https://americanpension.com/pages/home



There is no indication that First Utah Bank actually knew it was the custodian of the IRAs that American Pension Services was the 'administrator' of, but there is a high likelihood that if the investors aren't made whole they will come after the deep pockets of First Utah Bank under the guise that as the 'IRA Custodian' they had a fiduciary duty to notice/identify/report/prevent the alleged fraudulent activity.

As a smaller bank we have been approached repeatedly over the years by "Self Directed IRA" companies to either enter into a partnership with them to offer our clients alternative IRA investment options or to simply allow them to have operating accounts with us in exchange for being a passive nominee custodian with, according to them, no duty to actively engage in any of the responsibilities of an IRA Custodian because they would handle the administration for their clients. I've been successful in convincing executive management that the risk is too great and there is really no way as a bank to surrender your duties as an IRA Custodian to a third party with no responsibility for their actions whatsoever. I'm sure though that there are a lot more instances of the above type of fraudulent schemes going on than have currently come to light and there will be unsuspecting banks that find themselves in the position of being a deep pocketed third party in a lawsuit.

and a couple of articles with more details:
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140430/FREE/140439988#

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57919716-79/funds-deyoung-accounts-attorney.html.csp

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57879654-79/pension-customers-deyoung-funds.html.csp

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2014/lr22982.htm

As a smaller bank we have been approached repeatedly over the years by "Self Directed IRA" companies to either enter into a partnership with them..............


And there is a specific reason for that. Some smaller banks, especially the locally owned ones in which the owner, president and other executives have never been outside the 20 mile radius in which the bank resides in their lives see nothing but dollar signs. Of course that is true sometimes even if they are well traveled

I was at a rural Texas bank that was facilitating multi-million dollar wire transfers for their good customer that showed up on their doorstep one day (new member of the local country club) that just happened to own a pharmaceutical company in the Cayman Islands. Why they needed a $65MM rural bank involved was pretty obvious.