All that glitters definitely wasn’t the gold that investors thought they were receiving when they purchased gold as an investment from Bruce R. Sands Jr. who recently was sentenced to eleven years in prison for his multi-million dollar scam by which he purported to sell gold coins, bullion and other precious metals to unwary investors who paid him millions of dollars and got absolutely nothing in return.  Investors were lured to Sands through his advertisements on radio, television and the Internet.

TIPS

An essential rule of investing is to never invest in anything that you don’t fully understand.  Sands not only never provided the gold purchased to his clients, but also sold the gold at prices significantly higher than the fair market value of the gold, which would have been apparent to anyone who had done their homework.  Another important thing to remember is that merely because an advertisement appears in legitimate media, such as television and radio does not mean that the company doing the advertising is legitimate.  Most media do little or no investigation into whether or not an advertiser is scamming the public.

Specifically for prospective gold purchasers, you should make sure that the dealer selling you gold is a reputable dealer which you can do by checking out the dealer with the American Numismatic Association at its website http://www.Money.org.  Also do not have the dealer store your gold for you.  Always take delivery of the gold yourself.  Finally, only do business with dealers that offer a buy-back guarantee within 72 hours.