Six precious-metals dealers that once advertised heavily to retirement savers are gone or in court. This is the paper trail behind each one: who filed, in which court, on what date, what the order actually said, and how much of it ever reached a customer. Where nothing has been proven, we say so in the same sentence.
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In a properly built gold IRA the firm that sold you the coins holds nothing afterwards. Federal law puts your account with a bank or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee and the bullion in that trustee's possession at a depository, which is why the receivers below spent years chasing money rather than bars. When a dealer shuts its doors, the custodian keeps administering the account and the depository keeps holding the metal. What you lose is the buyback desk.
The caveat is that in every case here the damage was done at the sales counter, long before anyone closed. Customers were charged 71 percent, 130 percent, and in one indictment as much as 250 percent over what the coins were worth, and that overpayment was locked in the day the invoice was signed. In two files the metal was allegedly never bought at all. The structure protects you against a dealer disappearing, not against a dealer overcharging you first.
| COMPANY | STATUS | WHO ACTED, AND WHEN | MONEY ORDERED OR CLAIMED | PROVEN OR ALLEGED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metals.com (TMTE, Inc.), Chase Metals, Barrick Capital | Federal receivership Sept 2020, still litigating | CFTC and 30 states, N.D. Texas, 22 Sept 2020; grand jury indictments 2025 and 2026 | $185m solicited; $8m first interim distribution paid | Consent orders on injunctive relief only; liability contested, jury trial 2027; criminal counts unproven |
| Safeguard Metals LLC | Shut down, permanently barred | CFTC with 30 states and, separately, the SEC, C.D. California, both 1 Feb 2022 | $68m solicited; $25.6m restitution plus $25.6m penalty | Consent order Oct 2023; final judgment 30 Sept 2025 |
| Red Rock Secured LLC | Judgment entered; per the SEC now trading as American Coin Co. | SEC, C.D. California, 15 May 2023, plus a parallel CFTC and state action | More than $50m taken; $76.4m judgment | Settled without admitting or denying, 23 April 2024 |
| Regal Assets LLC | Gone; website no longer resolves | CFTC with the California DFPI, C.D. California, 27 Sept 2023 | $21m alleged misappropriated; $49m in judgments | Default judgment Oct 2024, nobody appeared to contest it |
| Oxford Gold Group, Inc. | In Chapter 7 liquidation | Its own customers as petitioning creditors, Bankr. C.D. California, 28 Aug 2024 | NO REGULATOR FIGURE PUBLISHED | Order for relief 15 Oct 2024; fraud claims remain allegations |
| Gold Alliance | Closed voluntarily, 24 June 2024 | Nobody. No enforcement action located | NONE | A wind-down notice on its own homepage is the whole record |
Sources: CFTC releases 8254-20, 8812-23, 9139-25 and 9001-24; SEC release 2023-93 and litigation releases 25708 and 25996; the receiver's site for case 3:20-cv-2910-L; the Chapter 7 docket in 2:24-bk-16947; the Gold Alliance homepage notice. Every link is in the sources box below. Status checked August 2026.
On 22 September 2020 the CFTC and securities regulators from thirty states walked into the Northern District of Texas together and asked a judge to stop TMTE, Inc., trading as Metals.com, along with Chase Metals, Barrick Capital and principals Lucas Asher and Simon Batashvili. The CFTC announcement put the figure at more than $185 million taken from roughly 1,600 people, over $140 million of it out of retirement savings, with overcharges from 100 percent to more than 300 percent above prevailing market prices.
The judge granted a restraining order the same day and appointed Kelly Crawford as receiver, who took the defendants' principal office two days later. Consent orders continuing the injunction and the receivership followed on 14 October 2020. The receiver publishes his own case site under case number 3:20-cv-2910-L.
What customers got. A claims process opened in March 2021 and objections were fought through 2022. The Fifth Circuit upheld the receiver's distribution plan on 7 March 2024. An interim distribution of $8 million was approved, held up by an IRS audit of Chase Metals, and finally mailed as pro-rata checks on or about 1 May 2025, four years and seven months after the doors were sealed. The receiver's site carries the sentence no promotional page will quote back at you: there may not be sufficient funds or assets recovered to repay the victims.
