Dale Whitaker Exposes the Gold Grift: How Retail Dealers Rip Off Investors
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So, it all starts when someone calls and wants to purchase gold from a company, then essentially persuaded to buy coins that are completely controlled by the companies.
And they're told that these coins are better coins for their investment.
But the reality is much different because these guys have a huge vested interest in selling you these premium coins.
These salesmen are making a lot of commission.
Just perspectively, if you have $100,000 and you're investing that into these coins, that salesman could walk away with the $10,000 paycheck right then and there.
And this is where the start of the scam comes in.
They sell you the overpriced assets and they tell you that they're better assets for you.
Watch out.
Don't get ripped off by some gold grifters.
Welcome to the show today.
I'm Mike Adams of Brighteon.com.
And today we have a very special guest, a whistleblower, a former CFO of a major gold retail company.
And he's now the author of a very important book called The Gold Grift.
His name is Dale Whitaker.
He joins us here today to talk about what he's been working on for seven years now, trying to blow the whistle on how innocent people are getting ripped off by dishonest gold retailers.
We want to show you how to get honest gold retailers and honestly purchase gold and silver if you choose to do so at fair prices, but not get ripped off and taken for your life savings.
And that's happening.
So welcome to the show, Mr. Whitaker.
It's an honor to have you on today.
And, you know, I applaud you for being the whistleblower and having the courage to do what you're doing.
Welcome.
Thanks, Mike.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Well, thank you.
My goodness.
This has been a long time coming because I've interviewed many other people in the gold space who have told horror stories about what's happening, mostly to people on the older side who are being taken for their life savings.
But could you, let's rewind and you tell us what's happening because you saw it.
You were in it and you, you know, you blew the whistle.
So tell us what's actually been happening.
So it all starts when someone calls and wants to purchase gold from a company.
And they're basically, they call and they want to buy typical gold bullion, right?
Gold bullion, eagles, gold silver eagles.
And they're then essentially persuaded to buy coins that are completely controlled by the companies.
They control the mintage.
They control the premiums.
They control the spreads.
And they're told that these coins are better coins for their investment.
And, you know, as a general rule of thumb, I would say most people take that advice at face value and they believe that the person on the other end of the call is offering them solid fiduciary advice.
But the reality is much different because these guys have a huge vested interest in selling you these premium coins, what they call premium coins, fixed mintage coins, numismatic, semi-numismatic.
There's a bunch of different interchangeable terms for them.
But these salesmen are making a lot of commission, you know, sometimes upwards of 10, 15% commission plus bonuses on the gross amount of the sales.
So just perspectively, if you have $100,000 and you're investing that into these coins, that salesman could walk away with a $10,000 paycheck right then and there.
And that's crazy because if you're buying gold that's priced honestly, even the dealers' margins are a fraction of that percentage.
Yeah.
And this is where the start of the scam comes in.
They sell you the overpriced assets, gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, even sometimes in some cases, and they tell you that they're better assets for you.
And again, the average investor doesn't know better.
they're really relying on the advice of the salesman and expect that they're trustworthy and that they have their best interests at heart.
But the reality is they have their own interests at heart and the interests of the company at heart.
So they sell you these coins and they tell you in a lot of cases, hold on to them for three years, five years, seven years, 10 years.
And the reason they do that is because they often mark up these coins over 100%, 150%.
I saw one recently.
I'm working a case right now where they charged over 450% on silver.
Unreal.
And they tell folks that these are better investments.
And they use a lot of confusing language.
They tell them that there's tax incentives and there's tax reasons for doing this, which is not true.
There's a whole spiel they go into to earn your trust.
And now once they've earned your trust, they sell you these coins.
So they sell you the coins.
And let's just say that they've marked the coins up 100%.
Once those assets hit your custodial account, a lot of people then realize, hold on, I invested $100,000, but my custodian's saying they're only worth $50,000 or $60,000.
Where's the rest of the assets?
So when they call the company and say, hey, I bought $100,000 worth of assets, but my custodian's only saying they're worth $50,000 to $60,000.
They say, oh, no, that's just the spot value.
They have more value over and above that.
So when you go to sell, you come back to us and you sell at our spread, et cetera, et cetera.
But what ends up actually happening in reality is you go back to sell the coins to that company and they give you spot.
So they give you the same value that the custodian's valuing them at.
Whoa, okay.
So I've heard from other people in this industry who I've interviewed that I think we both know that, yeah, in some cases, people are paying 300% more per ounce for silver often than they should be.
So like today, right now, silver is like $88 spot, let's say roughly.
And premiums are going up substantially.
It's probably not crazy for a premium right now on American coins to be even $12.
I don't know where the premiums are, but that would actually put a silver coin at like $100 right now at honest retail.
But then there are these dishonest retailers you're talking about that might charge someone $200 or $300 for one ounce of silver.
That's what you're saying, right?
Correct.
Actually, just a couple of days ago when silver was floating around 84 bucks, I know there was one retailer that was selling a two-ounce coin for $188.
So I think that premium shakes out to be about 70 to 80% off the top of my head.
It's pretty astronomical when you think about it because that's for a two-ounce coin.
And that's another thing that, because I saw you kind of go, huh?
Well, I'm trying to say two ounce coins.
What?
Yeah, exactly.
And that's the catch, right, Mike?
Because you had to check yourself.
You had to go, wait, oh, no, that's more than 80.
No, but it's a two-ounce coin.
That's what they're, they're preying you on, right?
They don't sell you a one-ounce coin where the math's easy to do.
They sell you these fractional denominations that are weird, like one and a quarter, a quarter ounce.
I saw a third ounce gold the other day.
Yeah, exactly.
So, so, and then they do this because when a customer is on the phone with them and they're purchasing the coins, it's a lot harder when you have a fast-talking salesman to do the math on the back of an envelope or take notes and go through and do the math while they're talking you through this trade that they want you to execute when they're using these fractional denominations.
