Another gold scam has been exposed this month, but only after customers gave more than $2.6 million to precious metals dealer Robert Escobio who lost $600,000 of the invested funds. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a civil enforcement claim against Escobio and his company Southern Trust Metals, Inc.

Escobio convinced investors to send him a down payment towards a large purchase of gold, promising to lend them the rest. This sounds exactly like the classic leveraged gold scam, in which the scammer convinces his victims to buy more gold than they can actually afford. He then loans them the remainder at unreasonably high interest rates, promising to deliver all the gold when the debt is paid.

Why would anyone fall for this? The swindler has probably persuaded his targets that gold is going to go up in value dramatically, which would allow them to easily pay off the debt and profit much more than if they had bought a smaller amount of gold. The so-called “customers” probably don’t even consider the possibility of gold taking a dip. If gold drops, a leveraged gold scheme will require the customer to cough up more cash to make a “margin call.” If they do not have the cash on hand, their gold could be sold at a loss to cover the debt.

That’s how a leveraged gold scam usually works, but in Escobio’s case, the leveraged loan was never made in the first place. Rather than stealing his victims’ money slowly, nickel-and-diming them with margin calls and investment fees, Escobio just made off with his ill-gotten gains.

This is just the latest example of an all-too-common scam and should serve as a reminder that you should always take physical delivery of your gold from a reputable dealer.

Smart investors looking to protect their wealth from the jaws of inflation and an uncertain economy need to be vigilant to avoid scams like this one. There is a free report available online that explains this and other common gold scams in more detail. Download it here.

There’s a marketing gimmick that is becoming more common in the gold dealer business – the “price guarantee.” It sounds like a great deal on its face, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Here’s what these dealers will offer:

You call to place an order for gold coins and lock in a price. Within a specified number of days, the spot price may change. If the price goes down, they will add more coins to your order to make up the difference. If the price of the gold coins goes up, they’ll let you buy more coins at the cheaper price.

This price guarantee is pitched as a way of protecting yourself from short-term fluctuations in the price of gold. Thus, doing business with these companies is supposed to be less risky and more transparent.

But here’s the catch – the price guarantee generally applies to only certain products offered by the gold dealer. You can bet that these are not going to be the common and recognizable gold coins most suitable for serious investors.

For example, look up the Canadian Maple Leaf, American Eagle, Vienna Philharmonic, Australian Kangaroo, and South African Krugerrand. Coins like these are minted in huge quantities by national governments, which also guarantee their purity. They enjoy wide international demand and generally lead the market with the lowest dealer markups. That means you’re paying as close to the spot price of gold as possible.

The spread between the price at which an honest dealer can buy and sell these bullion coins is so slim, there’s no way they could afford to guarantee price movements of more than a percent. That isn’t a very exciting offer, and it would require not offering the lowest possible price at the beginning.

And yet some companies offer guarantees on price movements as high as 8% or more. To risk price movements of that size, the dealer is likely to be hawking gold products that carry at least 20-40% premiums over the spot price.

And that’s exactly they’re doing – we’ve seen guaranteed bullion products with 29% markups! Price guarantees almost always involve “rare” or “collectible” coins sold at outrageous premiums. Pushy salesmen will claim that their “numismatic qualities” are supposed to make them more valuable than the actual gold content – but our readers know that’s bunk.

After all, you’re not investing in gold and silver as a hobby. You want gold as a form of savings that you can use in the future. And when you are ready to sell your gold, you want to be able to trade it in easily and quickly, without a lot of negotiations.

If you paid 29% over gold’s spot price for a coin, and the price of gold has only gone up 10%, you’re going to need to convince someone to pay you 19% over the current spot price of the metal to break even. This is far more than the price of more common bullion products, so why would anyone take that deal? What if the buyer doesn’t find the collectible nature of your coin appealing? You could end up selling at a loss and losing a lot more money than a “price guarantee” would ever have saved you.

That’s the rub: companies offering price guarantees are overcharging you to make up for it.

Ultimately, anyone who is concerned about the main argument for price guarantees – protection against short-term fluctuations in the price of gold – is misunderstanding the fundamental reason for holding gold in the first place.

