Dedicated viewers of Fox News are likely familiar with Lear Capital, a Los Angeles company that sells gold and silver coins. In recent years, the company's ads have been a constant presence on Fox airwaves, warning viewers to protect their retirement savings from a looming "pension crisis" and "dollar collapse."
While the legitimacy of the gold retirement investment industry is the subject of numerous lawsuits - including allegations of fraud by federal and state regulators against Lear and other companies - its advertising has become a mainstay of right-wing media. The industry spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets, according to a Washington Post analysis of ad data and financial records, as well as interviews with industry insiders.
Joe Rotunda, enforcement director at the Texas State Securities Board, said the industry is extraordinarily difficult to police because selling gold, even as a retirement investment, is "extremely thinly regulated." In a statement, Lear Capital spokesperson Tracy Williams defended the company's operations, saying most of Lear's customers would have made a profit if they had sold at a recent market high. Williams said that White, the New York retiree, had acknowledged the company's fee in a recorded call.
For years, gold IRA industry advertising has echoed accusations against Democratic politicians commonly found in news segments on conservative outlets. The ads tout the coins as a safe haven from economic uncertainty and social upheaval. The ads explain none of that. Instead, they focus on news events, such as a spate of recent bank failures and "everything that's happening in the economy right now ... with all the talk of inflation," Rotunda said.
Since October 2020, email newsletters distributed by Newsmax have included more than 1,100 ads for gold IRA companies - nearly a quarter of all Newsmax email ads reviewed by The Post. At $1,000 to $5,000 each, according to Augusta financial records from 2016 reviewed by The Post, the ads likely generate more than $1 million a year in revenue.
Hartford spokesman Steven Goldberg said it runs ads "where we believe it will create the most value." Among the company's chosen venues: a "prophetic" evangelical Christian email newsletter, two right-wing TV channels, and more than a dozen conservative radio shows and podcasts, including Giuliani's and Cruz's.
"I did a little bit of research, but evidently not enough," DeSanto said. "When I found the invoice, it was a big shock." The gold IRA industry's ties to right-wing media date to the Great Recession, when the price of gold was rising rapidly and Fox commentator Glenn Beck was one of the most popular hosts on TV. Beck recorded ads for Goldline, a gold dealer that also offered IRAs, and interviewed its CEO on his show.
Beck faded from prominence after departing Fox News in 2011 to start his own channel. He still endorses Goldline on the company's website. Neither Beck nor Goldline executives responded to requests for comment. A former Merit salesman founded Augusta Precious Metals, which has been accused of defrauding its customers by Whitaker, its former CFO. Whitaker filed a whistleblower complaint to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has not taken public action. Augusta has denied the allegations, and CEO Isaac Nuriani said in a statement that Whitaker "never had any visibility into Augusta's business operations.
After Metals.com closed, some salesmen went to work at Safeguard Metals, according to one of the salesmen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In February 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission, CFTC and 27 states sued that company, too. Safeguard recently settled the SEC's case without admitting liability; the CFTC's suit is still pending. Safeguard's lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.