say, "Hey, our spread is this percent. 29% is what we had at the time." And then that client at any time in the future could call us and they could sell it back to us at what they purchased minus the spread and whatever happened in the markets. And that isn't really what happens because the companies have the exclusive control over these coins. They can manipulate the price of the coins at any time. And so the CEO called me and he asked me very specifically to increase the spread, thereby decreasing the amount of money that we would give to that client who wanted to sell us the coins. That's when I realized something was terribly wrong. Over the past two decades, Americans, mostly conservative Americans seeking protection from market volatility and encouraged by media figures they trust, have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into commemorative gold coins. gold coins. So the way that it works is a dealer will enter into an exclusive distribution contract with a reputable mint like the Royal Canadian Mint, the British Royal Mint, the Perth Mint. And what they do is they say, hey, we want you guys to mint this coin for us. And we want to have the exclusive distribution capability in the United States. And the mint says, yes, we'll do this. This is what it costs. You pay for the mintage fees, you pay for the premiums to the mint. And then they give you the exclusive distribution for that coin in the United States. Since the value of the coin in theory comes from the value of the gold or silver within it, these coins are technically bullion and they can therefore be used in retirement accounts. That means effective salesmen can convince people to move their retirement savings into gold-backed IRAs. Unlike typical gold bars, however, the gold IRA industry coins are exclusive to the companies that sell them. The companies then massively mark up the price of those coins and tell customers that that price is justified because these are unique collector's items. Folks ask the question, well, why is this marked up exponentially? Why is it so much more expensive than, say, a typical bullion coin? And the answer is very simple. Well, well, there's limited mintage. There's only so many of these. And we are the only ones that you can buy this from. This model works because it relies on the trust built up over years between conservative media and the people who watch it. And that draws consumers into highly persuasive sales pitches. You could argue there's an element of willing buyer and willing seller, but the reality is much different. A lot of folks are really relying on the trust that they've built with influencers who push this stuff, that these companies are reputable. And then when they call the company and you have salesmen purporting themselves to be fiduciaries and telling this person that, hey, this is a better asset for you. I've been doing this for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. As a consumer, as an investor, it's like, why would I not listen to my stockbroker? This is the same thing. The terms are often obviously absurd. Massive margins over the publicly traded spot price, which you can check on your phone. They include hidden fees and commissions. A lot of them. Many companies' business practices have led to lawsuits. One of the largest indictments for $76 million was against a company called Red Rock Secured, who the owner, Shade Johnson, Kelly, and Jeffrey Ward, they were two of the salesmen at Augusta who left Augusta because they felt they weren't earning enough. According to federal regulators, Red Rock Secured, quote, used scare tactics to convince prospective customers to transfer funds, including funds from liquidating securities in their tax-deferred retirement accounts in order to purchase precious metals. In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Red Rock Secured and its executives with fraud. The government alleged that the company was charging, quote, "as much as 130% in markups on the precious metal coins." They sold to investors. Through this scheme, defendants allegedly defrauded at least 700 investors out of more than $50 million. So there have been a lot of lawsuits in the past few years. The CFTC and the SEC have really ramped up. And there are also a lot of private lawsuits from customers who have realized they've been scammed. In 2020, 12 states and the CFTC cracked down on metals.com after, quote, "defendants allegedly solicited more than $185 million from seniors and other vulnerable investors nationwide by touting precious metals at grossly inflated prices." In 2023, the SEC filed charges against safeguard metals for allegedly, quote, "obtaining approximately $67 million from the sale of coins to more than 450 mostly elderly retail investors and kept approximately $25.5 million in markup on the price it paid to acquire those coins." The CFTC and SEC are, I think, aware of this problem, but they just don't have the resources at hand to deal with it. So they end up playing whack-a-mole. And so they sue RedRock secured, but all of the salesmen then start a new company and then you have a new company and then that they start down this trajectory and end up doing the exact same thing. And so far, that's been true. These companies are easy to create. All you need is a relationship with a mint, ads on conservative radio and Fox News, and aggressive salesmen. In 2011, prosecutors filed 19 criminal counts against one company, Goldline International, for selling overpriced coins. Paid spokesmen for Goldline included Fred Thompson, Dennis Miller, Mark Levin, Lars Larson, Michael Smirconish, Mike Huckabee, and Glenn Beck. I've been doing business with Goldline for, gosh, over 15 years. It was a no-brainer for me to do business with them. I think they're the best in the precious metals category. A congressional investigation found, quote, "the average Goldline markup was 90% above the melt value of the coin." In other words, 90% above