Gold IRA Dealers Sued by the CFTC, SEC and States: 7 Cases Read

The census: seven dealers, three regulators and the states

Every row below comes from the regulator's own release, the court order or the complaint. “Alleged” means the plaintiff's claim at filing; “ordered” means a court order or consent order. We name companies and agencies only; the people charged in these cases are in the documents linked in the data file. This is a census of actions, not a ranking of dealers: a company missing from this table has not been shown by this page to be better or worse than one in it.

Notes on the table. The Metals.com line combines two layers: the 2019 state orders (Texas, Alabama and Colorado acted before the federal case) and the 2020 federal action. Alabama's cease and desist order CD-2019-0025 is dated August 8, 2019 and quotes the company's own statement that the spread on IRA precious-metals transactions “varies between two percent and thirty-three percent”. The SEC's Red Rock release says the company “now operates under the name American Coin Co.” The CFTC counts at least 950 Red Rock customers; the SEC complaint counts at least 700 investors and $50 million, so the two agencies' figures differ by what each charged.

What the orders say about fees: disclosed versus charged

The recurring allegation is not that customers bought metal, but that the price included a markup far above what they were told. The bases differ (cost to the dealer, “operating margin”, spread over the market price), so the rows are not directly comparable.

A worked example, using only figures from the Red Rock and Safeguard orders (our arithmetic). A markup of 91.89% means a coin that cost the dealer $100 was sold for $191.89. Put $100,000 of retirement savings into coins at that markup and the coins are worth about $52,113 at the dealer's cost; at 129.97% about $43,484; at Safeguard's 71% average about $58,480. The Red Rock order's own totals point the same way: customers paid $69,524,878.99 for coins that Red Rock bought for $30,540,565.09, a profit of $38,984,313.90, or 127.65% of its supplier cost (our arithmetic). These are values at the dealer's cost, not what a buyer would receive on resale.

Safeguard's measure of loss is simpler. The court found that Safeguard solicited $66,948,960 and bought $41,379,657 of metal that went to customers; the $25,569,303 difference is the restitution, 38.2% of the funds solicited (our arithmetic).

The Metals.com case: why the largest action is still open

Filed on September 22, 2020 with 30 state regulators, this is the largest joint filing between the CFTC and the states in the agency's history, per its own release. It never reached a federal judgment, and the docket explains why the page above has an empty “ordered” cell.

• July 21, 2025: the court denied summary judgment to both sides and, applying canons of statutory reading, held at that stage that the CFTC lacked jurisdiction over silver and gold trades.
• August 3, 2026: after renewed briefing, the court denied the CFTC's and the individual defendants' amended motions and wrote that “the Fifth Circuit has held that the CFTC can regulate gold and silver trades, and that decision is binding.” It set trial for March 1, 2027.
• October 7, 2026: it stayed the case “pending the resolution of the parallel criminal trial” and vacated the trial setting.
• October 27, 2026: it certified an interlocutory appeal to the Fifth Circuit on whether the Commodity Exchange Act grants the CFTC jurisdiction over retail cash sales of gold and silver coins, and stayed the case; the stay “does not affect the operation of the receivership.”

The court's orders refer to a criminal case but do not describe it, and we did not locate a Justice Department release; we state nothing about it beyond the court's words. The status of any distribution to customers from the receivership is not in the orders we saved.

What the IRS rules say a precious-metals IRA may hold

The statute is 26 U.S.C. 408, and the IRS summarizes it on its page “Investments in Collectibles in Individually Directed Qualified Plan Accounts” (page last reviewed July 3, 2026), which says the same restrictions apply to IRAs.

Three points from the text. The word “depository” does not appear in the text of section 408 that we saved; the physical-possession condition is stated as trustee possession, so any question about keeping IRA bullion at home turns on §408(m)(3)(B). In the Tax Court decision our self-directed IRA rules guide describes (157 T.C. No. 10), an IRA owner who kept an IRA-owned LLC's $374,000 of gold coins at home was taxed on their cost. And the IRS page adds that, when a collectible is acquired, the resulting distribution is generally taxed as ordinary income and the 10% additional tax may apply if the participant is under age 59½.

Coins that the dealers in these cases sold as “semi-numismatic” or “premium” are the category where the legal line and the pricing line meet. Whether a particular coin is one of the §408(m)(3)(A) coins is a question for the coin's statutory description, not for its marketing name; the orders above are about price and disclosure, not about eligibility, and none of them is a finding on any coin's IRA eligibility.

What changed in 2025 and 2026

• Safeguard Metals moved from liability (consent order of October 25, 2023, with the amounts reserved) to money: the court's statement of decision of September 30, 2025 set restitution and the penalty. The SEC's parallel remedies decision is dated May 2, 2025, and each action offsets the other.
• Metals.com produced the rulings summarized above, including the 2025 reading that questioned the CFTC's reach over bullion and the 2026 reading that Fifth Circuit precedent binds the court to the opposite view, now headed for appeal.
• Lear Capital closed through its bankruptcy plan (regulator announcements of August 1 to 4, 2023).
• No new complaint of this type appears in the releases we read after September 27, 2023. We did not search every state securities regulator's site, so a state-only order could exist that this census misses.

What we left out: CFTC cases about precious-metals “lease” programs rather than retirement-account coin sales, such as the Argent Asset Group and First State Depository order (restitution of $112,700,000 and a $33 million penalty, July 3, 2023) and the National Coin Broker order (combined restitution of $6,923,919, September 15, 2025). Their releases do not describe IRA sales. Cases against individuals acting alone are also outside the table.

What a reader can do with this

• Ask for the all-in price in writing before any transfer, in dollars per coin or per ounce, and compare it with the day's spot price for the same metal and weight. The orders above turn on the gap between what was said on the phone and what was invoiced.
• Ask who the trustee is and who has physical possession of the metal, because §408(m)(3)(B) conditions bullion on a trustee's possession. See our guide to self-directed IRA custodians for how custodian fee schedules are laid out, and our review of one large custodian for an example of a published fee schedule.
• Check registration the way the CFTC suggests: it “strongly urges the public to verify a company's registration with the CFTC before committing funds” (NFA BASIC), and your state securities regulator can say whether it has an order on file.
• Know the tax step first. A rollover into an IRA has its own rules, summarized in our 401(k) rollover guide; a purchase that falls outside §408(m)(3) is a taxable distribution.
• Keep every recorded or written statement the dealer made about markups, fees and “free” items. The consent orders are built from exactly those.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on November 10, 2026: CFTC press releases 8254-20, 8694-23, 8704-23, 8784-23, 8791-23, 8812-23, 8898-24, 9001-24, 8741-23 and 9124-25; CFTC complaints and consent orders in C.D. Cal. 2:22-cv-00691 (Docs. 201 and 239), 2:23-cv-03680 (Docs. 1 and 129), 2:23-cv-08078 (Doc. 1), E.D.N.Y. 1:23-cv-03121 (Doc. 1) and N.D. Tex. 3:23-cv-02077 (Doc. 2); SEC Litigation Release 25996 (May 7, 2024); memorandum opinions in N.D. Tex. 3:20-cv-02910 (Docs. 911, 1038, 1057 and 1078, via govinfo); Alabama Securities Commission order CD-2019-0025; Texas State Securities Board release of July 1, 2019; New York Attorney General release of January 3, 2022; South Carolina Attorney General and Washington Department of Financial Institutions releases on the Lear Capital plan (August 2023); 26 U.S.C. 408 (Cornell Legal Information Institute); IRS, “Investments in Collectibles in Individually Directed Qualified Plan Accounts” (reviewed July 3, 2026).