Regal Assets Review: Fees, Ratings and Complaints

Regal Assets was once one of the most visible names in alternative-asset retirement accounts, and a Regal Assets gold IRA came with a pioneering crypto option and a flat-fee pitch. It is no longer a choice we can defend. In October 2024, a federal court found the company, its CEO, and a former president liable for misappropriating more than $21 million from retirement savers, and the firm has since stopped operating. This review explains what Regal Assets was, what regulators found, and what former customers can do now.

What Is Regal Assets?

Regal Assets was a precious metals dealer and self-directed IRA facilitator founded in 2009 by Tyler Gallagher, most commonly listed as operating out of Burbank, California, though its BBB profile was filed in Beverly Hills and a few sources list a 2008 founding [verify]. At its peak, the company marketed gold and silver IRAs, physical bullion sales, and, later, cryptocurrency IRAs, positioning itself as an “international alternative assets firm” with claimed transactions exceeding $1 billion.

For years, the firm’s public profile was unusually high for a dealer of its size. Gallagher joined the Forbes Finance Council in December 2018, contributed commentary under that banner, and the company sought press attention for its growth into Dubai, where it obtained what press releases described as the first crypto-commodities license from the DMCC free zone in late 2017. Its marketing leaned on flat annual fees, rapid delivery promises, and ratings badges, a combination that made it a fixture of gold IRA comparison content through the late 2010s.

The contrast between that profile and what followed is the core of this review. Between 2021 and 2023, customer complaints about undelivered metals and stalled refunds accumulated, Washington State regulators issued an enforcement order, and in September 2023 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) filed a joint civil action alleging a nationwide fraud scheme. By the time the courts ruled, the company no longer existed as an operating business. If you are evaluating dealers that are actually open for business today, our best gold IRA companies roundup covers the current field.

How a Regal Assets Gold IRA Works

Because the company is closed, this section describes how a Regal Assets gold IRA worked historically, in the past tense, since no new accounts can be opened. Like other gold IRA dealers, Regal did not act as its own custodian. The process started when a customer rolled over or transferred funds from an existing 401(k), IRA, or similar tax-advantaged account into a self-directed IRA held by a third-party custodian. Regal then sold the customer IRS-approved precious metals — gold, silver, platinum, or palladium coins and bars meeting the fineness standards the IRS applies to retirement accounts — and arranged storage at a depository.

The company’s pitch had two distinctive elements. The first was pricing: instead of the scaled percentage fees many dealers charge, Regal advertised a flat annual administration fee and a flat annual storage fee regardless of account size, plus no charge for rollovers. The second was speed. Its marketing promised fully insured delivery within a week of purchase, a claim that appeared in its own promotional copy on review platforms as late as 2022.

That promise is precisely where the record fell apart. The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions later found that metals were delivered more than twenty weeks after purchase in documented cases, or in some instances never delivered at all and never refunded. The mechanics of the account were standard; the execution was not. Savers who want to understand how a properly run gold IRA should function — custodian separation, insured storage, confirmed delivery — can compare that structure against our rating methodology before committing funds to any dealer.

Regal Assets Fees and Minimums

Regal Assets’ historical fee schedule was one of its main selling points, and on paper it was genuinely competitive. Independent listings, including Retirement Living’s December 2025 update, recorded a $100 annual administration fee and a $150 annual storage fee, both flat rather than percentage-based, with no fees charged for rollovers or 401(k) transfers. A $0 setup fee was part of the marketing, though we were unable to confirm that figure against a current company document [verify]. The stated minimum investment was $5,000 for a metals IRA and $10,000 for the crypto offering [verify].

For a $50,000 account, that flat model works out to roughly 0.5% per year, which compares well against dealers charging scaled admin and storage fees that grow with account value. The picture was less clear on the crypto side: contemporaneous Forbes reporting on the 2018 crypto IRA boom noted upfront fees near 10% across the industry, and Regal’s crypto pricing was commission-based and not publicly standardized [verify].

There is a more uncomfortable entry for the ledger. A federal court found that Regal took customer funds allocated for metals purchases and diverted them, meaning the true cost to affected customers was not the $250 in published annual fees but the entire amount they wired. With that record, and with the company closed, the published schedule is effectively historical. Here is the fee table as it stood:

The Crypto IRA Story

Regal Assets deserves genuine credit as an early mover, and this part of its history is worth setting down accurately. In late 2017, the company obtained what its press described as the first crypto-commodities license issued by Dubai’s DMCC free-zone authority, and it began marketing cryptocurrency IRAs alongside gold and silver. By 2018, Gallagher was being quoted as a crypto-and-gold IRA authority, and in December 2018 he joined the Forbes Finance Council. The Dubai expansion became a signature part of the brand story: a Beverly Hills-area dealer presenting itself as a global alternative-assets firm with licenses no competitor had.