And if you were to call the question and go, oh, no, no, you're not, you're not doing it right.
You know, this is how you have to do it.
And then they'll fast talk you again.
They'll confuse you with terminology.
And it's all part of the scheme to get you to buy the coins that they want to sell you, that they have a vested interest in selling you.
So basically on the other side of the phone is not the wolf of Wall Street, but the wolf of Gold Street.
You know, this is like the fast-talking junk bond salesperson that's talking people into handing over often their life savings into this, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's the apt analogy, right?
Is this a boiler room type sales floor?
Um, kind of the same thing.
You know, they have pejorative terms that they use for folks who won't invest in these coins.
They call them bullyheads, like bullion bullyheads.
Um, you know, there's high fives when they manage to basically rip someone off on the sales floor, um, the you know, fist bumps and so on and so on.
And in some cases, it was in the metals.com case, who were another gold company that did this that were sued into the ground.
There was they had posters in the in their staff room, they had like this lottery machine.
I mean, it was all like a hype to get these guys to sell as much as possible and make as much money as possible at the expense of the folks on the other line and their retirement funds.
I mean, it's really egregious what they're doing.
Okay, but there's another aspect of this that I'd like you to speak to, and you don't have to name names, but these aren't just sort of sketchy flyby night names.
These, my understanding is that many of these companies that you're describing or these kinds of operations are taking place at gold retailers that are sponsored by mainstream, well-known, almost celebrity type of people.
Is that true?
Yeah, it's unequivocally true.
In fact, I have a list right here.
You know, you talk about naming names.
So, let me just tell you who have been sued for fraudulent practices.
Okay, this is the list: Birch Gold Group, Goldline, Gold Co., Lear Capital.
Lear Capital was sued by multiple state attorney generals.
They went through Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
They had to adhere to all of these standards.
And I'm now working on a recovery for someone who, after their bankruptcy, after all of these standards were applied by state legislators, are still doing the same thing.
And then American Hartford Gold, Goldgate Capital, Oxford Gold Group, Red Rock Secured, they were sued by the SEC and CFTC for, and they were indicted for $76 million.
The owner of that company, Shade Johnson Kelly, was the VP at the company I worked for, Augusta Precious Metals.
And he quit, stole the lead base from Augusta, went and started Red Rock, and then were subsequently indicted and sued into the ground by the federal authorities.
You know, this is someone that was at my wedding.
I know this individual, right?
Whoa.
Then you have Regal Assets, Rosalind Capital, Safeguard Metals, Merit Financial, which a lot of these companies spawn from.
They went bankrupt in 2014 when they was sued by the city of Santa Monica.
Moving on, U.S. Money Reserve, Vault Metal, Wall Street Metals, Metals.com, who I just referenced a few minutes ago, Fisher Capital, and Langmore Capital.
And so these are the ones that have had lawsuits against them in the space.
So, look, there are, to your point, there are a lot of conservative voices who what I call show gold for these companies because they make hundreds of thousands, oftentimes millions of dollars a year to do so.
And I've reached out to many of these folks.
I would say probably 90% of the large voices I've reached out to and said, Hey, I can provide you all the evidence to prove that these people are defrauding your viewers and I get crickets.
Wow.
Wow.
Okay.
So just as background to our audience, I think, I mean, I've mentioned it publicly.
I was offered, you know, 100 grand a month to promote exactly one of those companies you mentioned.
And I turned it down because I did research and found out some of the things that you're finding out.
Also, it's also public knowledge.
Chris Olson talked about it here that Tucker Carlson was offered a massive amount, tens of millions of dollars, to push gold for an unreputable company, and he turned it down because Tucker Carlson has principles.
You blew the whistle on this courageously and at great risk.
And now you're naming names.
And I just want to be clear that just for the lawyers watching, you mentioned all those companies have been sued doesn't necessarily mean that they were all criminally indicted or anything like that, but they've all been sued at some level.
And some of them have been, as you said, criminally indicted.
But if that's the case, why is this still happening?
I don't understand how this is still going on if the states and the federal government are putting some of these people in jail.
How is this still happening in America?
Well, to be clear, I wouldn't say to be clear first, no one goes to jail.
And that's another part of this that just absolutely boils my blood is they are indicted by the SEC and the CFTC and sued into the ground, but they never really pierce the corporate veil and go after personal assets for recovery or anything like that.
So essentially, if you've invested in one of these companies that has gone bankrupt, your assets are worth melt.
So that 100% premium, 200% premium that you've paid, there's absolutely no way for you to recover any of that premium.
So that's the first point I'll make.
Now, the second point, and it's a very good question.
Why have they not done anything?
Well, Mike, I want to know the same thing because I've spoken to three separate congressional offices and their staff, one of which told me that I needed to find a lobby group, which to me is just insane.
I mean, I am the lobbyist.
I am the guy saying, hey, there's a problem here.
And I have victims all lined up with testimony that are willing to go to Congress and testify in front of Congress as to what happened to them from a lot of them from a lot of these companies that I mentioned.
And so I don't understand why they won't do it.
And now I will touch on something that becomes a little controversial.
And I understand.
Anthony Weiner, the disgraced New York ex-congressman, had a bill.
He had a public feud with Glenn Beck in the 2010s.
He had a bill on the House floor to try to, I don't think the bill went far enough, but it was a good start on trying to get a wrap and a handle around this issue.
Now, that bill died in Congress and he went to jail because he's not a good person.
I think people know why.
But the question is, why is it that after he had that public dispute about Goldline and then Goldline were subsequently sued by not just the government, but also a lot of individuals?
Was Goldline promoted by Glenn Beck?
Goldline, yes.
And he viciously defended them publicly for years.
