This blog, like virtually all blogs here on SD Bullion, is written by James Anderson. The following opinions are those of myself James Anderson, the author of this article. Not necessarily the views of SD Bullion.
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Imagine being an older person nearing retirement age right now.
Feel the hypothetical peace of mind, with having saved nearly $900,000 fiat US dollars in your likely lawsuit proof IRA account. Most specifically, to be able to retire with some dignity.
Nightmare imaginary scenario is, you recently got caught up with the perhaps wrong kind of gold dealer business. In doing so, you allegedly lost about 1/3rd of those hard-earned life savings to potentially questionable sales tactics.
This scenario is what a former customer, William Hough, and the City of Los Angeles Attorney’s office are now alleging against Los Angeles based Lear Capital.
In the following video clip, you can hear further details from Los Angeles Attorney General and a former customer of Lear Capital some of the allegations filed against the company in early June 2019.
Lear Captial Lawsuit filed by City of Los Angeles Press Conference
The City of Los Angeles vs. Lear Capital Lawsuit Filing - Deep Accusation Details
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Perhaps, understandably from the outside, some might give this business the benefit of the doubt.
With more than 22 years in operation, a self-reported $3 billion fiat USD total revenue all time, and some slick television advertisements (i.e., on CNBC and Fox Business News). These guys appear to be honest and successful.
It looks as if Lear Capital can afford to pay best-selling author Robert Kiyosaki, Michael Pento, John Rubino, Chris Martenson, and even Mish Shedlock. These promotional videos on their youtube channel are perhaps a likely embarrassing association for them now looking backward.
Lear Capital, like many phone call-heavy sales teams, also have many odd weighted ’exclusive’ IRA Eligible coins made by the Royal Canadian Mint. Those things have to be great deals for elder soon to be retiree IRAs, right?
If your order 'qualified,' they were giving some of it away for free!
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A cursory two-minute look on Lear Capital’s BBB page and I quickly found a recent complaint alleging an echo of this LA City Attorney lawsuit.
Much seemed similar to many of the words spoken there by the former Lear Capital customer complainer, William Hough. The man at that same press conference video at the start of this article, alleging to have lost nearly $300k to potentially underhanded Lear Capital sales tactics.
Well, this fresh complaining BBB post alleges an IRA customer of Lear Capital lost some self-reported $50k in an IRA transaction. But then again, this is the internet; thus, the validity of all these claims or comments are still questionable. Guess the courts of law may sort some of this out soon.
Lear Capital Review Source
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I have been working in this industry for over a decade.
These kinds of allegations always make me feel a range of negative emotions. It's like staring at a four-lane intersection without stoplights or stop signs, and only having a bull horn far away from an empty field trying to warn folks. Good luck.
Seeing some of the potentially poor business practices used on unsuspecting would be simple bullion buyers is frustrating and sad.
It has bothered me so often, to the point of having to make gallows humor satire videos.
Perhaps to feel sane while mocking how dumbed down some of the offerings can get on tell-a-vision.
1964 Morgan Dollars Clad in Silver and Half-Truths
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I want to think that the following is common sense, but corner-cutting is also commonplace in the business world.
When you do business with anyone, first and foremost, your name and reputation is the most precious thing you have.
In any dealings, there should always be as fair a value attained from both sides of the table.
Be that internally in an industry (B2B) or externally with direct clients (B2C).
Practice these principles, or you will have to spend a lot of time finding new business vendors, employees, clearing your reputation, battling lawsuits, and dealing with both potentially conscious and unconscious repercussions of possibly taking advantage of someone or many people even.
Business is often a game of operational processes and trained staff repetition. If many alleged scams have occurred, often chances are high, there may be more poor business practices ongoing or yet to have been reported.
Do not get confused. High volume bullion dealers with legit market share, do not typically resort to high-profit margin sales desks nor hundreds of commissioned employees calling leads all day with crafted sales scripts.
To offer bullion with excellent service and prices in today’s market. It necessitates economies of scale.
Things like high-level website coding skills, expensive inventory management know-how, and well-trained talent are but a few fair price and service efficiency requirements.
Bullion IRAs - Low-Profit Margin Dealers Often Get Priced Out
Honest bullion dealers also work in Bullion IRAs too, but their often more valuable messaging gets overshadowed and priced out from the first landing page in google.
Pretty ridiculous how much power we have allowed that dominate search engine company. Google currently makes nearly $58 fiat USD per paid click search term like ‘Gold IRA.’
Similar stories with ‘Silver IRA,’ ‘Gold ETF,’ and ‘Silver ETF.’
How are companies able to pay so much per click?
Often by making significant profits off of financially illiterate folks.
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There is a fine line between fair and lousy business deals. It can be very slippery to define, but one knows it intuitively in their gut when they see it and or experience it.
If indeed the law proves Lear Capital was on the right side of these transactions, then maybe this lawsuit was a mere misunderstanding. Caveat emptor regardless.
