The fear of waking up one day and watching your 401(k) implode has continued to fester during the pandemic, the civil unrest and and a hotly charged election in 2020. 

So, why shouldn’t we expect that someone would try to scare people out of all their money and putting every dime they’ve got into, say, silver or gold coins and bars? Investors in their 60s, 70s and 80s are particularly vulnerable since they might have built up hundreds of thousands of dollars in life savings. 

A Maryland investor, according to a civil complaint filed by a group of regulators in September, was told that roughly $300,000 in precious metals bullion could be worth as much as $1.2 million in 10 years. At the same time, the investor was warned that every dollar could be lost in the stock market. 

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and 30 state