Anthony Weiner (left) issues a report slamming Fox News pundit and radio host Glenn Beck and Goldline's use of fear mongering tactics to market gold. | Composite image by POLITICO Weiner targets Beck and gold retailer

Talk show host Glenn Beck and Goldline International, a California-based gold retailer, have colluded to use fear mongering tactics to bilk investors, according to a stinging report issued Tuesday by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

The report alleges that Goldline grossly overcharges for the gold coins that constitute the bulk of its business, uses misleading sales techniques and takes advantage of fears about President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the economy – which are stoked by its stable of paid conservative endorsers including Beck, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and Fred Thompson – “to cheat consumers.”


Goldline is the exclusive gold sponsor of Beck’s radio show. But, as POLITICO detailed in December, a number of gold selling companies pay other conservative commentators as sponsors and also advertise on a variety of conservative talk radio shows, as well as Fox News, which airs Beck’s television program.

“Goldline rips off consumers, uses misleading and possibly illegal sales tactics, and deliberately manipulates public fears of an impending government takeover – this is a trifecta of terrible business practices,” said Weiner. He said a December report in POLITICO report prompted his scrutiny of Goldline.

“This industry goes beyond Goldline, but the Goldline circle has been particularly cynical in its cultivation of these conservative commentators,” he said. “There are two industries that are intertwined here in this cynical play: the media industry and the online gold industry, and there is a lot of blame to go around.”

As for Beck, Weiner asserted he “should be ashamed of himself.”

A member of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, Weiner said he plans this week to introduce legislation to require Goldline and other precious metal retailers to fully disclose all their fees, how much the price of gold would need to rise in order for their customers’ investments to yield a profit, and the purchase price, melt value and resale value of the metal that constitutes their products. And he called on the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “the shady business practices conducted by Goldline International.”

Goldline president and CEO Mark Albarian said Weiner is targeting the company because of its relationship with Beck, the popular conservative radio and television talk show host who has drawn rebukes from the White House for his scathing attacks on Obama.

“It feels like it’s politically motivated in that neither the Congressman nor anybody from his office ever contacted executives form the company to really ask the important questions that they need to ask to understand this business,” said Albarian, adding Weiner “doesn’t get” the gold retail business. The congressman’s report, Albarian asserted, seems driven by “our relationship with Glenn Beck, which we are very happy with.”

On his radio show Tuesday Beck teed off on Weiner, pointing out that his newly hired press secretary until recently worked at Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog that Beck has attacked in the past for its repeated criticisms of his ethics and integrity, including over his gold sponsorships. On Tuesday, Beck accused Weiner of leveling a politically motivated attack on Beck and Goldline at the behest of the Obama administration.

“This is incredible. This is incredible,” he said. “This is again another arm of this administration coming out to try to shut me down,” he alleged, calling Weiner and the Obama administration “monsters” and the report a return to the “McCarthy era.”

Levin, a rival radio host, in an email to POLITICO blasted Weiner as “a grandstanding leftist” and said of his report “there's nothing here but Weiner's self-serving assertions.”

According to the report, Weiner’s office compared the prices of 18 gold coins (half of which were collectible, half of which are still circulating) offered on Goldline’s website with their “melt value” – an assessment based on weight, purity and the price of gold – and found the average Goldline mark-up was 90 percent above the melt value of the coin.

Additionally, the report asserts “Those same 18 coins could be found much cheaper on similar precious coin seller’s websites.” Plus, it alleges that Goldline’s salespeople misrepresent themselves as “investment advisers” or “financial advisers” – “implying that they have some sort of fiduciary responsibility to get you the most return on your investment.”

Instead, the report contends they “aggressively push the sale of numismatic coins (collector) over bullion (pure gold) because the company has the largest profit margin on them and the sales representatives make the largest commission.” And through its commercials and salespeople, Goldline makes the case for collectible gold coins over more reliable bullion by suggesting that the Obama administration could repeat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1933 gold call-up, which required citizens to turn over gold bullion and other forms of the metal, but exempted “gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins."

The report points out that Roosevelt’s executive order – which Goldline features on its website -- did not define “special value” or “collector value.” Nonetheless, the report contends that Goldline and other retailers with assistance from conservative talkers “perpetuate this myth because it makes the selling of high-priced numismatic coins easier.”

Conservative talkers whose shows are sponsored by Goldline push the idea “that government is out of control and unsafe, inflation will continue to devalue the dollar and that as an investor you should protect yourself by stock piling gold coins,” the report contends.

Beck, who has taken to comparing the state of the U.S. economy to that of modern day Zimbabwe or pre-Hitler Germany, has been urging his devotees to invest in gold, and bragging about his own gold investments, since at least 2008.

Last year, for instance, he used one of his trademark blackboard illustrations to provide tips for weathering “the three scenarios that we could be facing: recession, depression or collapse.” In the case of a recession, he said “you need to have something left. Get out of debt and save.” Beck urged viewers to add “fruit cellars … like our grandparents used to have” in the case of depression, and in the case of a total collapse of the economic system, he recommended what he called “the three system. It’s God, gold and guns.”

At times, the dire forecasts about imminent economic collapse offered by Beck and other conservative talkers during their shows are echoed by grave intonations in gold commercials, some of which also feature the very same commentators.

Weiner said “people shill for products that are problematic all the time. What’s different here is that so much of the commentary bleeds into the advertising.” And he asserted “it certainly does appear that the zealotry of these conservative commentators is because they’re being paid to advertise.”

But Weiner, a liberal who represents New York City, brushed off allegations that his report was politically motivated. “My message is directed at consumers, telling them to beware that the things that Goldline and Glenn Beck are selling are essentially rip-offs,” he said, adding “if these were all liberal commentators who were promoting a company that has a 200-percent mark-up on its gold, I would like to think that I would be just as hard on them.”

Other gold retailers that have used conservative commentators to hawk their product include Swiss America (which has boasted as pitchmen 1950s pop star-cum-Christian conservative personality Pat Boone and firebrand talk show host Michael Savage) and Rosland Capital (which has featured endorsements from G. Gordon Liddy and Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly, Brian Kilmeade and Andrew Napolitano, among others).

Albarian said “there are a number of sellers like Goldline, although we think we’re the biggest, but you see their ads everywhere, and nobody else was mentioned” in Weiner’s report. “Why is Goldline the only company mentioned, when we believe that in many ways we have best practices within the business,” said Albarian.

He conceded “we do benefit from fears about the economy,” but he asserted his company is set apart from its competitors by its A + rating from the Better Business Bureau, its compliance department and its written account agreements and refund privileges for new clients.

“All of our competitors can’t say that,” he said, adding that Goldline also advertises on CNN and on the Internet, and previously had an endorsement deal with the late Jay Johnson, who served as a Democratic member of Congress and was appointed director of the U.S. Mint by President Bill Clinton.

“We’re not a political company,” Albarian asserted, adding that if Johnson were still alive “we never would have stopped with Jay. Jay would have been our spokesperson, who was a Democrat. He had a passion for gold. We pick people based on their passion, not their politics.”

As for Beck, Albarian said “before we met Glenn, he was a client and we interviewed him about his passion for gold. He really believes in gold and, if anybody knows anything about Glenn, he just says what he believes.”

But Michael Smerconish, a Philadelphia-based talk show host who leans slightly right asserted Goldline canceled its advertisements on his syndicated show after about one year because he wasn’t conservative enough.

“I think their business depends on a very conservative brand of talk radio and mine isn’t,” Smerconish told POLITICO.