It is worth being careful about what the press coverage actually was. Forbes’ February 2018 coverage of the crypto IRA trend was largely a warning — the article and similar pieces flagged upfront fees near 10% and the speculative nature of holding digital assets in retirement accounts. Being covered by national outlets, or holding a trade license in a foreign free zone, is not the same as being vetted by those outlets or by any US financial regulator. Regal was skilled at generating coverage, and that visibility helped it win customers who might otherwise have chosen a quieter, better-run firm.

The crypto product itself is not what ended the company. The CFTC and DFPI case concerned customer funds given to Regal to purchase precious metals through self-directed IRAs — the core gold IRA business — and the court found those funds were misappropriated. But the crypto era matters to this review for a structural reason: the high-pressure growth marketing that surrounded the crypto boom, the international expansion, and the constant stream of ratings claims all built the customer pipeline through which, regulators alleged, more than 120 savers lost more than $21 million. Investors considering crypto exposure in an IRA today should note that the regulatory and custody landscape has matured considerably since 2018, and should read the IRS rules on retirement account investments before touching any alternative asset.

Ratings and Customer Feedback

The surviving review record is lopsidedly negative, and the direction of travel matters: the complaints cluster in the company’s final years, not its early ones. Regal Assets’ Trustpilot profile remains online but carries only a small number of reviews — on the order of two dozen by our last check [verify] — and recent entries are dominated by one-star accounts with language like “I’d give Regal Assets no stars if I could” and references to retirement funds that were never recovered. One reviewer described backing out in 2022 before funding an order, which matches the timeline when delivery failures were becoming public.

Contrast that with the firm’s historical ratings footprint. Aggregator Birdeye listed 1,821 reviews for the company, averaging strongly positive, and older review sites repeated an A+ BBB rating and zero-complaint claims. That split is a caution about review platforms generally: high historical scores accumulated during the growth years, while the customers harmed in 2021–2023 arrived too late to be reflected in them. Washington State regulators, reviewing actual transaction records, documented cases of metals delivered more than twenty weeks late or never delivered without a refund — findings that no star rating captured until it was too late.

The BBB profile today lists Regal Assets LLC as not accredited and, per search records, out of business, with no current rating [verify]. Forum threads on Reddit’s silver-stacking communities have been hostile to the brand since 2021, with users alleging fake reviews and unrecovered funds; we treat forum claims as allegations, but in this case they pointed in the same direction the courts later confirmed. When the federal default judgments landed in October 2024, the last credible argument that negative feedback was a vocal minority disappeared with it.

Complaints and Red Flags

The documented problems follow a clear chronology, and we will lay it out with dates and sources so readers can verify each item.

Delivery and refund failures, 2021–2023: The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions’ order (S-22-3482-23) found that Regal Assets, Gallagher, former President Leah Donoso, and an associate sold commodity-purchase contracts to Washington residents between 2009 and 2022 with material misrepresentations, and documented metals delivered more than twenty weeks after purchase or not delivered at all, without refunds being offered. This directly contradicted the firm’s advertised one-week insured delivery. During the same period, a February 2023 Justia consumer question described a customer whose Roth IRA funds had been transferred to Regal for metals that never arrived — an individual account, but consistent with the state’s findings.

The vanishing act, 2022–2023: According to the CFTC’s complaint as reported, Regal’s registered agent resigned in September 2022, and the company ceased operations in late 2022. The Daily Beast published an investigation in February 2023 titled around the claim that Gallagher “took their millions for gold and vanished,” describing customers unable to reach anyone at the firm. Television coverage by Inside Edition featured an investor who said he put more than $1 million into the company without receiving his metals, and reported collective investor losses exceeding $10 million.

The federal case, 2023–2024: On September 27, 2023, the CFTC and California DFPI jointly sued, alleging the defendants misappropriated more than $21 million from more than 120 customers nationwide, diverting funds meant for metals purchases to luxury cars, an esports team, and other expenses, and using forged documents to conceal the scheme, per the court filings. On October 15, 2024, Judge Fernando M. Olguin of the US District Court for the Central District of California entered default judgments against all three defendants: over $21.9 million in restitution and over $27.3 million in civil monetary penalties, roughly $49 million combined, plus permanent bans from trading in CFTC-regulated markets.

The standing red flags, in summary: out-of-business status with unresolved restitution, delivery promises contradicted by regulators, a pattern of opaque crypto-side pricing, and ratings claims that aged badly. Any of these alone would disqualify a dealer from our coverage; Regal Assets accumulated all of them.

