Gold Scams: Don't Fall For Them!

Photo from sammyboy.com

This BullionStar article on scams in the gold market caught my attention. It's true. You might think that just because gold is a good investment, that you can just go along with whatever business that purports to take advantage of the rising price of gold. The truth is, scams are aplenty, and this is not just limited to the 'paper trading' going on with GLD, SLV and other ETFs. Even when it comes to physical gold, some people have somehow managed to come up with their own hare-brained Ponzi schemes.

The people likely to fall for these scams are those who just look to the returns they envision deriving from gold, without understanding the particular business plans of where they're buying. How ironic is it, that gold is seen as a bullish asset because central banks are printing money out of thin air, and these scams are based on physical gold being as accessible as thin air!

Let me relate my experience with one such company being accused of such practices (court cases are pending): Genneva. Nice touch, to name your company after a place (Geneva, Switzerland) known for its gold reserves. I actually visited their office once, while scouring for places to purchase physical gold. The peculiar thing was the lack of actual physical gold available in the store, and what I did see from their brochures weren't brands like PAMP, or coins like the Panda, but bars minted from God knows where. I smiled and said thank you to the one attending to me, while in my mind I was going, "I may want to buy gold here in Singapore, but there is no way I'll be buying gold from you!"

I've seen some good places to purchase gold and silver in Singapore, and BullionStar also looks like it's worth checking out as well.