And then at the end of the, once Goldline actually got sued, Glenn Beck went silent on Goldline, which, you know, no one could blame him, but he went silent on Goldline.
And then very recently, I think about a year and a half ago, Lear Capital engaged him and he takes another sponsorship.
And it just blows my mind.
I do not understand why when one gold company has done this to your viewers and you have defended them publicly and then been proven wrong in a court of law, why you would ever engage with another company.
Now, to be clear, Glenn Beck was not listed on that lawsuit, but the gold company that he was selling gold and defending publicly was.
And they were indicted and sued.
And then, again, chapter 13 come out the other side.
And for all intents and purposes, from what I've seen, people sending me, they're doing the same thing still.
So it sounds like what you're implying is that Glenn Beck should know better because he's already been associated with a company that was accused of a lot of wrongdoing.
And you're saying that the company he's promoting now is on your lists of companies that are also being sued because they're accused of engaging in this activity.
And let me just say for the record, I've never found Glenn Beck to be a person of integrity.
So I'm not surprised by any of that.
But am I correct in what you're saying?
Here's what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is if I have defended publicly for years a gold company who were then subsequently sued by individuals and by the government and then were criminally indicted by the government and then had to go through this whole process to come out the other side and then I ceased to engage with that company, why would I ever engage with another company ever that sells gold, right?
Ever.
It just doesn't make sense.
Now, the new company that he engaged with, Lear Capital, they were sued by more than 10 states in a joint AG lawsuit against Lear Capital.
What was the outcome of that?
They were sued.
They went through Chapter 13 bankruptcy and there was a bunch of rules imposed upon them in order for them to fix their practices.
Now, I can tell you that they never fixed their practices because I'm working on a recovery right now for someone who purchased from Lear Capital post-bankruptcy and they still sold them crap coins at massive markups and huge spreads.
If you were to take a guess, how many Glenn Beck listeners got ripped off?
It's, I mean, it's incalculable.
I don't know.
You know, I think that, yeah, so I've been speaking about this issue, Mike, for seven years or trying to, trying to get the word out as much as possible, trying to engage congressional legislators and lawmakers on this issue for about seven years.
And it's been really, really hard because it's hard for me to get in front of a big enough audience to get a true grasp on the totality of this.
Now, I think, you know, you have Andy Sheckman at Miles Franklin.
You have Chris Olson at Battalion, myself.
You know, we're all working on these recoveries.
And I think they were very shocked.
I think Andy was shocked and Kevin Hauser over at Miles Franklin.
I think Chris was shocked really at how egregious and how much scale there is in this.
But it's in within the, I would say at least thousands.
And that's just the Glenn Beck listeners, right?
Then you go back and you go back to all the folks who peddle Birch Gold and Goldco and so on.
I mean, it's the scale is, I think, so unimaginable that we wouldn't, we won't know until we know.
In your analysis, then, is this mostly targeting people on the older side because they maybe they can't, you know, their cognition is waning because of their age.
They're easy to fast talk or confuse.
But because I've heard stories of elderly people handing over their entire retirement savings to some of these gold companies, and the very next day, it's worth half or a third of what they wired in terms of money.
I mean, they're getting taken.
Yeah.
And so it, so I'll tell you what, who we targeted when I worked at Augusta.
So our marketing strategy was 50 plus conservative Christian.
There you go.
That's it.
That's who we targeted.
50 plus conservative Christians.
50 plus.
Now, but that isn't to say that it's exclusively folks at retirement age or in retirement.
There are plenty of folks in their 40s, you know, professionals with quite a bit of money too, who I've helped recover funds for as well.
So and a lot of this comes with a lot of shame and embarrassment, right?
Because these aren't dumb people.
These are your normal, everyday, hardworking Americans who just trust that these companies are going to have their best interests at heart.
And they really don't.
And so When you are a podcaster or a trusted right wing voice and you put your name behind a company, your viewers trust that.
And what these companies are doing is they're exploiting that trust and saying, oh, yeah, you know, Glenn Beck's great, for example.
And, you know, Glenn, Glenn and our company, CEO, go golfing all the time together.
They'll allow right lie about things and use that as leverage to get you on side and say, hey, look, we're trustworthy.
If Glenn trusts us, then everyone trusts us, right?
There's no reason to believe otherwise.
Wow.
And so it is a massive problem, but I would say it's not exclusive to elderly folks, but that is the target market.
So, and you explain all this in more detail in your book, The Gold Grift?
So my book details how this happened, how I came to work for the company, Augusta, and how I came to find out that this happens and how they do it.
And then in the back side of my book are steps to recovery that folks who think they've been scammed can utilize to try and get their money back.
And it really is just a very short, concise version.
I wanted it to be a short book.
It's about 150, 160 pages.
I wanted it to be a very short read for folks so they could get to the meat of the issue, realize if this happened to them, and then start working on steps to get their money back.
Now, I want to give out your website also, dale Whitaker.com.
And Whitaker is just spelled simply here as it shows Whitaker.
Also, I see on your site, you have a free gold buyer's guide.
And I don't know what's in that, but I imagine you would be giving people information on how they cannot get ripped off.
Is that it's exactly that.
It's like, hey, avoid these things.
Look for these things.
If this happens, stay away, right?
One of the big things that I would like to state here is if you have a bad gut feeling, if you're on the phone with the salesman and they're really pushing you hard and you just have a bad gut feeling, just walk away.
Just go, hey, no, trust your gut.
90% of the time, your gut's telling you to do the right thing.
So just trust your gut and walk away.
I cannot tell you, Mike, how many folks have read that guide, have read my book and said, you know, I just knew something was wrong.
And I just, I couldn't put my finger on it and I just trusted them.
And that's what it comes down to.
I've observed something too about the Christian conservative community in general, which is that, you know, most Christian conservatives are themselves good people who follow moral values.
They lead in their own lives a life of morality.