Whatever comes of this particular LA vs. Lear lawsuit. We will continually attempt to educate readers about some of the potential poor gold industry business practices past and present.
After all, poor precious metal business practices get regularly alleged and lawsuits filed in this 'wild west' physical gold and silver coin industry.
Problem is many people do not know about some of the potential pitfalls, nor know the depths often required to do proper due diligence in order to better buy bullion safely.
Alleged bad actors in the greasy 'car salesman' section of the physical precious metals industry. Once busted, they often move on and set up new shops with new aliases. Rinse and repeat.
Companies with large total sales volumes or long durations in gold coin business operation, do not necessarily guarantee honest business practices either.
You are most likely not a child, therefore you are likely not naive to the fact that companies with large attorney budgets can exist for much longer than most would ever perhaps believe is possible.
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IRA Eligible Does Not Mean it is a Fairly Prices Bullion IRA Product (Find a Real Bid-Ask Spread)
By merely having an 'exclusive' Government mint issued coin or bar, with some limited size and mintage, does not mean said products are going to be competitively priced based on their precious metal melt value. Nor does it mean said products would be in high collectible demand when you go to sell silver or gold bullion. Here are some tips on how to sell bullion intelligently.
Please know too young hotshots reading this. Just because a few coin or bar flippers are selling one or two items at bloated prices online. That does not mean when you go to sell a considerable lot of similar products to a bullion dealer; you will get anything near those price premiums. Products price premiums are fickle and often evaporate with time and or demand.
Often what is being sold by potentially crooked IRA Eligible exclusive products, is hot air and kickback bonuses for salespeople and the proprietors. Usually, it is the unsuspecting customer who gets left to dangle with significant losses.
It was not but a handful of years back when the City of Santa Monica Attorney’s Office went after a now-defunct Merit Gold for alleged ‘bait and switched’ tactics.
During the era of the still nominal 2011 gold record price, spokesman Glenn Beck (surprise, he's now a cryptocurrency newsletter promoter) and his sponsor Goldline. They were involved in another California lawsuit alleging similar poor business practices.
That lawsuit got settled, and both the spokesman that company appears to be shells of their former selves now.
I went so far as to put my name and face on television for free. I was mainly hoping to dissuade anyone watching to not fall for these poor business tactics or additional threats of counterfeit Chinese clad precious metal product threats.
Across the world, there are a couple of hundred babies born each minute. So about ten babies in the USA are born each sixty seconds of the day. The saying "a fool is born every minute," is sadly partly true. Gullibility is a permanent human shortcoming.
Not everyone gets duly warned, but hopefully, we can save some would be mistakes from occurring.
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Even one of the most TV branded names in the gold business, Monex of Newport Beach, CA, has had various run-ins with the CFTC.
This latest CFTC vs. Monex lawsuit alleged Monex's offering off commodity exchange precious metal leverage account services. Which supposedly totaled some unsuspecting customer losses to the tune of $290 million fiat USD. The allegation spanned from the 2011 silver price and gold price peaks into late 2017.
The CFTC again recently lost this lawsuit versus Monex in a court of law. This age-old back and forth has been going on since the 1970s Monex vs. the CFTC.
Regardless, such serious allegations require proper due diligence always.
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Get Your Free Bullion Guide Right Now by Email
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You can learn some common sense tactics to use when buying bullion safely online. Doing so can help ensure you do not end up on the wrong end of a losing transaction.
Best to avoid outfits with profit margins large enough to afford expensive television advertisements or $58 pay per click ads.
Stick with the most popular gold and silver bullion products with reasonable buy and sell spreads. Here is a playlist with 10 of the most popular bullion products regularly purchased with typically satisfied customers in our industry.
Only deal with gold and silver dealer websites that allow you to order online 24x7 easily.
You should never have to have an “account manager” to place your orders.
You should not have to speak to anyone if you indeed prefer when ordering proven bullion products with high recognition, proven premium performance, and market liquidity.
If you do make a phone call, the staff at an honest bullion dealer should be highly trained. Also not incentivized to sell you into anything you did not inquire over.
Anyone using greedy or fear-based sales pitches trying to pry into products you either did not ask about or do not fully understand, steer clear.
Due Diligence on all Bullion Businesses is a Must
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Many honest bullion dealers are offering win-win business transactions with fair, transparent prices, fast delivery, and no hassle, high volume operational flows.
If you are interested in fair Bullion IRA transactions, it is perhaps better to choose the most popular IRA eligible bullion products. The ones that are difficult to over-price due to their broad buy-sell market, deep liquidity, and tough to hide behind limited-exclusive-flimflam marketing tactics.
Here is a simple walkthrough of how to begin a proper Bullion IRA due diligence via a simple phone call.
Sounds ridiculous to have to write this again. But just because a government bullion mint issued some precious metal item in small exclusive quantities. That does not make them a good deal for you or your IRA.
To learn more about how to buy and sell bullion safely, you can pick up our free Bullion Guide by email right now.
Thanks for visiting us here at SD Bullion.
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