You can only put earned income into a Roth, you can only put up to 6K per year, and you are only eligible to put anything at all for a given year if your total earned income was below a fairly modest threshold. Roth IRA already has plenty of restrictions. The fact that one man happened to be some combo of smart/lucky to make the modest initial investment turn into billions is definitely not an indication of whether the Roth is problematic. I think the parent may be confused about the exact details of a Roth.