Gold should be a long-term nest egg – savings that you only need to touch in emergencies, retirement, or which you pass down to your children. You shouldn’t be jumping in and out of gold investment on a short-term basis.

To ensure that you don’t buy in on a short-term market top, use the professional strategy of “dollar-cost averaging” – making smaller purchases over time.

There was big news this week, when a Senate committee heard testimony about widespread precious metals fraud since 2001. The activity has picked up significantly since the financial crisis, with conmen targeting people who want to protect their savings from a crumbling US dollar.

According to the news, US regulators have done virtually nothing to effectively stop the criminal activity. Here are some of the highlights being reported:

• 10,000 American (most elderly) victims since 2001

• $300 million in total losses

• $54 million lost in Florida alone

• 21 prosecuted cases by CFTC – Nobody jailed!

Karl Spicer, a convicted Florida scammer, spoke about his experiences and what little effect government regulators had on the crooks he had worked with:

“With all due respect to the civil authorities, the people that I have encountered … don’t really respect the civil authority bans… The gentleman I was with had a CFTC ban, he cooperated; he had a ban and he still went about doing business the very next day.”

According to Spicer, these guys just continue doing business under another name!

So what do these scams look like? They often begin with a telemarketing call, which makes it easier for a fast-talking salesman to confuse his victims. Unfortunately, the victims are usually retirees who are already interested in protecting their remaining savings from inflation. They might even be aware that gold is a great investment, making them even more eager to hear what the crook has to say.

These folks quickly fall for the pitch that the salesman’s company has ways of investing in gold and silver that will deliver extraordinary returns. News reports mention victims being talked into borrowing money at very high interest rates in order to buy the gold or silver being offered. This sounds like the classic leveraged account scheme, which we warned you about last year.

These are some of the worst scams around, because you don’t just lose your upfront investment – you might actually wind up in debt to the people who stole your money! In the end, the victims don’t just have to deal with usurious interest rates. They’re also hit with hidden fees, huge commissions, and unexpected storage costs. And if their so-called investment actually exists, it probably doesn’t perform.

Stay away from buying into any sort of “paper gold” investment or gold derivative. You want to purchase the actual physical gold and silver bullion as close to the spot price as possible.

But watch out – another common scam mentioned by the CFTC is simply selling gold and silver coins that are vastly overpriced compared to their actual metal content. Sometimes the coins are just clad in precious metals and are practically worthless! Telemarketers might pitch these to you on the phone, but also look out for those late-night infomercials. They’re hoping to trick you while you’re half asleep.

It’s nice to see US lawmakers waking up to this epidemic of precious metals fraud, but it doesn’t look like the government is capable of preventing it.

Fortunately, it’s not difficult to educate yourself. You don’t need a government watchdog to avoid these gold scams. You just need a little common sense.

Take a moment and Learn How You Can Avoid Gold Scammers Here.

Last week, if you were looking for gold coin news, you were likely to come across two stories about the release of brand new collector’s coins being issued by national mints.

The Royal Canadian Mint has released silver and gold coins commemorating the canonization of Pope John Paul II. The US Mint has released a new gold coin as part of their National Baseball Hall of Fame program, which is being heavily marketed as the “first curved coins ever produced.”

Unfortunately, it seems that even well-respected bullion producers play the gold scams game nowadays. What’s worse, it appears to work – the US Mint sold out of the first 50,000 of these new curved coins in just days!

To an experienced and intelligent gold investor, both of these coins are rip-offs. If you’re a devout Catholic or a hardcore baseball fan who can afford them, maybe these will be nice collector’s items for you. But don’t be fooled into thinking you’re simultaneously making a good investment.

A quick look at the specifications reveals how overpriced these coins are. Here’s a synopsis:

Pope John Paul II Fine Gold Coin

• Weight: 7.8 grams – 1/4 troy ounce
• Price: About $590 US
• Actual value of gold content: About $322 US
• Total Markup: Over 83%!

National Baseball Hall of Fame Proof $5 Gold Coin

• Weight: 8.359 grams – a bit more than 1/4 troy ounce
• Price: $424.75 US
• Actual value of gold content: About $346 US
• Total Markup: Over 22%!

