Another Reason Why If You Don't Hold It, You Don't Own It!

There are many, many lessons here. If guilty, the guy is scum, but when I read things like "basically my wife's entire IRA," all I can do is shake my head. That worked real well for Enron and WCOM employees, huh? Research. Start small. Phase investments. Diversify. Take possession. Attempt a transfer. Lessons all. The only guarantee would have been steering completely clear, but there's little excuse for 6 figure losses in an Internet company with "Discount" in the name.

I'm thinking of that old P. T. Barnum saying, maybe they born every minute.

What could he have possibly said to make that guy invest the whole IRA? He must have had a weapon.

I'm inclined to share an old Will Rogers saw, "The return of my money is more important to me than the return on my money."

Rediculous.....

Very scary, kinda like the Bernie Madoff of gold - similar to Bernie's victims, these gold investors might be guilty of letting larger-than-reasonable profits cloud their judgement. Very sad, seems like for every dollar you have, there's someone out there that will take it from you...

While there is some truth to this, it is difficult to make such blanket statements that can truthfully cover all possible situations. In my case, for example, I invest in a number of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and PMs. I don't really hold any of these, with the exception of a small amount of silver that I am collecting. The rest are in 3 brokerage accounts with large nationally known financial custodians. I am pretty sure I can deal safely with them because they manage many billions of dollars and cannot afford the notoriety of fooling around with other people's money. They earn huge amounts of money managing the money that people deposit with them and the last thing they need are law suits and additional government scrutiny. After dealing with these companies for 20-30 years, I have not had a single problem getting an accurate accounting of my money, making transfers of money in and out of their system, or in getting checks drawn on my accounts sent to me. For the very reason of this topic, I would not invest with anyone who did not have more to lose by fooling around than I have by investing with them.

OneBowl had a great reply to this topic. It is excellent advice for anyone looking to invest without getting ripped off.

This will probably be happening a lot. Gold is in right now and investors are going to sucker the innocent. I see it a lot with the elderly who are all too forgiving. So rough to see it happen to them when they work so hard for their money

But like another poster said, invest little. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm at a young age and by saving little by little, I feel I'm doing the right thing.

My gold rule is very simple and effective. When I hand you my money, I want my gold.

No online forms, no Craigslist, no shipping address or credit card / wire transaction and finally no BS.

I do these type of transactions at my local dealer and the coin shows where they stand behind what they sell.

Oh, PLEASE! "Investors" do not sucker or rip off anyone. Thieves do that. Let's keep the nomenclature straight here. I am an investor and have never cheated anyone... ever. I fully plan to keep that record intact. Been at it for 30+ years, so it is pretty much a habit with me by now. I know that there are people out there who do lie, cheat, and steal but simply being an investor does not make a person do those things. They are like that well before they pretend to be investors.