Cash stolen from thinkorswim accounts, any advice?

D

dis

Someone added a strange bank to my thinkorswim Rollover IRA account and used ACAT to transfer tens of thousands of dollars to the bank. In addition, cash was transferred from my trading account to the IRA account and from there to the bank.

The thief could have stolen a lot more money had he/she sold the stocks but, apparently, was unable to do so. This, and the lack of e-Mail notifications leads me to believe that the thief did not know the password and that the theft may have been an inside job.

It has been over a week since I reported the incident to thinkorswim's compliance officer Mr.Tim Cullen who promised to fix the problem by the middle of last week, but as of today the money is still missing. I left a voice message to a ToS manager that has not been returned. :mad:

Is there anything I can do to compel thinkorswim restore funds to my accounts ASAP?:mad:
 
Tens of thousands? TENS OF THOUSANDS?!?!

I would be on the phone three times daily with someone at ToS. Morning call "what are you going to do today?" Mid-day call "do you need any info or help doing what you are doing?" Evening call "how did it go today? do I have my money back"

If I didn't get through to someone, I would be writing certified letters to the president, CEO and board members.

Drop a line to my local newspaper and TV stations. They love a human interest story where a faceless corporation is the bad guy, and the hapless little guy was going to use the money to take care of his elderly mother. (You do have an elderly mother right? Perhaps a sickly child? An invalid aunt? Diabetic wife?)

Have you contacted the FBI? This most assuredly crossed a state line somewhere, unless you, the thief, the thief's bank, and the clearing firm for the thief's bank are all in Chicago with ToS.

Good luck. And get agressive.
 
Check if TOS will report the withdrawal to the IRS. If they will report the withdrawal then the IRS expects you to pay 10% early withdrawal penalty from your IRA account and also report the withdrawal as taxable income.
 
Assuming this is a true tale, let it be an object lesson for those that like to snipe at IB and others for supposedly draconian security measures.

TOS is now an Ameritrade Co. So you could kick it up to their offices
 
Quote from dis:

Someone added a strange bank to my thinkorswim Rollover IRA account and used ACAT to transfer tens of thousands of dollars to the bank. In addition, cash was transferred from my trading account to the IRA account and from there to the bank.

The thief could have stolen a lot more money had he/she sold the stocks but, apparently, was unable to do so. This, and the lack of e-Mail notifications leads me to believe that the thief did not know the password and that the theft may have been an inside job.

It has been over a week since I reported the incident to thinkorswim's compliance officer Mr.Tim Cullen who promised to fix the problem by the middle of last week, but as of today the money is still missing. I left a voice message to a ToS manager that has not been returned. :mad:

Is there anything I can do to compel thinkorswim restore funds to my accounts ASAP?:mad:
More...

You know, I would contact every and all regulatory agency you can. Heck call your local congress person. Without going into details I did that and the staff of said congressman called the futures broker and put some pressure on them to make sure I rightfully received my money, because they almost went under.

Now that said, are you sure you do have a key logger or trojan/virus running on your puter? If you don't already you should use a dedicated puter just for trading white listed IP addresses.
 
Quote from dis:
Someone added a strange bank to my thinkorswim Rollover IRA account and used ACAT to transfer tens of thousands of dollars to the bank. In addition, cash was transferred from my trading account to the IRA account and from there to the bank.

The thief ...
More...
IRS? :D
 
In all likely hood they will make you whole on this issue, once they investigate what actually happened. Online brokerage firms fix these incidents all the time. They just cannot afford for the public to lose their confidence in online trading. If that happens they would be out of business in a week.

There were lots of scams going on involving penny stocks in which persons from eastern europe would break into accounts and sell the account owners legitimate stocks and purchase penny stocks...simply to drive the price of the penny stocks up, so that the criminals could dump their shares at artifically inflated prices. Throughout the industry the victimized customers were made whole.
 
They are still doing that with pennies, but they figured out they don't have to break into any account to rob them.

It would be funny if it wasn't true.
 
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