A Disney Channel star who skated through “Brink!” and voiced Sid in “Toy Story” now stands accused of steering an elderly couple’s retirement savings into $2.1 million worth of gold coins.
Norman Greenberg, 97, and Sheila Greenberg, 85, accuse actor Erik von Detten, 44, and his employer, Rosland Capital, of financial elder abuse and fraud in a lawsuit that became public Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, when court documents were first reported.
The couple sued May 11 in Los Angeles Superior Court as trustees of their family trust, naming von Detten and the Los Angeles precious-metals asset management and sales firm where he worked as an account representative. The allegations have not been proven in court.
Hundreds of Similar Stories, Committee Says
An investigation into what brought the company down has led Rosland’s creditors’ committee to seek a subpoena for von Detten. He appears to have “played an instrumental part in the Debtor’s business and its financial collapse,” the committee said.
The committee says the Greenbergs’ experience is not unusual. “It is one of hundreds. Creditors, including the other Committee members, have described remarkably similar experiences: trust cultivated, expertise professed, reliance encouraged, and substantial savings ultimately lost with zero information about where their money has gone.”
The committee’s attorneys also wrote: “The Committee believes the facts point to something far more troubling: a business that preyed on a vulnerable population, stole customer money while its ability to perform was collapsing, lied to its own customers about what their money would be used for, and ultimately left creditors to ask whether those funds were misused, diverted, transferred to insiders or affiliates, or simply consumed to keep the scheme alive.”
The Gold Never Came Home
The Greenbergs called Rosland in 2020 after watching its commercials, which the lawsuit describes as “designed in large part to appeal to senior citizens.” They asked for the firm’s top advisor and were connected with von Detten.
Phone calls followed, according to the complaint. Roughly $2 million was sitting in the couple’s retirement accounts, and von Detten said he had special knowledge of gold and could help them with it. The couple say they told him plainly that precious metals were something they had never bought and knew very little about, that their age was advanced, and that trust was what they wanted in an advisor.
Their first purchase put about $1 million into Lady Liberty gold coins, the suit says, and von Detten then put another $1 million of their money into more coins. Additional purchases between 2020 and 2021 brought the total to roughly $2.1 million, with another $114,000 coming in through the family trust. The coins went to a storage facility, not to the couple’s home.
Court filings lay out the orders: 1,328 Lady Liberty gold coins in October 2020, then 1,499 more the following month at 60 percent above market value. Next came 109 Lewis Chessmen King coins at a 36 percent premium, and 50 F1 coins at a 34 percent markup in August 2021, bought with family trust money.
All told, the complaint says, the couple paid $2,146,958.22 for gold coins worth roughly $1,360,925.00. They did so “without any notion that in a matter of just two weeks” their retirement accounts had been drained of more than $780,000.
The holdings are now worth about $1.3 million, a loss of roughly $900,000, according to the complaint. The Greenbergs say they learned the scale of the shortfall in 2025, after independently checking the value of their gold. They allege the coins carried excessive premiums and were worth little more than the metal inside them, and that Rosland used high-pressure tactics to sell far above market value.
Financial elder abuse, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud and conversion make up the five claims in the suit. California law treats financial elder abuse as conduct that can include wrongfully obtaining an older person’s property through fraud or other means likely to cause financial harm. The Greenbergs have requested a jury trial and are seeking no less than $1.8 million in damages for each allegation, plus prejudgment interest accruing at 10 percent and punitive damages.
What the Commercials Promised Retirees
Actor William Devane starred in the ads Rosland ran on Fox News and Newsmax, pitching gold coins as a hedge against inflation. The spots urged retirees to convert their IRAs into gold-backed funds and threw in a free safe for storage.
The company reported revenues of $151 million in 2021, then net losses of $24 million from 2022 to 2025. Sales representatives took 15 percent to 35 percent of the profit on each order, even if the order was later refunded.
The 470 Messages Left Behind
Rosland ceased operations and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 2, taking its case to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California. The filing listed some $64 million in liabilities against just $500,000 in assets. The New York Attorney General’s Office and the Securities and Exchange Commission have also scrutinized the company, bankruptcy filings show. When the company shut down, about 470 messages and voicemails were waiting from customers demanding refunds or demanding their gold.
Rosland Capital’s bankruptcy counsel told E! News the firm “cannot comment directly on the lawsuit,” adding that the attorneys “have worked with the Creditors Committee to create a liquidating trust which will have the power to investigate the financial history of the company to provide answers to the claims of the Greenbergs and other investors.” Another company recently acquired Rosland’s assets.
The bankruptcy could limit what the Greenbergs recover from the company. The claims against von Detten personally are a separate matter, and a case conference in the Los Angeles Superior Court case is set for Nov. 9.
From “Brink!” to Selling Gold
Von Detten began acting in 1992 with a 55-episode run on “Days of Our Lives,” voiced Sid Phillips in “Toy Story” in 1995 and starred in the 1998 Disney Channel movie “Brink!” He played Clu Bell on “So Weird” from 1999 to 2001 and voiced Erwin Lawson on “Recess.” That series ran from 1997 to 2001.
Josh Bryant, the love interest who dumps Anne Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis in “The Princess Diaries,” was his 2001 role. His other credits include “Escape to Witch Mountain” and “Complete Savages.”
Around 2010, von Detten largely stepped away from acting and moved into sales and finance. He joined Rosland in 2018, the same year his wife, Angela, a real estate agent, married him. The Lifetime movie “My Acting Coach Nightmare” brought him his first role in more than a decade in 2024.