what it would sell for on the international market. Goldline never admitted to wrongdoing, but paid $4.5 million to settle the charges. After the legal scrutiny, Goldline employees got jobs at Merritt Financial, which also sold coins by phone and ran ads on Fox News. So the SEC sue a company into the ground, another company starts up, and then you start the vicious cycle all over again. Three years after Goldline faced charges, Merritt was accused of engaging in, quote, "an aggressive nationwide fraud scheme that is built for consumer consumers out of tens of millions of dollars." After Merritt fell, many of the salesmen moved to Augusta Precious Metals, where Whitaker worked. We reached out to Augusta Precious Metals for comment, and they described Whitaker's claims as, quote, "false," but they acknowledged that the industry is, quote, "filled with many bad actors and liars." The company claimed that Whitaker was terminated due to incompetence and has not had any working relationship with Augusta for nearly 10 years. Notably, Augusta does not list the prices of gold coins on their website. So the target demographic at Augusta Precious Metals was 50-plus conservative Christian. And the reason for that is because it's typically the conservative Christian who believes in some form of apocalyptic scenario where we're going to get away from the fiat monetary system, we're going to go back to a barter and trade, and they're going to need this gold and silver to barter and trade with. They're using this angle to target a very specific group of folks to then defraud them of their life savings. And to me, I think that's just a bar in it. My name is Rob Leinbarger. I would consider myself a straight-across-the-board conservative. I graduated in 1984, joined the Navy. I was a helicopter pilot in the Navy. Then after that, I took off the flight suit one day, and the very next day, I went to work for Motorola. And I led their R&D, engineering development projects. And then after that, I was able to save some money, so I built up this night's nest egg, and then the cloud of COVID hits. That's how I got into the gold, because I'm like, "Well, I've got to get out of the market." I fell for the con, looking for the safe haven. End of the dollar empire. That's birchgold.com/bannon7thfreeinstallment, the rear reset. I bought with birchgold, rolling over the 401k that I had saved. I'm part of the war room posse, I guess, or at least I was. And I just trusted the host of that show. Why is gold a hedge to all the madness of the money printing of the central bank, sir? I'm a business major. I understand business terms. First thing they ask you is, "How much are you looking to buy?" All right? And then I told them my situation. And I think at the time, I had about 400,000 left in my 401k. I got 420 pieces on the first purchase. I did a second purchase, there was 59 more. The story that he told me was, "These are premium coins." If I went online, I could see that, you know, 9.999% pure coins were actually selling above what let's say a spot price was on the bid and the ask. So I kind of believe that when they said that these are limited supply, so that makes them more valuable. And over time, they're going to appreciate at an increased rate, let's say, as measured to the spot price as a benchmark, which turned out to be 100% false. If I paid $1,020 premium, and so when I call to say, "Hey, I'm looking at divesting some of it because I want to move those assets into maybe something different," he's basically quoting me the melt price. The account manager basically told me there's an inversion in the market where the price of the commodity is going up, you know, on a slope like this. But because so many retired people are cashing in now, the coin itself, there's no value in it. The premium on them is basically a sunk cost, you're throwing that money away. And then, you know, once I find out, you know, how the pricing model worked and then what they told me was just did not come true based on, you know, they just totally misled me.

Being a conservative and, you know, watching, you know, conservative shows, things like that, they were pumping this company and I trusted them. And people need to know, you know, it's not just to do your own research. It's don't trust these people. Linebarger estimates the decision to buy commemorative coins cost him more than $200,000. For millennia, human beings have bought and sold precious metals, especially gold, to store value in times of economic uncertainty. The first gold coins were made in Turkey about 600 years before the birth of Christ. Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Code of Hammurabi, the Hebrew Bible, Homer's epics, all contain references to gold. Gold was one of the three gifts the wise men brought to Jesus. In 1792, George Washington signed a law that created the U.S. mint and authorized the government to produce gold, silver, and copper coins. 70 years later, President Lincoln enacted the Legal Tender Act, which introduced federal paper money. It was America's first experiment with fiat currency. That led to extreme inflation during the war and then extreme deflation after it ended. In 1900, President McKinley established the gold standard. It pegged the dollar to $20.67 per troy ounce of gold. The U.S. Treasury was obligated to convert paper money to gold upon request. That system ended on April 5th, 1933. And it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime. As Americans rushed to turn their dollars into gold during the Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt, as one of his first acts as president, banned gold ownership by decree. He issued Executive Order 6102 that required Americans to surrender their gold coins and bullion to the Federal Reserve at an exchange rate he fixed. Roosevelt did this because the government wanted a way to increase the money supply amid the Great Depression. The gold standard was holding them back.