And so they project that onto others.
And if others begin to use those trigger words, the Christian words, oh, you know, blessings to you.
And, you know, Jesus wants you to do this or whatever, those trigger words are used to manipulate Christians very often into thinking, oh, this, this person on the other end of the phone is also a Christian.
He shares my values.
Therefore, I can trust him.
Is that a fair assessment of some of what goes on?
Yeah, that is true.
That is a fair assessment.
And what I would even say as well is a lot of these folks will portray themselves to be Republicans and conservatives when in fact they're the exact opposite.
A lot of these guys don't care about politics at all.
And if they do, they want Democrats to be in office because typically gold and silver rally when Democrats are in office and people will flock to the gold market when a Democrat is elected because they're concerned about the fiscal policies that Democrats put forward, right?
So they'll use any tools in their toolbox.
And I think what you, including lying, and I think what you said is absolutely true is we as Christians like to think that we are equally yoked when we are talking to other people.
But the reality is that it's an unequal yoking with other people because we're holding them to the biblical standard and we think that they are holding themselves to that standard.
And that just simply isn't true.
We need to be more cautious as conservative Christians when engaging with folks, especially when it comes to your life savings.
You have to question everything.
You know, this isn't a trust, but verify situation.
This is a, you know, verify and then trust.
Right and make sure what they're telling you is true before you invest.
Yeah and, and I would say, a very simple thing for people to do is if, if you're quoted, here's a dollar amount and here's how many ounces of silver you're getting, regardless of what kind it is bars coins, special coins numismatics, whatever if you look at that number and you do the math and you're not getting a good value per ounce, like if you're paying 200 per ounce for silver, something's wrong.
I mean, that isn't that just like a?
Just a simple first glance, like wait a second, this is wrong.
It is, and a lot of the times they won't put the the actual prices in writing for you up until you you actually sign the document to purchase.
So they'll do everything they can to not give you that price.
They'll do everything they can to not put it in writing with with you until the time comes for you to sign all of the documentation and the disclosures.
And so one of the big things to do is get the prices in writing and then take that pricing and go and shop it with other dealers.
Go to Miles Franklin, go to Battalion, go to SD Bullion, go to Appmex, go to all these websites.
Find the prices on their websites.
And if you cannot find the pricing on their websites, then you know something is wrong.
One of the big triggers and and one of the big UH red flags that I in my guide, in my gold buyer's guide that you'll see is, if a, if a company will not disclose the pricing of their coins, just don't buy from them.
Yeah, no reason for that.
Well, and I I also want to ask you you mentioned some names there of some of the more reputable dealers.
I'd like you to offer some of those names now, of course, in full disclosure.
Our sponsor is Battalion, which is UH co-founded by Tucker Carlson and Chris Olson, a group i've worked with for many, many years.
I would not ever work with any company that ripped off customers, period.
So I I I trust Battalion and they have all their prices online in real time and they'll give you actual prices on the quotation.
And, in fact, Battalion and Andy Shackman, who i've had on the show many times.
They help people rescue funds from some of these UH scams and schemes that are going on out there.
But could you, from your research, give us just some of the names that you think UH have have a good reputation and have earned it.
I would say, stick to those four.
You could probably throw JAM Bullion in there too.
Uh, so Appmex Miles Franklin, SD Bullion, JAM Bullion I think they're all good, reputable companies to to price match against each other.
I mean, what you should be doing is going to each of these sites pulling, Pulling up the same exact coin and then saying, okay, who has the cheapest price?
And look, if you prefer to do business with one over the other and they're not as competitive, call them and say, hey, these guys have this coin at this price.
Can you guys beat it or match it?
You know, I prefer to do business with you.
Right.
And that's the way that the market works.
Everyone expects that.
Everyone expects that competition at this level and at this volume.
And, you know, oftentimes in the real bullion space, they're fighting over pennies.
I mean, they really are.
That's how thin the margins are.
No, I know.
I've had conversations with Chris at Battalion about, you know, they can move hundreds of millions of dollars of metals and make almost nothing off of, you know, and that's like, that's how the customer knows, really, they're getting an honest price because the people on the other side are not getting rich.
They're not doubling or tripling the premiums on your coins.
They're not high-fiving each other.
They're basically saying, oh, man, you know, this is a lot of work.
I got to take calls late at night.
People are panicked.
Can you talk about that for a moment?
There's a there's a fear factor in people right now.
Like, and oh, Asian guy, Asian guy videos are going crazy, like all over YouTube.
I saw that.
Right.
And Asian guy, some of the stuff he says is like completely made up.
Other stuff is like, yeah, that makes sense, but some of it's made up.
And so people panic and they call and panic buy.
Can you talk about that factor?
Yeah.
And a lot of the sales in this industry actually, they prey on fear.
And I'm not talking about the legitimate guys, but I'm talking about the guys who will gladly take half of your retirement from you.
They prey on fear.
And the Asian guy that's going around, I'm 90% that's 90% sure that's AI.
Oh, yeah, it is for sure AI.
You can make that 100%.
Yeah.
And I'm 90% sure that it's probably one of these companies that do this.
Because this is another thing that people don't realize is whenever you search like top gold IRA company or top gold company, right?
And you get these websites that list the top five gold companies and you have, I don't know, let's say Augusta Precious Metals, who I work for at the top, I can guarantee you that that is them paying to have that website either made or it's an affiliate of theirs who is making the website and listing it that way.
And what you'll see is they'll list all of their competitors who do the same thing on the same website.
And then they'll say, hey, this is the best one for these reasons.
This is the best one for these reasons.
But the overall pick is this company.
And so they do this because they're trying to build legitimacy outside of their own company and outside of the conservative voices to say, hey, this is why you should purchase from this company.
And so you'll happen upon like what seems to be a third-party consumer review website of someone, I don't know, that portrays themselves, has news articles, things like this about the gold industry.