We’re not sure what’s so appealing about a bent coin. It’s a nice marketing gimmick, but the real curveball is the steep price tag. The price of the Canadian coin is worse, which they justify by touting the limited nature of this mintage – only 1,500 coins were produced. Of course, who’s to say they won’t run off more and more if these sell out?

How much of a role will the collectible factor play in a coin’s value in ten years? Who knows! But we will always know what an ounce of pure gold is worth, no matter what is stamped on its face.

Fundamentally, gold is cheap right now – it’s a great time to buy. But that doesn’t mean you should break the bank just because a new coin design catches your eye.

There was big news last week in the precious metals industry. Anthony Columbo and his companies (Premier Precious Metals Inc., Rushmore Consulting Group Inc., and PPM Credit Inc.) were banned by the FTC from selling precious metals “investment opportunities.”

The FTC charged Columbo with swindling millions of dollars from investors through hard-sell telemarketing schemes.

The saddest part is that a large number of his victims were senior citizens, who were probably looking for a way to protect their hard-earned savings from inflation and a crumbling US economy. We expect there’s going to be a lot more stories like this in the coming years as gold and silver start to make headline gains once again.

Read the Full FTC Press Release Here

If you don’t want to become a victim of the next would-be Columbo, now’s a great time to bone up on your gold-buying smarts. Peter Schiff has just re-released his free special report, “Classic Gold Scams and How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off”. It is completely updated with the latest information on the most common gold and silver scams you should avoid, and tips to find out if a dealer is honest. Read more about it here.

Download the Updated “Classic Gold Scams”

The majority of precious metals scams prey on the uninformed, which is one of the reasons we started this blog. Just a little knowledge about best buying practices when shopping for gold and silver can prevent all sorts of nightmares. However, there are a handful of dealers that have started to find ways of tricking more diligent gold buyers out of their cash.

No matter what you’re shopping for nowadays, the first place a smart buyer turns is usually the internet. A quick Google search can reveal the biggest retailers in any market, as well as a huge variety of review sites with feedback from previous customers. A growing number of gold dealer review sites have emerged in the past year and not all of them are operated by helpful, disinterested third parties. In fact, a little digging reveals many that are run by metals dealers trying to steer more traffic to their own business.

For the casual internet surfer, determining whether a review site is legitimate might be difficult. Here are a few clues that are not definitive, but might help hone your fraud detector:

1. Look carefully at how many reviews there actually are on the site. Often these sites will feature large “5 star” ratings graphics designed to grab your attention. Looking a little more closely should tell you how many actual reviews were averaged together to get a company’s rating. If there were only a handful of reviews, you can bet there have not been enough reviews to give you a reliable average of a company’s performance.

2. Examine the individual reviews closely. On one site we found that there were many different reviews for various companies, but only a handful of names for the reviewers. One user had written reviews for every single company on the site, meaning he had either purchased a staggering amount of gold and silver in the past year, or he was simply writing generic reviews to create content. Our suspicions were that all the reviewers were probably employees of a metals dealer.

3. Check how many companies are reviewed. We found review sites that had less than 10 different metals dealers on their list, including some we had never heard of and none of the big names. It was immediately obvious that these sites were not created for customers by customers, but rather for potential patsies by unscrupulous metals dealers.

4. Note whether or not the review site is trying to “steer” you to a specific company. A non-partial review site will let the reviews do the talking, whereas a scam site might endorse specific companies based on the “results” of the reviews. This is editorializing, because review sites are supposed to be organic, constantly growing resources. While “results” might say one thing today, a company’s average could fluctuate by next week. A site that picks a single company from their whole list as the “recommended gold dealer” should be highly suspect.

For investors who follow the fundamentals, the recent plunge in the gold price is an excellent buying opportunity. And indeed, physical metals purchases have continued to be strong around the world. Of course, when opportunities like this arise, so do the people aiming to take advantage of inexperienced buyers.

If you believe that the price of gold has to rise again, you might be susceptible to the leveraged gold account swindle. This particularly aggressive sales tactic thrives off the belief that the price of gold will continue to go up. While there are very good reasons for making this argument, it doesn’t change the fact that gold can be volatile and so leveraged accounts are rarely a good idea.