Where it stands now. In August 2026 the court denied the amended summary judgment motions, putting the matter back on the trial docket with a jury trial set for 1 March 2027. Separately, a federal grand jury in Dallas indicted Batashvili on 22 July 2025, and a second superseding indictment filed 3 February 2026 in case 3:25-cr-343-X names both Batashvili and Lucas Thomas Erb, also known as Lucas Asher. Counts one and two charge mail fraud under 18 U.S.C. 1341, and the indictment alleges markups as high as 250 percent and profits of at least $70 million. Nothing in an indictment has been proven.
On 1 February 2022 the CFTC filed with thirty state regulators in the Central District of California under case number 2:22-cv-00691, and the SEC filed its own action the same day under 2:22-cv-00693. The SEC's account, in litigation release 25708, alleges the firm marketed itself as a full-service investment house with offices in London, New York and Beverly Hills and roughly $11 billion under management, while in reality operating from a small leased space in a Woodland Hills office building.
The consent order announced on 25 October 2023 supplies the number that matters. Between roughly October 2017 and July 2021 the firm took in about $68 million from around 450 customers, most of it retirement money, and the average markup on silver coins was 71 percent against customer agreements stating a maximum of 23 percent. The order enjoined future violations and barred the defendants from trading or registering, but left the money open.
What customers got. That closed on 30 September 2025 with a final judgment of $25.6 million in restitution plus a $25.6 million civil monetary penalty, announced that November. Against $68 million solicited, that orders repayment of roughly a third of what came in, and an order is not a payment. Note too that the individual defendant changed his legal name mid-case, from Jeffrey S. Santulan to Jeffrey Ikahn.
This file should change how you read the whole category. The SEC sued Red Rock Secured LLC, chief executive Sean Kelly and two senior account executives on 15 May 2023 in the Central District of California. Its announcement of the charges alleges the sales force told holders of federal Thrift Savings Plan accounts, 401(k)s and IRAs to protect their savings by selling securities and buying coins at a markup of only 1 to 5 percent, when actual markups ran as high as 130 percent. The complaint puts the harm at more than 700 investors and more than $50 million between 2017 and 2022, more than $30 million of it allegedly pocketed.
The legal theory is the interesting part. Selling a gold coin is not a securities transaction, so at first glance the SEC has no seat at the table. But advising somebody to liquidate securities is investment advice, and judgment was entered under both Rule 10b-5 and sections 206(1) and 206(2) of the Investment Advisers Act. If a dealer's pitch is really a recommendation about your existing portfolio, the securities laws are in play whatever is sold at the other end.
What customers got. Per SEC litigation release 25996, a final consent judgment landed on 23 April 2024 totalling more than $76.4 million: $50,150,000 in disgorgement from the firm plus $6,110,000 in interest and a $10,000,000 penalty, with separate amounts and an officer-and-director bar for Kelly. All four consented without admitting or denying, which is a settlement and not a finding of fraud. The same release records that the company now operates as American Coin Co. That clause alone is why a brand search is not due diligence.
Regal Assets spent most of the 2010s as one of the most aggressively promoted gold IRA brands in the affiliate ecosystem. On 27 September 2023 the CFTC and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation filed jointly against Regal Assets LLC, owner Tyler G. Gallagher and former president Leah Donoso in the Central District of California under case number 2:23-cv-08078.
The allegation differs in kind from the markup cases. The complaint charges that from at least November 2019 through at least October 2022 the defendants solicited customers to move retirement funds into self-directed IRAs to buy metals, then misappropriated more than $21 million from more than 120 customers, using forged documents to conceal it. The money left the custodian, an order was recorded, and the metal did not arrive.
What customers got. The CFTC announced on 25 October 2024 that Judge Fernando M. Olguin had entered orders of default judgment requiring more than $21.9 million in restitution and more than $27.3 million in penalties, joint and several, totalling over $49 million. Default means nobody appeared to contest the case, so the allegations were accepted procedurally rather than tested before a fact-finder. As of August 2026 the regalassets.com domain does not resolve, and a judgment against a defunct company and absent principals is worth exactly what a collector can find.