But oftentimes those are sponsored, if not directly funded by these companies.
So beware of that too.
As for the fear-mongering, we should, as Christians, never let fear control whatever we do.
We should never do that, right?
We're called to denounce fear.
Fear is not from the Lord.
It's from the devil, right?
So we need to be very cautious.
If we have concerns about something, sit down and think through it methodically.
Don't be worried about the price fluctuating a dollar here or there, a couple of dollars here or there while you're trying to make a decision that could really impact the rest of your life.
Because again, this comes back to this is your retirement funds and you need to be making a very sound decision.
So talk to your tax accountant, talk to your attorney, your financial advisor, whoever it may be, and ask them, hey, do you think this is a good idea?
Why or why not?
Go to as many people as you can and get as much information as you can before you make that decision.
But, but sadly, the these scammers out there are harming the overall reputation of gold and it's causing, you know, mainstream media can point to stories like what you're talking about and say see, we told you gold is all a scam, silver is all a scam.
You should, you should buy treasuries.
You know like which treasuries are a scam.
I mean, come on um, in my opinion, is backed by nothing.
Backed by nothing.
Um, gold and silver are real money, But the scammers give it a bad reputation, don't they?
They do.
And this is part of why I think that as we move forward and as this story grows and folks like yourself, Mike, are willing to have someone like me on to expose this, because it is a contentious issue on the right where, you know, I'm a conservative, you're a conservative, and we're talking about other conservatives pushing assets that are defrauding their viewers.
This is a hard thing for me to talk about and to break through on the narrative on because people say, well, I don't think X person would ever do that.
And it's like, okay, but you have to look at the facts.
And so when I present you with the facts, the amount of people that go, holy cow, this is insane.
I was taken by this and I'm going to write a letter to X influencer and let them know is staggering.
Now, what I think, to your point, the really big problem here is that not only are they taking a billion to maybe $2 billion a year of liquidity out of the market and actual dollars too, of available dollars to spend from legitimate companies, which impacts the economy massively because it doesn't just impact the economy at the point of sale.
It also impacts the IRS's ability to tax those dollars when these guys take their RMDs and start taking distributions for their retirement.
Because you think about it, if I had $300,000 invested in bullion and the market appreciates 200%, I have essentially a 200% gain, 195% out of 5% spread, give or take, right?
Now, if I have that same, if I have that same initial investment, but the premium that I was charged up front is wiping out a ton of my value, that's less taxable revenue for the IRS.
True.
So there's no downside to the government coming in and setting some regulations on this industry that is completely unregulated for anyone.
The upside for the investor is you have way more money at the end of the day in your retirement.
And the upside for the IRS is you have more taxable revenue in the future.
Now, I'm not saying advocating for more taxes.
I wish we could abolish the IRS completely.
But the reality is it impacts everyone.
And it also impacts the legitimate dealers because there's less dollars out there for them to go and get in business to invest in their in legitimate coins.
So it impacts everyone.
All right.
Let me throw a counter argument at you here.
I'm sure you've heard this from various people.
Someone, maybe, maybe like the company that you used to work for, maybe they would say, well, we're not forcing people to make these decisions.
They choose to wire us the money.
They choose to engage in this decision.
They want the numismatics.
They want the weird two-ounce coins.
Like we're not, you know, we're not robbing them.
We're not criminals, et cetera.
What would you say to that kind of argument?
I would say that if you're not intentionally trying to defraud people, why would you steer them away from bullying, typical bullying products?
Why would you even have these fixed mintage premium exclusive coins in the first place?
Why not just sell them bullion?
Why do you push so hard when people call and want bullion to get them to what they call flip, flip them into these other assets?
Well, it's because you know that all the money to be made are in these fixed mintage premium exclusive assets.
That's where the money is because they're relying upon low volume, high margin rather than the high volume, low margin that the legitimate dealers operate off of.
And so, and then the second thing I would say to that, why don't they keep all of the call recordings, including the sales recordings?
And why do they only keep the recordings of the confirmation of the person agreeing to purchase the assets that you've sold them?
Oh, they do that.
They only keep it.
They do that.
So that's another thing too.
So then the other, and then on top of that, what I would say, the third thing is: why is it that you put all this jargon and these massive spreads in your transaction agreements, but then you don't disclose those over the phone to people when they're purchasing?
Why do you not tell them that you're going to make 10% commission on their deal?
Why do you not tell them that the spread is essentially arbitrary?
So if you were to lobby for some basic regulatory oversight or laws, would you demand that the salesperson disclose their commission, among other things?
What would you want to see?
I think that's a good start.
I think there's a lot of things that we could do.
In talking with some folks too, they seem to think that we might not need to do anything regulatorily.
I don't know if that's necessarily true, but what I think is we just impose the same type of standards that we have on the stock markets, maybe not as stringent, but that, hey, you have a fiduciary responsibility to disclose all fees, everything that you're going to earn, your margins and everything else on your coins to the consumer.
Why is there no fiduciary responsibility in this industry?
Right?
There's the, for example, and this is an allergy I like to use: there are as many regulations on me selling coins to you than there are you going to buy a shirt at Walmart.
There's no, there's nothing.
You know, there's, so there's a few ways, Mike, we could have a new bill that codifies some regulatory fiduciary responsibility, which I'm in favor of.
And look, I'm not a like a pro, I'm a very limited government type guy, but the reality is this is where government needs to step up and this is where the government needs to function is to protect the consumer, right?
And so I'm, so you could go that route.
There, you could clarify the internal revenue code where it tells you what coins can be invested in your IRA, because this is the big part, right?
It's not cash deals that were worried about you going investing $10,000 at your local mom and pop shop.
It's your IRA funds that they're targeting, your retirement funds.
So if we can clarify that portion of the IRC, that might be a quick fix, right?
