How to Check If a Gold IRA Company Is Legit: A Free Lookup Walkthrough

You can run a solid background check on a gold IRA company in an evening, from your kitchen table, using public records. It takes eight steps. Together they tell you who you're dealing with, what's on the public record, and which answers to get in writing before any money moves.

Before you start: get the exact names

Ask the salesperson for four things, by email:

• The company's full legal name, any "doing business as" names, and the state where it's registered
• The names of its owners or principals
• The IRA custodian it would use for your account
• The depository where your metal would be stored, and which location

You need the legal name because the brand on the website is often not the name on a lawsuit or a regulator's order. Companies change names, too. Write down every name you find and search each one.

A good company answers all four the same day. If one won't tell you who owns it or which custodian it uses, you can stop here.

Step 1: Federal enforcement records

Start with the agencies that bring the cases.

CFTC

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has brought many of the big precious metals fraud cases, often alongside state regulators. Two places to look:

• The enforcement actions list, which you can filter by year.
• The search box at the top of CFTC.gov. Type the company name, then each owner's name. Press releases and court filings come up.

What about the CFTC's RED list?

You'll see the RED list recommended for checking gold dealers. It's the wrong tool for that job. The Registration Deficient list names foreign entities that appear to need CFTC registration and don't have it.

A U.S. gold dealer that sells coins for full payment and delivery won't be on it, good or bad. Not being on the RED list tells you nothing. The CFTC also says that being on the list doesn't mean it or a court has concluded a violation occurred. The list earns its place if someone pitches you gold through an overseas trading platform. Then check it, and be very careful.

SEC

The SEC has charged metals dealers too, in cases where salespeople acted as investment advisers. Search the company and owner names at SEC.gov, where litigation releases and press releases are posted.

FTC

Search FTC.gov the same way. The FTC has brought cases against metals sellers over deceptive sales and undelivered orders.

Step 2: State regulators

States act on their own, and a state order can exist with no federal case behind it. Check two offices in two states: yours, and the state where the company is based.

• State securities regulator. Find it through NASAA's directory. Search the regulator's site for orders, then call and ask whether there are complaints or actions on file for the company and its owners.
• State attorney general. The office takes consumer complaints and sometimes sues. Search the press releases and call. The National Association of Attorneys General keeps a directory of every state's office.

The CFTC's own advisory on buying physical metals recommends this same call to your attorney general or securities regulator.

One more state check: look up the company with the secretary of state where it's registered. The state's business entity search shows when the company was formed and whether its registration is current. A firm that says it has thirty years of history and was formed three years ago has some explaining to do.

Step 3: Court records

Enforcement records show what the government did. Court dockets also show what customers, former employees, and business partners have alleged.

• CourtListener is a search site run by the nonprofit Free Law Project. Its RECAP archive holds tens of millions of documents from the federal courts' PACER system. Search the company's legal name in quotation marks.
• PACER is the federal courts' own system. You need an account, and its pricing is 10 cents a page, capped at $3 per document, with fees waived if you run up $30 or less in a quarter. Written opinions are free.
• State courts each have their own search. Try the county where the company is headquartered.

Read what you find with care. Any business of size gets sued, and a complaint is one side's claim. What you're looking for is a pattern: several customers alleging the same thing about pricing or buybacks, or a government agency as the plaintiff. Then see how the cases ended.

Step 4: Anyone who calls themselves an "advisor"

Titles like "retirement specialist" and "senior account executive" are job titles a company hands out. "Investment adviser" and "broker" are registrations, and people who hold them are listed publicly.

• FINRA BrokerCheck covers brokers and brokerage firms. It shows employment history, licenses, and disclosures such as customer disputes and disciplinary events.
• The SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site covers advisers and their firms, including the Form ADV each firm files. BrokerCheck draws on the SEC's adviser database too, so one search covers a lot of ground.

Both are free.

Most precious metals salespeople won't appear in either one, and they aren't required to. Selling coins doesn't take a securities license. So an empty result doesn't mean anything is wrong. It means the person is a salesperson, and you weigh what they say the way you'd weigh any seller's advice.

It's different if they told you they were a registered adviser or a fiduciary and you can't find them. That's a false claim about something easy to check. Walk away.