We could not locate a published enforcement finding against Oxford Gold Group, Inc. from any agency, so nothing here should be read as one. What exists is a federal bankruptcy docket, and it is unusual enough to spell out.
On 28 August 2024 a large group of individuals filed an involuntary Chapter 7 petition against the company in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, case number 2:24-bk-16947, before Judge Neil W. Bason. The petitioning creditors are not banks or suppliers; they are named individuals represented by a single attorney, the signature of customers acting collectively, and they moved on an emergency basis for an interim trustee within eight days. The court entered the order for relief on 15 October 2024, Carolyn A. Dye was appointed interim trustee that November, and the general claims bar date was 12 March 2026. The docket was still receiving filings in July 2026.
Three private suits ran alongside it, all filed in August 2024: Stanaway in the Eastern District of California under 2:24-cv-02118, and Baker and Jordan in the Central District under 2:24-cv-06824 and 2:24-cv-07213. The company's BBB profile shows an F rating with an alert on file, driven by 177 complaints of which 151 went unanswered.
One practical warning. When we checked in August 2026, the oxfordgoldgroup.com domain served unrelated gambling-affiliate content. Expired brand domains get bought and repointed. If you are a former customer chasing a claim, your counterparties are the Chapter 7 trustee, your custodian and your depository.
This page needs a shutdown with no scandal attached, or the reader takes away the wrong lesson. Gold Alliance simply stopped. Its homepage still carries the notice: "Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are closing our business effective June 24, 2024," followed by a commitment to keep a helpline open during the wind-down and refer clients to other dealers.
We searched CFTC and SEC enforcement records and state regulator releases and found nothing naming the firm, so the record is a wind-down notice and nothing else. This is the common outcome. Dealers exit because margins compress or a marketing engine stops paying for itself, and their customers find nothing about the account has changed except the phone number they used to call.
Three separate businesses touch a gold IRA. The dealer sells you coins and then has no further role. The custodian, which must be a bank or one of the entities on the IRS list of approved nonbank trustees and custodians, administers the account and bills you annually. The depository stores the bars, because Internal Revenue Code section 408 requires IRA bullion to be in the physical possession of that trustee rather than a dealer's safe or your basement.
Which is why none of the receivers above spent time hunting for vaulted metal. Where coins had genuinely been bought and delivered, they sat where they always sat. The recovery fights were about cash, commissions, real estate and cars.
The reassurance fails in one situation: the Regal Assets pattern, where cash left the custodian and metal never arrived. That is invisible on a dealer invoice and obvious on a depository confirmation. If you have never seen a custodian statement listing specific coins, you have not verified that you own anything.
The markup is the business model. Read the numbers side by side: 71 percent average against a stated 23 percent cap at Safeguard, up to 130 percent against a promised 1 to 5 percent at Red Rock, 100 to more than 300 percent alleged at Metals.com. No federal rule requires a coin dealer to disclose its markup, so the whole margin lives in a number nobody has to say out loud.
The vehicle is always a coin without a public price. A one-ounce bullion coin trades against a spot price you can look up in four seconds, which makes a 130 percent markup impossible to hide. A coin described as rare, exclusive, proof or limited mintage has no such reference, and the pitch reprices it as a collectible rather than as metal. If you cannot find a published price for the exact item, you cannot price the markup. That is the point. See our comparison of coins against bars.
The conversation is about your existing portfolio, not about gold. Safeguard's charged conduct was misstatements about the safety and liquidity of investors' current securities. Red Rock's was a recommendation to sell out of a Thrift Savings Plan. In both the metal was almost incidental; the sale was made by making somebody afraid of what they already owned.
The target is a retirement account, on purpose. More than $140 million of the $185 million in the Metals.com complaint came from retirement savings. Those balances are large, they move slowly, and the owner is often years from asking what a liquidation would fetch. That gap between purchase and price discovery is the room the markup lives in. For live warning signs rather than case history, read our page on gold IRA scams and red flags.
We apply these tests in our ranking methodology, and the resulting shortlist is on the best gold IRA companies page. Several firms above were once ranked highly by affiliate sites that never opened a docket. Rankings resting on commission rates are not due diligence, including ours if we ever stop showing our sources.