Reality itself prevented them from doing this. And as public confidence waned in the banking system, people rushed to get their money out of banks. Because of an undermined confidence on the part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold. Americans who didn't turn their gold into the government faced fines up to $10,000. That's the equivalent of more than a quarter million dollars today. They also faced up to a decade behind bars. The Fed sicked the Secret Service on anyone who violated it. Famous cases hit the papers. A New York attorney called Frederick Barber Campbell attempted to withdraw his deposit of 27 bars of gold, worth about $3 million in today's exchange, from Chase National Bank in Manhattan. Roosevelt's government filed criminal charges against him. And though the prosecution failed on a technicality, his gold was confiscated by the government. A jewelry store owner called Gus Farber in San Francisco was arrested for illegally selling gold coins in 1939. Others were arrested and coordinated stings. In 1971, Richard Nixon ended the gold standard altogether, so the government no longer had an interest in preventing gold ownership.

Though, of course, Americans certainly did. The dollar, which is the best-performing currency of the past 100 years, has declined by 95% between 1925 and 2025. During the same period, gold rose from $20 an ounce to more than $4,000. On New Year's Eve 1974, President Gerald Ford signed legislation making it legal for Americans to own bullion again, finally. But the industry faced basically no regulation. The reality is there is no regulation over this, and which is why it's so difficult to really put a — it's like putting a Band-Aid over a gunshot wound, because you just cannot stem the flow of companies that pop up after one is sued. According to the Washington Post, over the past decade, more than 30 customers in 20 states have sued a dozen gold IRA companies. Federal regulators have sued four companies, two in the past year alone, claiming that investors were systematically charged as much as triple the coin's value. It kind of sounds dirty coming out of my mouth as a conservative to say we need to regulate this issue, but that is the reality. This is where government needs to step up and say, hey, there is harm being done to citizens, and not just citizens, but their livelihoods, their life savings, and we need to do something about this instead of just suing individual companies and playing whack-a-mole like the SEC and the CFTC are doing. My name is Andrea McEvoy. I used to do real estate, but I'm mostly a mom now. I've been investing in precious metals since 2015, 2016. This was an IRA that I had developed before I got married, and it was basically a debt account at that point. I had two-year-olds. I was freshly postpartum, and I was also pregnant. I found out about Leo Capital through podcasts. I do like to support the sponsors with the people that I listen to or try to. It's like, you know, a soft intro. We do that in real estate, right? It's like that warm intro, and you're like, oh, okay, well, these guys trust them. So instead of just Googling a company, maybe I should try the company that they're sponsoring, because you assume that they kind of do some background due diligence. You wouldn't want your reputation to now be tainted from a bad sponsor. So I made the wrong assumption. So I bought about $186,000 worth of gold and silver through my IRA. The sales tactics, it was interesting. I'm trying to remember exactly how he framed it with me. But basically, what he said was that these coins might be the best opportunity for me because they tend to buffer when the market goes down. So you don't get as much of a loss. And they tend to really accelerate when the market goes up, which obviously sounds too good to be true. Now that you think about it, if you look at the actual contract, it says that like essentially something, something along the lines of that the commission will be discussed on the recorded call.