We might be able to shut these guys down overnight.
So there's many ways we could skin that horse.
And to be honest with you, I'm in favor of any and all that will put an end to it.
Okay.
Okay.
But like you said, we don't want to operate in an environment of a regulatory overburden that would create new friction in legitimate sales of gold and silver.
And there is, you know, the buyer, if you go buy a used car, you have a responsibility as a buyer to make sure you're not getting ripped off.
If you buy a house, you have a responsibility to make sure you're not getting ripped off.
And that's why I love what you're doing here, educating the consumer, because if we create enough education and decentralize this knowledge, then these companies that try to rip people off will lose sales.
You know, just free market principles will drive people away from the ripoff artists more and more, right?
But then we're talking about the elderly who are often very, you know, cognitive decline is a thing.
And then there's junk silver, which nobody can do the math on junk silver.
It's like, what is it?
90%?
Is it 91%?
Depends what year, what coin?
Wait a minute.
How many ounces?
Face value versus what?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
That's confusing to everybody.
Yep.
You're coming.
So I'm with you.
And I understand the regulatory overburden, which is why it's important to engage with legitimate companies, big companies, right?
Big companies like AppMax, Jambullion, SD Bullion.
Let's bring the retail side to the table, the legitimate retail side to the table and say, okay, we have a massive problem here, guys.
How do we tackle this without putting too much of a burden on you, but where it protects the consumer?
Right.
Right.
There is a way.
There is a way to balance this.
And look, we have a Republican Congress right now across the board.
If there's a time to get this done, it's right now because this actually protects their constituency.
And this is why when I go to these legislators, I'm like, guys, it's your constituents.
It isn't the Democrat constituents that are investing in this stuff.
It's your constituents.
You need to protect your constituents from this.
Right.
And like you said, it is a tough thing and it's a balancing act.
But again, I don't see another way around it.
I don't know that information alone, Mike, will be enough because how do we combat the folks?
How do we combat the commercials on Fox News when Fox News won't talk about it, but they're taking millions and millions of dollars in advertising revenues from these companies when people, the people that we're talking about, you know, the 70-year-olds and 80-year-olds, a lot of them don't consume independent media.
They're still on Fox News.
They're still on news.
Oh, you're right.
I forgot.
People still watch fake news.
Yeah.
So, yeah, and that's right.
Like the Trump, the Christian conservative Trump base is all over Fox News.
So you're saying, and again, I really don't watch Fox News, but you're saying that a lot of these companies that you named are advertising on Fox News?
Yeah, absolutely.
Of course.
Our budget for At Augusta was about a million and a half, I believe, for Fox.
What per year?
And we would buy remnant.
So we weren't buying a year, a year, a million and a half a year.
But we would only buy remnant because we were like mid-tier, right?
We aren't the top dogs in the space by any stretch of the imagination.
We were like mid-tier.
So, you know, you figure we had a million and a half.
And that's just our Fox budget.
That's not Newsmax.
Whoa.
Right.
That's not these other.
Newsmax runs ads for some of these companies, too.
We would buy targeted emails from them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we would sponsor an email essentially and then they'd send it out to a specific segment.
Really?
They sell their email lists?
I mean, they sell.
Well, you don't get access to the list, but you say, hey, we want to buy.
Yeah.
Yep.
We want to buy this segment.
I mean, this is how this is how typical media works, right?
You buy in and you give them a bunch of money and then they'll run an ad for you.
Well, we don't do that.
We don't let people buy access to our email list.
I mean, you know, you never get direct access, but they send it, you know, as a sponsored email.
Yeah, but we don't do that either.
I mean, we never, but okay, I get it.
But have you had?
I'm with you.
I mean, I'm with you, but this is just the nature of the beast.
See, I guess I've been operating in a world of high integrity for so long.
I'm actually shocked at some of the things you're saying that there's still going on.
Because those are things I would never do.
Right.
But we're looking at this as individuals with individual consciousness.
We're not looking at this as a corporation who only care about their bottom line.
Wow.
Right.
And the other, the other side to this is, you know, I've reached out to, I've reached out to Hannity and Bill O'Reilly when I was at Fox.
I've reached out to all these guys.
I mean, and I get crickets.
I don't get any responses.
And look, someone said to me the other day, who's going to listen to you?
You're a guy on X with 3,500 followers and so on.
It's like, but I'm bringing the receipts.
I'm not asking you just to take my word for it.
I'm bringing you documentation to prove that this is what happened and how I can tie all of these companies together in a centralized part of Los Angeles.
I'm going to give you a nickname.
You're the Mitch Vexler of gold.
You're the whistleblower.
Mitch Vexler is blowing the whistle on property taxes all over the country, how it's a total scam.
You're like the Mitch Vexler of gold, like blowing the whistle.
But let me ask you this.
Have you received legal letters or threats from Augusta, Goldco, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, any of these people?
Any legal pushback?
No.
No, I haven't.
So Augusta threatened me initially when I started going public after I filed my whistleblower complaint, told me to return their property.
And I said, sure, I mean, send me the FedEx label.
I'll box this stuff up and get it back to you, you know, immediately.
And then they never did that.
And then I just ignored them and they sent me another letter.
Hey, we take this, your ignorance to our prior letter to be an admission of guilt.
I'm like, take it however you want.
I mean, I don't care.
I can prove everything I'm saying to you.
So, you know, if you really are going to claim that I'm defaming you, sue me and let's go to discovery.
Sue me and let's go to discovery.
Oh, yeah.
And then I know who to subpoena.
I know who to get in front of the judge.
So let's do it.
And again, the companies that I'm listing here, Mike, I'm not just saying that they are doing this.
They have been sued for fraud, whether that's by the government or a government agency or whether that's by an individual.