Here’s how a leveraged account works:

A buyer will call a dealer to make a purchase of gold coins, say $10K worth. The salesperson learns that the buyer believes the price of gold will go up or else convinces the buyer that this is the case. The buyer is then offered a loan of $40K in order to purchase a total of $50K at the current low price. After all, why risk buying gold at higher prices in the future if the dealer can “help” you to buy it cheaply right now?

A payment plan is set-up, and as the buyer pays more into the leveraged account, more physical gold is supposedly added to the buyer’s “hoard” that is held in a secure location. The buyer does not receive the gold until the full loan and all associated fees and interest have been paid.

If the price of gold continues to rise, the buyer might very well be able to afford the fees and interest of the loan while also making a profit. However, if gold drops below the price to which the leveraged account is pinned, then the buyer has to make a “margin call.” Basically, the buyer has to hand over more money to make up for the now over-valued gold that is being held in the buyer’s name.

Not only will the buyer get dinged with a margin call if the gold price drops below the price at which the account began, but the fees and interest can border on criminal. First of all, there will likely be a commission paid on the full sale of $50K. If it’s “just 2%,” that actually equates to 10% of the initial $10K down payment!

And then there’s the interest on the outstanding loan. If the buyer is paying 8% on $40K, that totals $3,200 in the first year. So in the very first year of opening a leveraged account, this particular buyer has already lost 42% of the initial $10K and doesn’t even physically possess any gold!

Add onto this transaction fees, storage fees, delivery fees, leasing fees, administration fees… well, you get the point. It is very hard to get ahead with a leveraged gold account.

There’s one last problem with a leveraged account and that’s the fact that you aren’t actually gaining possession of any gold. It could take years to pay off the loan, and during that time you won’t get a single glimpse of “your gold,” let alone hold it in your hands. This defeats perhaps the most important reason for owning physical precious metals in the first place: having real money on hand in case of financial crises.

To be fair, buying physical gold through a leveraged account is not illegal, however, pushy salespeople will often play down the grave risks and play up the potential rewards of this investment strategy.

For the rest of us, owning gold is about reducing risk. The best way to do that is to buy what we can afford a little at a time and store it safely away for the future.

Don’t forget to join our growing community on Facebook and share your own experiences of buying gold and silver.

As more and more ordinary citizens become concerned about fiat money’s instability (not to mention government overreach with the Snowden and NSA scandals), metals dealers are increasingly able to prey upon these fears to unload suboptimal gold products at steep prices. In particular, you may have heard rumors about government gold confiscation and why you should purchase gold collector coins to dodge such a program. So this week, we’re considering the history of gold confiscation and what it means for your metals investment strategy.

Gold confiscation fear-mongers typically cite the historically important confiscation undertaken in the United States by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. With Executive Order 6102, FDR forbid the hoarding of gold based on the logic that withholding that money from the economy prevented a recovery from the Great Depression. FDR ordered that holders of gold bars and bullion sell them to the government at about $20 per ounce, and then dramatically raised the price for gold to $35 per ounce shortly afterwards. Although there was no forcible confiscation, Americans largely voluntarily complied with the act out of a mix of fear and patriotism.

The act included an exception for “gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins,” which is the precise clause gold dealers harp on when pushing their over-priced “collectibles.” However, it was unclear which coins in particular (and how many of them) would meet this criteria. Indeed, the ambiguity may have encouraged people to err on the side of caution, turning in more rather than less gold for fear of prosecution. In effect, the federal government greatly inflated the value of its own assets through the confiscation maneuver, making possible a huge wave of expenditures on war and Great Depression social programs.

That motivation doesn’t exist today. Because US dollars are no longer backed by gold, the government had to find another way to artificially seize our wealth. Enter the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, which doesn’t require physical confiscation of any sort of asset, let alone gold. A heightened unease about the Fed’s endless QE, combined with the recent crisis in Cyprus, where the government forcibly extracted value from individuals’ bank accounts, has made people nervous about confiscation once again. But notice that the Cypriot confiscation was achieved entirely on paper – no physical moving of money or gold required.

That doesn’t make the Cypriot savings haircut right or fair, of course. However, it reminds us that if your government wants to take money, it will do so in whatever way is easiest and most beneficial to itself. In FDR’s era, a physical gold confiscation happened to pack the most punch. But now that paper money isn’t backed by gold, the Fed is happy to inflate away your savings instead, sparing itself the hassle of a confiscatory buyback. So in today’s monetary landscape, purchasing physical gold has actually become a safer choice, as compared to holding all of your savings in bank-deposited fiat dollars.

