A San Diego gold retailer says its bank account was frozen and then permanently closed after two elderly customers became entangled in a gold-bar scam that had nothing to do with the business itself. Bullion Standard owner Kyle Horn says he watched his Bank of America account balance plunge to a pending debit of negative $456,000, even though the company says it was not involved in the fraud that hit its customers.
According to NBC 7 San Diego, the two customers, both of whom fell victim to a gold-bar scam in 2025, had made high-dollar purchases from Bullion Standard before the fraud was discovered. Bank of America placed holds on six purchases connected to those customers, which were reported as unauthorized and under investigation, per letters sent to Horn. The bank ultimately closed Bullion Standard's business account for good, a move Horn says devastated a company he says generates more than $100 million in annual sales.
The ordeal reportedly began after Horn received a text on March 11, 2025, warning him the account held less than $100, according to American Banker. That is when he discovered the negative $456,000 balance showing as a pending debit, tied to an account that had a balance-alert threshold below $100. The outlet reported that a Bank of America representative initially unfroze the account after confirming the two elderly customers had been scammed and that Bullion Standard was not the perpetrator.
Frozen Again, Then Closed for Good
The relief did not last. American Banker reported that Bank of America froze the account again on March 27, 2025, and later closed it entirely, leaving $50,268 trapped inside and inaccessible to Horn. NBC 7 reports Horn says the bank froze more than $50,000 in the account and that transactions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars were temporarily placed on hold during the ordeal.
The business says it was shut out of operation from March 11 through March 17, a disruption Horn estimated cost Bullion Standard more than $8 million in missed bullion business during those two weeks, per the same American Banker account. Horn has since filed a lawsuit against Bank of America over the account closure.
Bank of America has acknowledged that the seniors were defrauded by a third party and not by Bullion Standard, and the bank told NBC 7 Responds it eventually resolved the pending debits and returned the money to Bullion Standard before freezing the remaining funds again while reviewing and validating their source. The bank said it closes accounts when warranted based on factors such as repeated fraud complaints under its deposit account agreement, and it told NBC 7 Responds that ongoing litigation took precedence over its investigation and prevented further action on the now-closed account. Bank of America added that account decisions are made seriously and that client matters are resolved as quickly as possible.
A Scam That Begins With a Fake Hack Warning
The San Diego County District Attorney's Office has described the broader gold-bar scam as a fast-growing scheme targeting seniors. Officials say it typically begins with a pop-up alert warning victims that their computers have been hacked, after which a scammer posing as a government official claims criminals have compromised the victim's bank accounts. The scammer then instructs the victim to buy gold bars to protect their money, promising a courier will collect the gold for safekeeping during an investigation — before the scammers simply steal it.
District Attorney Summer Stephan has described the tactic as a combination of a tech-support scam with government impersonation, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. The warning applies whether the stranger claims to represent a government agency or offers another explanation entirely, and authorities say anyone instructed by a stranger to buy gold to protect their money could be a target.
Losses Mount Across San Diego County
The scale of the problem locally is striking. San Diego County's Elder Justice Task Force has tracked more than 4,600 victims and more than $325 million in elder financial-crime losses since the task force was founded in 2020, the Union-Tribune reported. Stephan said criminals stole $140 million from local seniors in just the 12 months before the March report, and officials say this style of tech-and-government impersonation scam has become more common over roughly the past two years.
One case the Union-Tribune detailed involved a 94-year-old San Diego man and his 87-year-old wife, who handed over gold bars in seven batches worth more than $3 million. NBC 7 has also reported that courier scams, in which fraudsters send someone to a victim's home to collect cash, have become the most common scam type seen locally, with seniors across the region reporting $140 million in losses in 2025 alone. In one Carlsbad sting covered by the station, police arrested a suspected courier investigators said was attempting to collect $20,000 from an elderly victim.
Federal regulators have flagged similar tactics nationwide. The Federal Trade Commission has said scammers have told older adults to transfer money out of accounts, deposit cash into Bitcoin ATMs, or hand cash or gold to couriers, insisting the real FTC would never ask for any of that. Separately, WTKR has reported on a nationwide scheme in which alleged scammers posed as bank security officers and government officials to persuade victims to convert money into gold or cryptocurrency, with court records in that case alleging victims surrendered roughly $20,000 in cryptocurrency and about $260,000 worth of gold on separate occasions; federal prosecutors allege that scheme ran from April 2025 through June 2026.
Bullion Standard Adds Safeguards for Senior Customers
In response to the scam that ensnared its customers, Bullion Standard has added gold-bar scam warnings to its customer contracts and implemented additional precautions when seniors make large precious-metal purchases. The company now asks questions whenever it identifies a senior making a larger-format purchase, an effort to catch potential scam victims before a transaction goes through.
For now, Horn's lawsuit against Bank of America remains the clearest path he has pursued toward recovering what he says the account closure cost his business. The case underscores a tension playing out well beyond San Diego, as banks move to freeze and close accounts tied to suspected fraud even when the business on the other end of the transaction says it did nothing wrong.