So all I'm saying is, hey, if there's no substantiation to my claims, if everything I'm saying to you is not true, then how is it that I have tens venturing on hundreds of people who have reached out to me individually and said this happened to me, right?
I have more witnesses than I could handle, right?
I mean, it's just the, so again, it comes back to, do I want to be sued?
Of course I don't want to be sued.
But if you think that I'm defaming you and I'm telling you, look, and I'm not saying, so I guess we should clarify this.
I'm not saying that Glenn Beck is directly complicit in defrauding people that watch his show.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm questioning is, why would you engage in his instance?
Why would you engage with another gold company after the gold company that you originally were sponsored by were sued into the ground for deceptive and defrauding their viewers, deceptive practices and defrauding of viewers?
Why would you ever engage with another company?
That's the question I'm asking.
And I want an answer from Glenn.
I want to know why you would do that.
It does not make sense to me, right?
And then especially when Lear Capital have been sued into bankruptcy by the state attorney general's office.
I'll say publicly, if Glenn Beck wants to come on my show and answer that, I would welcome him.
Same thing with any of the companies you mentioned, Goldco or whoever.
If they want to come on and answer what you're saying, they have an open door invitation.
I'd like to hear their response to these accusations.
But according to what you're saying, and you're not the only person I've heard this from, actually, I've been aware of this for quite some time.
And Andy Sheckman knows what's going on as well.
But it seems like there are hundreds, if not thousands of documented cases of people who believe, they believe they have been ripped off by these various companies.
Would that sound like a correct estimate?
Yeah, which is what, yes, absolutely.
And this is exactly why I don't have fear of speaking out because I know the truth is on my side.
I know it is.
So, and look, could I be wrong?
Sure, but I know I'm not because I lived it.
I went through it.
I understand how it works.
I've been behind the curtain.
I know who the major players are.
I know how they do it, what they do.
I know their tactics.
Again, let's go back to just that rudimentary example I gave you.
Why is it that they don't save the sales calls and all of the things that the salesman say to the customer, but then they get the customer on a recorded line with an administrator after the sale has been made by the salesman to record the person saying, yes, I agree to this.
Yes, I agree to this price.
Yes, I agree to this.
I have the recordings of Augusta doing this.
I know they do it.
I have the recordings.
This is why he won't sue me.
So, you know, and I know he's seen all of my content.
I know he has.
So is there anything that you are gaining from blowing the whistle on this other than a few copies of your book, which I would not imagine is going to be a number one bestseller?
You know, I mean, I want to be clear.
I'm glad you wrote the book.
It's very important, but it's not going to be the most popular book.
But is there anything that you're gaining from this?
No, what I gained was a clean conscience.
That's it.
I mean, I gave up.
I was being paid about $150-ish thousand dollars at the time per year at Augusta.
I walked away from that with no contingency plan.
You know, writing my book was a long process.
You know, I had to help pay editors to help me edit.
And, you know, I've never written a book before.
I needed help.
So I, you know, employed editors to help me write it and go through and make sure it's factually correct.
And, you know, it's a process.
It took me probably eight months to sit and write the whole thing.
And that's with help.
Right.
So I didn't, you know, and look, full disc, I make like $2 a book.
It was never about book sales for me.
It's about establishing that this is fact and that I can prove it.
So books don't take profits for people most of the time.
Unless you have millions and millions of followers and you're selling a book at 30 bucks a copy, then you're making some money.
Right.
That isn't me.
Ask what you're doing now professionally then to earn money to live?
Yeah.
So I'm a tax accountant.
So I've been in accounting for 18 years now.
So I'm a tax accountant.
I have a small practice.
It's just myself.
My wife also has a business, a cleaning business that's fairly successful.
So we do okay.
It was touch and go.
She wasn't working when I initially left.
She had just been recovering from a bad, she got hit head on by a teenager when, what, about a year before I quit Augusta, she got hit head on and she had, you know, fractured a couple of vertebrae.
And so she was on the road to recovery.
So she wasn't working at the time.
And it was fine.
You know, we were, we were doing okay.
It wasn't a big deal.
But, you know, once I made that decision to leave, my wife was just like, you got to do it.
You know, she was fully supportive.
She said, I'll go back to work.
And it just was never a question.
Your background in accounting obviously would have been very useful to understand what you're describing as the schemes.
Sounds like.
Yeah.
And this is what one, you know, this is one of the big questions.
And I think it is an apt question.
People say, hey, you worked there for years and you never realized this was a problem.
Well, in the book, I detail how, you know, I'd never worked in the gold industry.
I didn't really know anything about it.
So my entire worldview on this issue was crafted by my experience at Augusta.
I see.
And it wasn't until Isaac called me when Isaac, the CEO of Augusta, called me and asked me to manipulate the spread, increase the spread on coins for a 5,000 coin silver deal that we were purchasing back from a client who had purchased from us.
He had called me and said, hey, I want you to increase the spread.
And by increasing the spread, you're decreasing the amount of money that you give the client who had purchased these assets.
That's when I realized something was wrong.
I'm like, hey, you know, because you could argue.
So you could make the argument.
And I don't think it's a good argument, but you could make the argument.
And I guess this is how I justify it to myself is, look, if we're charging you 100% premium on a coin, but then when we buy it back to you, we maintain that same 100% premium on the coin and then we apply our spread, right?
That's the same as buying an ounce at any given time at the same markups at any given time and then just applying a spread.
That makes sense.
But when you're violating the agreement that you have with your customers, that's in the transaction agreement that says that we have 29% spread, which is still massive.
I understand that.
But we saw this 29% spread and then you're arbitrarily changing it on a per-purchase basis.
That was the minute I was like, hey, this makes no sense.
And I just said, hey, I'm not going to do this.
You do what you want.
Keep me out of it.
But, you know, I don't want any part of this.
I don't want any hand in this.
I don't know whether he did or didn't.
I didn't track it.