Step 5: BBB complaints

The Better Business Bureau describes itself as a nonprofit that is not a government agency and holds no regulatory power, funded by dues from the businesses it accredits. Gold IRA ads quote its grades, and the grades of other private rating groups, a good deal.

We'd set the letter grade aside. Use these sites for what they do well, which is showing you complaints in the customer's own words.

• Go to the complaints, not the star reviews.
• Start with the most recent, and read at least a dozen.
• Look for the same story told more than once, good or bad: how buybacks were priced, whether customers got the product they asked for, whether fees matched the quote.
• Read the company's replies. A specific answer that fixes the problem is a good sign. A boilerplate paragraph is not.

"Best gold IRA company" rankings deserve the same care, since some come from sites paid by the companies they rank. This site earns referral fees too, as our disclosure explains.

Step 6: The custodian, checked separately

The custodian is the regulated party that holds your IRA. Confirm it without relying on the dealer's word.

1. Look for it on the IRS list of approved nonbank trustees and custodians. Banks aren't on that list because they don't need this approval. If the custodian is a bank or a state-chartered trust company, look it up with the banking regulator of the state that chartered it.
2. Find the custodian's phone number yourself, call, and ask whether it works with this dealer and what its own fees are.
3. Ask for the custodian's fee schedule and account agreement directly.

Know where the custodian's job ends. The SEC and NASAA say in their alert on self-directed IRAs that custodians generally don't evaluate the quality or legitimacy of an investment or its promoters. Being on the IRS list means the custodian may hold IRA assets. It says nothing about the dealer, or the price you're paying for metal. How a self-directed IRA works covers the custodian's limits. More on the split in custodian vs. dealer.

Step 7: The depository, checked separately

Ask the custodian, not the dealer, which depository it uses and where. Then:

• Call the depository on a number you found yourself and confirm it holds metal for that custodian's IRA accounts.
• Ask who insures the vault and who audits it, and how often.
• Ask whether your metal would be segregated or commingled, and what each costs.

After you buy, your custodian's statement should list your metal by product and quantity. Our storage guide has the full list of questions.

Step 8: What to get in writing

The lookups tell you about the past. These tell you about your deal. Ask for all of it by email before you sign or wire anything.

1. For each product: the price per coin or bar, and the spot price at the moment of the quote
2. The premium over spot, as a percentage
3. What the dealer would pay to buy that product back today
4. Every fee: setup, custodian, storage, wires, shipping, closing
5. The custodian's name and the depository's name and location
6. The storage type, and who insures the metal
7. The cancellation terms, and what it costs to back out
8. The premium with and without any "free" metal or bonus on offer

Then do the arithmetic yourself. Spot price times ounces, compared with the quote. Our fee guide shows what published fee schedules charge, and ten questions to ask any gold IRA company covers the conversation itself.

If you find something

Read the document, and note the date and how it ended. An old matter that was settled and followed by years of quiet reads differently from a pending fraud case. If you're unsure what a filing means, your state securities regulator can explain it, and that call is free.

Our guide to gold IRA warning signs shows what regulators have found in past cases, and how to report a problem of your own.

When you've run the steps, you can put the company we recommend through the same check. We'd expect you to.

Common questions

Is there a license I can look up for a gold dealer?

Dealers are checked through public records. The CFTC says retail metal dealers are not regulated at the federal level, so you look at enforcement records, state regulators, and court dockets. The custodian must be a bank or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee, and you can look that up.

Does an A+ BBB rating mean a gold IRA company is a good one?

It's one data point. The BBB isn't a government agency, and a grade doesn't tell you what the company charges for metal. Read the complaints, then get the premium and buyback price in writing.

The salesperson isn't on BrokerCheck. Is that a problem?

That's normal. Most metals salespeople aren't registered and don't have to be. It matters only if they claimed to be a registered broker or adviser.

Where do I look up complaints against a precious metals dealer?

Your state attorney general, your state securities regulator, and the CFTC are the best sources. BBB complaint pages add detail in customers' own words.

We base our guides on primary sources such as the IRS, the Department of Labor, and federal regulators. Read our editorial policy. Spot an error? Tell us.