Even setting all of that aside, shady gold dealers’ claim that you should buy collector’s coins as protection against confiscation still doesn’t hold up. First of all, there’s no reason to assume that the collector’s coins exception included in FDR’s confiscation would be included once again. No legal rules exist as to which gold materials are confiscateable. Moreover, a coin’s age or selling price is not necessarily a reliable indicator of its actual rareness or collectibility anyways.

Note that unscrupulous dealers love to jack up the prices of fairly common pre-1930 coins like $20 double eagles, $10 eagles, or $5 half eagles. Even when the coins are far from mint condition, these dealers may scare you into buying them for their alleged “unconfiscateability.” The reality of the matter is that many of these coins didn’t even survive FDR’s executive order, and were brought back to the US only recently after having been sold post-confiscation to Europe! There are many of them on the market, and they’re nothing special.

It’s unlikely that gold confiscation will occur again in the United States – the costs to the government now would outweigh the benefits. However, it’s becoming clear that the government will likely continue to “quantitatively ease” the economy while inflating away the value of your savings. Don’t misguidedly attempt to protect yourself against the speculative danger of confiscation with numismatics of doubtful quality. Instead, focus on protecting yourself against the known danger of loose monetary policy with the proven value of standardized gold bullion and bars from reputable dealers.

Even if you know all the ins-and-outs of buying precious metals and are buying from a trusted dealer, there might come a time when you feel the need to test a gold or silver product for purity.

What follows is a brief synopsis of the most reliable methods for testing gold and silver. We encourage you to do your own research and watch some YouTube videos to become more familiar with each technique.

1. Know how the product should look. This might seem like a no-brainer, but simply researching the exact identifying marks of a coin or bar can help you to spot fakes. We posted a YouTube playlist last year that shows how to identify authentic Morgan Silver Dollars, one of the most commonly counterfeited products. Also, many gold products and larger silver products come with certificates of authenticity when they are delivered directly from the point of origin. Talk to your trusted metals dealer about which products come with certificates so you don’t have to worry about verifying authenticity or purity in the first place.

2. Know your karat markings. Authentic gold and silver jewelry will usually be stamped with karat markings denoting the purity – read more on Wikipedia and familiarize yourself with the European vs. US markings. This information is essential for the following tests.

3. Test the density and weight. Silver and gold have very specific masses and simply weighing products and conducting a water displacement test can tell you if a product matches up with its supposed metal content. You will need a scale that measures to 1/100th of a gram and a water container that measures volume in millimeters. If you’re testing for pure gold, you will need to know that it’s density is 19.32 grams/milliliter. Pure silver is 10.49 g/mL. Then follow the directions on this page. This test will tell you if the gold or silver is not pure, but does not guarantee that it is 24-karat. For instance, if a gold product has been corrupted with tungsten, the density will be nearly identical.

4. Conduct an acid test. As a noble metal, gold will not corrode or discolor when in the presence of certain acids, while many base metals will. Acid test kits are cheap to purchase online and sometimes even come in kits that include a scale and vial for testing the density as well. Keep in mind that an acid test can slightly mar a legitimate product if it isn’t 24-karat gold. Here’s a great video from the Gemological Institute of America on how acid tests work.

5. Use an x-ray or sonogram. These methods are not viable for most our readers because the machines are expensive, but we included them for the sake of thoroughness. Using x-ray and sonogram technology allows you to look inside a bar of gold or silver and spot air pockets or other metals. This is often how large banks or mints confirm the purity of their larger bullion bars.

6. Have it professionally assayed. Local jewelry shops are often happy to conduct one or more of the various tests we’ve laid out here for free simply to gain your business.

There are a few other very simple and rather old-fashioned tests that you can do very quickly. They will tell you if a product is a definite fake but can’t guarantee purity if the product passes the test, so we don’t recommend relying on these methods.

First, run a powerful magnet over the product to see if there are any base metals in it. Gold and silver are not magnetic, so if the magnet pulls the metal you’ve got problems. This is not foolproof, since many counterfeiters are smart enough to use non-magnetic metals when faking gold or silver.