And then my wife was at again.
She was working from home at the time.
And I came upstairs after we'd hung up and I said to my wife, I was like, something is terribly wrong.
I mean, I was like flushed with adrenaline.
I mean, I remember it so vividly because I was just shocked.
I mean, I was like, holy cow, we are doing the same thing that Merit Financial did, which is the company that Isaac used to work at as a salesman prior to starting Augusta.
Merit Financial, of course, who I mentioned earlier, that was sued by the city of Santa Monica into the ground into bankruptcy.
So that's that's unusual for a city to sue a company like that.
Typically, it would be a state or even the federal government.
But I just want to clarify that for any, maybe any DA that might be watching or any state or federal authorities that are watching, you are willing to be an expert witness to testify against the companies that you claim are engaged in these illicit practices.
Is that correct?
100%.
Yep.
And you can bring a long list of customers who were provably harmed.
Yep.
Absolutely.
And you touched on a very, so when you said that it's unusual for a city to sue, you're right.
And so at the time, and I detail this in the book too, at the time when Isaac, so I flew down.
So I'm in Washington State.
I'm in Spokane, Washington, right?
So I was working remotely.
And so when I would fly down twice a year, maybe sometimes three times a year.
And when I was down in December of I believe this would have been 2014, we were talking about looking for office space.
And I was like, hey, okay, sure, that's fine.
What are we looking for?
And you say, well, I don't want office space in Santa Monica.
I want office space outside of Santa Monica because the city attorney, I won't use the exact verbiage that he used, but the city attorney is basically a ladder climbing politician that is going after gold companies to basically pat his resume.
Now, at the time, I was, I would say, politically homeless.
I didn't really engage in politics at all.
So when I hear that, growing up in a family who has a massive distrust for politicians, I just said, oh, okay.
I didn't really question it.
I just said, oh, okay, it makes sense.
You know, I know these people exist and this is how this works.
And so I didn't really question it too much.
And, you know, in hindsight, there were a lot of red flags along the way that, you know, now in hindsight and you put those together, it's like, oh, of course.
I mean, duh.
They didn't want to be under the jurisdiction.
Of course, this is what they were doing.
I see.
All right, Dale.
Well, we are up.
We're out of time here.
Let me give out your website again, Dale Whitaker.com.
And your book is called The Gold Grift.
It's available on Amazon and booksellers everywhere.
And I would encourage our viewers to check out your website.
You've got the free report here.
And that you, by the way, you do know our sponsor, Battalion, to be one of the reputable companies that you named.
You named several of them.
And I appreciate you being very open about that.
Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
Yeah.
So typically, I'm glad you brought up Battalion.
So after my interview with Andy Sheckman and my conversations with Tucker's team and with Battalion, Battalion actually engaged me to try and help folks who have been through this process.
So if you are looking for help, I typically would tell you to go to my website.
But if you could just go to battalionmetals.com forward slash tricked and fill out that form.
That comes directly to me.
It helps me keep everything in one centralized area.
No cost to you.
The agreement between Battalion and myself was that we would, my role would be specifically to help you guys to get as much money back as possible.
So if you feel like this might be you, if you're uncertain, please fill out that form and then I can help you guys directly.
And, you know, I can do an analysis on your account and help you through that process.
And you do that without any fee.
Yeah, there's no fee to the customer.
So Battalion and I, Battalion have engaged with me.
They've hired my services to handle because they owe me a ton.
So they're paying me a nominal fee.
It's nothing crazy.
No fee to attempt to recover and rescue.
Correct.
Yep.
And that's something that Chris wanted to engage me with because he felt it was such a powerful tool in reading the back side of my book.
He said, hey, what if we help?
What if we engage with you to do this for us, for our customers?
Oh, okay.
Wow.
I didn't even know that Chris approached you with that.
So that's great to know.
And I'm not surprised because Chris is also a very high integrity person who has a philosophy that we agree with, even kind of a Ron Paul philosophy of honest money.
So it's great to know great people like you.
So thank you, Dale, for all that you're doing.
I'm honored to meet you.
Please let us know if anyone gives you any legal hassles.
I'm happy to have you back on the show to talk about what's going on.
So keep in touch.
And, well, actually, just keep in touch anyway.
I'd like to know what's happening in this area.
Appreciate it, Mike.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
Thank you, Dale.
All right.
So that was Dale Whitaker, everybody.
Again, his website is Dale Whitaker.com.
And you can check out his book, The Gold Grift, at booksellers everywhere.
He also mentioned, and I will mention our sponsor, Battalion Medals.
You can reach them.
You can go through medalswithmike.com.
It takes you to battalion medals, or you can just type in battalion medals.
Not everybody knows how to spell battalion, so sometimes that gets a little tricky.
And I think Dale said if you put in battalionmedals.com/slash tricked, that it takes you to a form that you can fill out.
If you think you have been tricked or taken by some dishonest dealers, then you can fill out that form and battalion medals and Dale will help you.
I do want to mention, again, Battalion is a sponsor of ours.
I conducted a lot of due diligence years ago before doing business with Battalion.
And I have resisted efforts of other gold dealers to take me away from Battalion, some of whom offered very large amounts of money.
We are compensated.
If you use our discount code Ranger, Battalion waives the shipping insurance fee if you purchase gold and silver from them.
And we are compensated with a crazy small amount if you do that.
Believe me, it's nowhere near what I was offered.
It's not even orders of magnitude close to what I was offered before.
But I believe in integrity and honesty.
And mostly I promote gold and silver because I want you to survive the currency collapse that's underway.
I want you to do well.
If you've worked hard, you deserve to keep your life savings.
And that's why I want to have people on like Dale that help you stay educated, stay informed, so you can keep what you earn and make it through these very trying times.
So thank you for watching today.
I'm Mike Adams of Brightown.com.
Take care.
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