I've faced this error using react-native 0.61.3-0.61.5, maybe older or newer versions don't have this bug.
Here is recommended way that didn't work for me.
1) I've placed fonts in src/assets/fonts folder
2) specified path to fonts folder in react-native.config.js -> assets: ["./src/assets/fonts/"]
3) tried running both react-native link
and npx react-native link