Second, there is the “sound test” or “tuning fork test.” This involves balancing a gold or silver coin on one finger while lightly tapping it with another coin of the same metal. Pure gold and silver will have a high-pitched tone that resonates for a few moments, much like a musician’s tuning fork. Plated products or fake products will produce a dull sound that disappears immediately.

Finally, there is the classic bite test, which you’ve probably seen in an old Western movie when a gold miner bites down on a coin to see if it dents. Gold is a soft metal and your teeth will leave a physical impression on it. However, we don’t recommend this test as you risk hurting your teeth and leaving unattractive marks on pure products. Plus, if it’s a bar, there could be a slug of base metal in the center that your teeth can’t reach.

In the end, the most important thing to remember is to shop with a well-known and trusted metals dealer. Doing so will decrease the chances of getting a fake product in the first place. Also, if all these science experiments just make your head spin, then don’t buy products from sources that get their inventory primarily from other customers! There are plenty of dealers out there who can get gold shipments directly from the mint or refinery where the product was created and/or professionally tested for purity.

Don’t forget to join our thriving community on Facebook and share your experiences of testing gold and silver.

This week, we’re reporting on one of the wackier gold scams that’s arisen amidst the recent gold buying frenzy: scammers in British Columbia have been trying to sell gold that was (allegedly) smuggled into the United States from Iraq, where it was (allegedly) first owned by Osama Bin Laden. These scammers operate in parking lots, using high-pressure sales tactics. They’ve succeeded in selling hundreds of dollars of fake gold to one customer, and outright stole gold off another man by switching his genuine gold chain with a fake one.

There’s so much wrong with this scenario. Right off the bat, you should be highly suspicious of any gold dealer who’s doing business in a parking lot or similarly non-professional environment. Approaching random people and asking them to buy gold is a sales strategy that reeks of desperation. It is not a strategy that any dealer who buys and sells in bulk would ever adopt. Rather, unprofessional settings are a huge red flag that the dealer is merely looking for a quick buck – and then a quick escape.

Furthermore, it’s unwise for gold investors to choose numismatics (e.g. collector’s coins), especially when they are only casual purchasers with little knowledge of the markets for such items. In this case, the scammers were peddling jewelry, which is similarly problematic. Only part of a piece of jewelry’s worth comes from the metals contained in it. Another part of its value is derived from the utility that the jewelry has as a wearable object.

However, remember that your goal as an investor is simple: to use precious metals for storing and protecting your wealth. Don’t let yourself be distracted by fancy “historical” coins, chains, and rings – when it comes to wealth protection, simple and highly liquid forms of gold, like American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs, and bars sold by weight, are best. You can sell these easily if you need to, without having to convince any purchaser of their special properties.

Because they are marked clearly and reliably by weight, you can also more easily tell what price is reasonable to pay for standard coins and bars. As we discussed last time here on the Gold Scams blog, 7% or less has been a reasonable markup to pay over spot for gold, but for silver that figure has recently increased to more like 20%. If you are buying mystery coins and jewelry from a shady dealer in a parking lot, it’s going to be difficult to tell offhand how much gold those items really contain and therefore how much would be reasonable to pay for them. Assuming that the items being offered contain any real gold at all, the chance of finding a fair markup in a parking lot is highly unlikely.

Last but certainly not least, don’t allow a dealer to push your emotional buttons with an attention-grabbing claim, like that the gold was previously owned by someone famous. The Osama Bin Laden claim was apparently the dealer’s last-ditch attempt to make prospective buyers feel like a really special, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was at hand, and that they should jump on it immediately. But, unless you’re an expert on numismatics or historical jewelry, it just doesn’t matter that your gold be unique in its form or in its alleged history.

Stay focused on your goal: buying well-known, liquid forms of gold at as low of a markup as possible, for the purpose of storing and protecting wealth. Don’t let yourself be led astray by claims about special gold, with an interesting history or medium. The Bin Laden gold scammers may have had a particularly far-fetched story, but unwitting buyers are taken in by claims about special gold every day.

Thanks for reading and sharing. Join us again next week for another installment of our series on scams during the current precious metals buying frenzy.