Most people reach this page after hearing a radio or television advert for silver and wanting to know whether it is legitimate. We are not going to call a trading company a scam, because that is a legal characterisation and not ours to make. What we can do is show you the finding a state attorney general actually made, and then hand you the arithmetic so you never need anyone's opinion again.
Commissions of up to 33 percent, not disclosed
New York's Attorney General resolved a case against Lear Capital and founder Kevin DeMeritt for $6 million, over allegations the company failed to disclose commissions of up to 33 percent. The advertising was central: investors, described as including many elderly residents of Western New York, were moved from retirement accounts into precious metals. Lear agreed to clear fee disclosure and a 24-hour cancellation window for New York customers going forward.
Source: ag.ny.gov, Attorney General James secures $6 million from Lear Capital
Why silver specifically
Silver is the metal of choice for high-pressure selling, and the reason is mechanical rather than sinister. Silver trades at a small fraction of the gold price, so a $50,000 order becomes a physically large pile of coins. A large pile feels like value. It is also much easier to hide a wide spread inside a product priced in the tens of dollars than one priced in the thousands, because the buyer is not tracking a per-ounce figure they know by heart.
Add the standard move from plain bullion into graded or limited-edition coins, and the gap between what you paid and what the silver is worth can become very wide indeed. That gap is invisible until the day you try to sell.
The arithmetic, so you can do this yourself
- Take the total you were quoted, including every fee.
- Divide it by the number of ounces of actual silver you receive.
- Compare that per-ounce figure to the live spot price.
A few percent over spot is a normal dealer margin on standard bullion. Around 20 percent should stop you. At 33 percent, silver has to rise about 50 percent before you break even.
Notice that this test works on any dealer, including the one we happen to earn a commission from. That is deliberate. A test you can run yourself is worth more than a recommendation from a website, and it does not expire the way a review does.
If you already bought
- Work out what you actually hold. Weight and purity, not the name on the packaging. Run the per-ounce calculation above on your original invoice.
- Ask for a buyback quote today. That single number tells you where you really stand, and it is often the moment people discover the spread.
- Check whether your state ran a claims process. Several state regulators issued alerts and there was a multistate distribution to affected investors following the bankruptcy. Your state securities regulator is the place to ask, and it costs nothing.
- If it is inside an IRA, do not fix it by withdrawing. Taking metal or cash out of a precious metals IRA the wrong way turns a bad purchase into a taxable distribution as well. Use a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer. Our rollover guide covers it.
Related
Checked against the New York Attorney General's published record on 1 August 2026. We have no commercial relationship with Lear Capital.
Thomas Richardson
The byline we publish our retirement research under. We are not licensed advisers. We read the primary sources, compare what companies publish, and write down what we find, including where a figure could not be verified.
Fact-checked by Sarah Mitchell, CPA — Licensed CPA with 15 years in retirement tax planning