Is Regal Assets Legit?

No — as of October 2026, Regal Assets is not a legitimate option, and it is not really an option at all, because it is no longer in business. That answer deserves the “still in business?” treatment explicitly, since many review sites still rank the company as if 2019 were the present.

Here is the current-status picture we verified. Operations: the CFTC’s complaint states the company ceased operations in late 2022. Regulator records: Washington State’s DFI order and the federal judgment both name the company and its principals as respondents found to have violated commodity and securities rules. BBB status: the profile lists Regal Assets LLC as not accredited and indicates it is out of business, with no current rating [verify]. Website: when we checked regalassets.com in October 2026, the domain returned a Cloudflare resolution error (code 1001) and the HTTPS connection failed outright — there is no working company site. Listings services such as Tracxn classify the company as deadpooled. The phone number on legacy review pages, the account representatives, and the buyback desk all lead nowhere.

On the underlying legitimacy question, the court record is dispositive: a US District Court found the company and its two senior officers liable for fraudulent misappropriation of customer funds and ordered approximately $49 million in restitution and penalties. That is not a customer-service dispute or a ratings quibble; it is an enforceable federal judgment.

For former customers: the restitution award exceeds $21.9 million, but collecting from default defendants is often slow and may recover only part of losses. The CFTC’s Notice of Covered Action 2024-035 allowed whistleblower claims through early 2025, which has passed [verify]. Affected customers can contact the CFTC and the California DFPI for case updates and should consult an attorney about direct claims. Be wary of any “recovery service” demanding upfront fees.

How We Rated Regal Assets

Our scoring follows the published methodology, which weights five criteria and rates firms as they stand today — not on their historical reputation. We applied it to the record as it exists in October 2026.

Fees (2.0/5, weighted 25%): Regal’s published schedule was genuinely competitive — flat $100 administration and $150 storage fees, no rollover charges, no scaled percentage drag. But a fee model only counts if the firm honors it, and the federal court found customer funds allocated for metals were diverted rather than spent. Effective costs for affected customers were catastrophic, and the schedule is now unenforceable history.

Customer feedback (1.0/5, weighted 25%): The surviving Trustpilot profile is small and dominated by recent one-star accounts describing unrecovered retirement funds, while the BBB lists the firm as out of business. The pattern of complaints from 2021 onward — undelivered metals, unanswered calls, stalled refunds — matches what regulators later documented in enforcement orders, which is the strongest corroboration feedback can receive.

Transparency and education (1.0/5, weighted 25% → 20%): Regal published clear fee tables and produced extensive marketing content, so this might once have scored mid-range. The federal complaint, however, alleged forged documents used to hide misappropriation from customers, and Washington State found material misrepresentations in the sale of metal-purchase contracts. Deliberate concealment is the opposite of transparency, and it caps this score at the floor.

Buyback and liquidity (1.0/5, weighted 15%): The company marketed buyback support historically, but a defunct firm cannot repurchase anything. Customers seeking to liquidate in 2021–2023 reported being unable to recover metals or cash at all, which is the most severe liquidity failure we score. There is no functioning desk today, so the effective score cannot rise above the minimum.

Products and storage (1.0/5, weighted 15%): The product catalog — IRS-approved coins and bars, segregated depository storage, and a then-novel crypto IRA — was broad for its era. But the enforcement record showed the products were not reliably delivered or funded as represented. A catalog that exists on paper while metals sit unpurchased in practice earns no credit for product quality.

Weighted overall: 1.25 out of 5, our lowest published score.

Should You Open a Gold IRA with Regal Assets?

You cannot, and you should not want to. The company stopped operating around late 2022, the courts have found its principals liable for fraud, and its website and phone lines are dead. Any website, call center, or representative presenting itself as Regal Assets in 2026 should be treated as impersonation and reported to the CFTC and your state regulator.

If you are a former customer with funds or metals still outstanding, act through official channels: the CFTC case page and the California DFPI can confirm what the restitution orders cover, and a consumer or securities attorney can advise on direct claims. Document what you paid, what you were promised, and what you received.

If you are shopping for a gold IRA today, use this review as a case study in due diligence rather than a ranking entry. Verify a dealer’s standing with your state’s regulator and the BBB before wiring anything, confirm that your metals are purchased through a self-directed IRA custodian you can contact independently, insist on written delivery and storage confirmations, and treat flat-fee or fast-delivery promises that sound too clean as questions to answer, not facts to accept. Our current best gold IRA companies guide covers dealers with active operations and clean recent records, including Augusta Precious Metals, Birch Gold Group, and Noble Gold. Regal Assets’ story is the clearest recent reminder of why those checks exist.