Downtown Austin vault of precious metals turns up mostly empty

Gold first caught Ron Barbala’s eye in 2008. With the housing values plummeting and the stock market cratering, the Phoenix engineer felt betrayed by the economy, which increasingly he considered little more than a mirage. “The standard American method of investing, all of it,” he said. “I’d had it.”

Desperate for something of value he literally could put his hands on, he began acquiring gold and silver bullion. “Its value is in its physicality,” Barbala said. “It just is.”

Over the next several years, Barbala bought more than $100,000 worth of precious metals through a little-known downtown Austin company. Started in 1999, Bullion Direct began as an online virtual trading floor where thousands of customers could buy and sell precious metals to each other, with the company taking a cut of each sale.

Later, it began selling the metals to customers directly. It also stored the commodities for those who requested it — such as Barbala — with the glittering coins and bars kept safely in individual piles for each investor in an old bank vault in its Lavaca Street offices.

At least that’s what everyone thought.

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He's a fool for not taking physical delivery to begin with. And we all know that a wise man once said "A fool and his money are soon parted"... 

One of the first things I remember my dad drilling into my head was "if it ain't in your hand, it ain't yourn boy". 

Situations like this is how people go missing in the middle of the night...