It should have been a red flag for me immediately. And for me, I still remember the day that I was on the recorded call. I was doing the dishes. I had my two year old tugging at me. You know, you got the water running, you got the kid pulling at you, you know, I'm doing, I'm shushing him, you know, trying to silently shush him, you know, so I can listen to the recording. And your mind is not where it should be when a very large purchase is occurring. They said 34%. There is no way I heard 34%. I heard 4%, right? That, that sounds more in line with a very large purchase. In April of 2024, I was, I think in my second trimester of pregnancy at that time, the market was so going so gangbusters. So I went into my equity trust account and the 186,000 was down to a hundred, I think somewhere around 109,000. And I mean, my heart sank and I was like, there's, there's no way this is, this can be possible. Andrea reached out to Lear Capital, which is a major player in gold sales with over 200 million in revenue, according to court filings. She wanted to know why her coins weren't rising as fast as the price of gold since they were gold. So that's when I really went gangbusters and started running the numbers and figuring out not only did they take 35% as a commission, but then they somehow took another 20, 25% as a premium or a spread on the value. Somewhere around the 120,000s is where I was. And I should have been somewhere around 213,000 had I bought bullion. The company, Lear Capital, strongly discouraged her from telling her story to anyone. Lear had reason to be worried about state attorneys general. In 2022, they reached a $6 million settlement with the state of New York in a suit that alleged, quote, "Lear fraudulently failed to disclose millions of dollars in commissions the company charged consumers." So what I did was I, you know, contacted several different AGs from different states. In 2023, quote, "at least 42 state and territory securities regulators have been investigating Lear for deceptive securities and commodities activity and misleading marketing." Amid a multi-state lawsuit, Lear filed for bankruptcy and agreed to pay $5.5 million back to its customers. Lear Capital: I put in a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, um, just started blasting them on X. Um, and it got, I mean, it's, it's interesting because I think, um, the gentleman that I was speaking to, I think he thought that he could kind of make me go away with, you know, giving me, you know, 10,000 or, you know, just kind of throwing me, um, crumbs and just seeing if I'd go away. He would leave me messages every day. I mean, constantly. And I would, I wouldn't call him back. And I would just send him a message. Um, I want to say it was through email, basically saying, "Unless you have my money, don't call me." "They use these tactics where they say, you don't have a case. You accepted this agreement. You verbally accepted this commission.

And you just got to just say, I don't accept that. I don't accept it. And you got to figure out how you can work around it because you can, obviously I did it. So." After aggressively fighting with Lear for months, Andrea was ultimately issued a full refund plus $15,000. "I would say just don't trust anyone. Don't trust anyone." If you check, you'll see that Lear has very positive reviews online and a solid rating from the Better Business Bureau. "We obtained documents that showed that in exchange for issuing the refund, Lear pressured Andrea into leaving the company a five-star Google review and contacting the Better Business Bureau to report that she was satisfied with her dealings with Lear." "You have to do your own research. You have to look at the contracts. You have to know what you're paying people. Um, it's really important. You cannot just trust that people have your best interests in mind because they don't. You don't, you don't just, um, listen to some pundit on online or on the TV and think that they have your best interests in mind. They, they clearly have their interests in mind, right? They're making money off of the advertising or in some way, shape or form. They're making money off of you doing this thing that they want you to do." "It leaves me sitting wondering as a conservative and as a consumer of media, wondering, do these guys have my best interests at heart or is it about money?" "By all accounts, it seems like money." "We were not surprised that multiple gold companies reached out to offer us money, in one case, nearly $20 million a year to pitch their products." "As a conservative and someone who's been reaching out to these folks for six, going on seven years now, it's frustrating that I see them pushing assets for companies that I know are going to defraud their viewers. And the fact that these guys are making millions and millions of dollars a year, and even the smaller, mid-sized ones are getting paid thousands of dollars a month, which just doesn't make sense for their audience size, so that they can sell and really leverage their viewers' trust to get them to go to these companies and to make these companies a lot of money, all the while they're losing their life savings is inherently frustrating for me." "The ads are ubiquitous." "Gold Lines Express IRA makes acquiring gold and silver for you fast and simple." "So please call the only precious metal dealer. I trust. American Hartford Gold." "It's American Hartford Gold." On July 1, 2023, Newsmax, a cable network, aired a live broadcast of a Trump speech in Pickens, South Carolina. They put it on a split screen with an ad for Hartford Gold, which also sends Trump rally special emails via a deal with Newsmax. The same company sent an email ad with the subject Bill O'Reilly Warns retirement funds at risk from a Biden