The CFTC and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation sued Regal Assets LLC, owner Tyler G. Gallagher and former president Leah Donoso on September 27, 2023 in the Central District of California, case number 2:23-cv-08078. The complaint alleged that between roughly November 2019 and October 2022 the firm took customer money earmarked for precious metals and never bought the metals, misappropriating more than $21 million from more than 120 customers and using forged documents to hide it. On October 25, 2024 the CFTC announced that Judge Fernando M. Olguin had entered default judgments totalling more than $49 million, being about $21.9 million in restitution and about $27.3 million in civil monetary penalties. Default means the defendants did not defend the case, so the allegations were never tested at trial. The regalassets.com domain no longer resolves.
If the metal was actually purchased and delivered, yes, because the dealer never held it. Internal Revenue Code section 408 requires an IRA to be administered by a bank or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee, and requires IRA bullion to sit in the physical possession of that trustee. Your coins are therefore held at a depository under a custodian, both of which are separate businesses from the firm that sold you the coins. A dealer shutting down does not distribute your account, does not trigger a taxable event and does not move your bars. What you lose is the counterparty who would have quoted you a buyback price. The exception is the case where the metal was never bought at all, which is exactly what the Regal Assets complaint alleged, so the number to verify is the depository confirmation rather than the dealer invoice.
Partially, slowly, and in most files the process is still running. In the Metals.com receivership the court-appointed receiver mailed a first interim distribution of $8 million to approved claimants on or about May 1, 2025, against more than $185 million the CFTC complaint says was solicited, and the receiver's own site warns there may not be sufficient funds recovered to repay the victims. Safeguard Metals was ordered on September 30, 2025 to pay $25.6 million in restitution against roughly $68 million solicited. Red Rock Secured and its executives consented to a judgment of more than $76.4 million in April 2024. An order to pay is a legal obligation, not a deposit, and collection depends on what assets a receiver or regulator can actually find.
Oxford Gold Group, Inc. has been in Chapter 7 since 2024. A group of its own customers filed an involuntary petition against the company on August 28, 2024 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, case number 2:24-bk-16947. The court entered an order for relief on October 15, 2024, Carolyn A. Dye was appointed as trustee, and the general claims bar date was March 12, 2026. Separate civil suits were filed by customers in August 2024 in the Eastern and Central Districts of California. No federal regulator has published an enforcement finding against the company, so these are creditor and plaintiff allegations plus a bankruptcy case, not a fraud judgment. Note also that the oxfordgoldgroup.com domain now serves unrelated gambling-affiliate content and should not be treated as the company.
Search four places before you wire anything. First, cftc.gov press releases and its enforcement action pages, which is where every case on this list except the Oxford Gold Group bankruptcy first appeared. Second, sec.gov litigation releases, which cover the cases where the pitch involved selling securities to fund the purchase. Third, your state securities regulator, because thirty state agencies were co-plaintiffs in both the Metals.com and Safeguard Metals actions. Fourth, federal court dockets themselves, since a bankruptcy filing or a customer class action can appear long before any regulator acts. Search the principals' names as well as the brand, and search former names: Jeffrey Santulan became Jeffrey Ikahn, Lucas Thomas Erb also goes by Lucas Asher, and the SEC states that Red Rock Secured now operates as American Coin Co.
Related reading: the red flags to spot before you buy, how depository storage actually works, our gold IRA fee breakdown, and the providers we currently rank.
Every company on this page is included only because a government filing, a court docket or the company's own published notice documents its status. Where a case ended in a consent order or a settlement, the defendants did not admit the allegations, and we say so in the entry. Where a judgment was entered by default, the allegations were not tested at trial. Indictments are accusations. Court records checked August 2026.
Domain checks on regalassets.com and oxfordgoldgroup.com were performed by our team in August 2026 and reflect what those addresses served on that date. Nothing on this page is a claim about any company not named on it, and no entry here should be read as an allegation against any current provider we review.
Our free kit includes the published fee and custody comparison behind our rankings, plus the short list of documents to demand from a dealer before you authorise a single wire.