recession. It directed viewers to American Hartford Gold. "And I've sent many of them the evidence. I've sent them my complaint that I filed, my whistleblower complaint that I filed, and I pleaded with them, hey, please stop selling this because your viewers are being victimized by the same company that's paying you massive sums of money." According to the Washington Post, revenues from the gold IRA companies can amount to as much as 10% of their total earnings. And the biggest personalities stand to earn millions of dollars a year. "And that's one of the most frustrating things now whenever I see these influencers. It's like, are your sponsors selling a legitimate product? Are you peddling a bad product now? I have to be questioning every single time that I see these guys selling something because it's like, how many millions of dollars are you getting paid to do that? And do you actually care about getting me the truth? or do you care about lining your pockets? If you lend your name to it and your reputation, so the audience thinks, oh, it's probably okay. Until it's not okay. Until your audience gets scammed, gets robbed, gets cheated, and then the trust is eroded. My name is Kristen, and I am a single mom seeking to raise my children and nourish and admonition of the Lord. And I am a servant of Jesus Christ. My mom and I are from Cambodia. We lived through the Khmer Rouge. And we came to America pretty much seeking the American dream. My parents were in the labor camps. And when the Khmer Rouge went in, they took their home, they took their business, and they took all their possessions. During the chaos, during the war, the currency used was pretty much gold because the currency during that time, the paper currency was useless. And so people would carry around, and my mom just, you know, had a little scale in which they would cut up pieces of gold to exchange or to buy or to hire people. And then with the current situation in America, in which the American currency is being debased, mom and I discussed it. And we thought that she would put whatever little money that she and my dad has to toward gold. There were a lot of influencers who recommended different gold companies. The company's name was Gold Co. And I believe now more than ever, is the time to find out how you can diversify your savings with gold. Now that's why I partnered with Gold Co. Gold Co. I've decided to partner with the top rated precious metals company, Gold Co. You can see here on their site, they're a great company, they're trusted and respected, and they have a great reputation as well. When you visit or call Gold Co., be sure that you tell them that Laura Loomer sent you. I am not important. I have no money, I have no influence, I have no power. We thought that what was going to be an investment that could help her survive, because we're struggling, she's struggling, I'm struggling. What was sold to her Gold Co., was the price was so high, exorbitantly high, higher than the market rate. And I realized that it's like she was robbed. I realized, oh my God, she, she has been cheated of her life savings. And I blamed myself for introducing her to that. For months, Kristin and her mother repeatedly reached out to the gold company attempting to cancel their order. But they were consistently rebuffed. It took a month of negative reviews and phone calls with the company before the company finally agreed to buy back the gold at the purchase price. When this is done to little people where the little people struggling, I'm struggling to survive. It's so crushing.

You feel like you're dying. And in the end, when people on their deathbed, as they say, and before you take your last breath, you've cheated and robbed people, people who are small, people who are just normal citizens trying to survive. Please think about it, because there will be an accounting by God. When we launched this channel two years ago, various gold companies reached out to us immediately, and they offered us enormous amounts of money. One of them offered nearly 20 million dollars. At first, it seemed like a great idea. It was natural. We love gold. We own gold. We've been buying it for years in physical form. But then the obvious question arose, how can a company that sells gold, which is a commodity set on the international markets, whose price is transparent, how would they have 20 million dollars to spend on marketing? Commodities is a low margin business by definition. It didn't make any sense.

But now it does. These businesses weren't selling gold as a commodity. They were ripping off consumers, mostly conservative Christians. The reality is that the influencers selling the scam were actually right on the most basic level. Gold is the answer to economic volatility. It is a hedge against fiat currency and the devaluation of the dollar. And in fact, if the people we spoke to had bought gold at spot price and held it, they'd be much richer today. Their instincts were right, but they were subverted. So what we have done instead in good conscience and great enthusiasm is partner with one of the biggest gold wholesalers in the country. We now sell gold with reasonable, totally transparent upfront, clearly detailed margins. Low margins. But don't take our word for it. You can check for yourself. The company is called Battalion Metals and the prices are on the website. You know exactly what we make. No, we're not going to get rich from this. Yes, we will make it easier for the people who watch our show to buy physical gold if they want to. There are no 34% markups.

There's no commemorative coin that's somehow worth more than its weight in gold. There's no scam here. Battalion makes money the way gold companies should make money: by selling gold, fairly and transparently. Thank you.