I would tell the broker that his Brokers License is on the line with this mistake and his firms local license .
I would visit the local office in person and request a meeting with The Manager of the office immediately .
This is very reckless situation with Tax ramifications and SEC would take note if not corrected .
No need for a lawyer yet. Tomorrow morning, call your brokers manager, explain the situation and demand he get back to you by the end of the day with an explanation and an action plan/timeframe for resolution. If you have stocks, ask the manager to check the ex dividend dates as you don’t want any dividends disappearing.
Write a letter, fax it, mail it certified to the broker dealers office of supervisor y jurisdiction.
Tell your broker by fax or letter or email whatever it takes to get the shared back. In the meantime submit a ACAT to transfer all securities to the new broker unless you want to pay for certificates to be issued.
Tell FINRA if you think it’s more than some doofus in the back office being a doofus.
Your securities are safeguard up to 500k in securities and cash, but only 100k in cash for broker fraud. Furthermore since they are held in streetname they will be returned no problem.
If they give you a problem write FINRA
Don’t contact the NASD, they are closed. Re-branding as FINRA
First!
Change your name!
Because “Homer1” may be more common than you suspect.
(Sorry.....couldn’t help it)
I have seen a lot of requests for advice over the years here. This one gets some sort of a prize. Just....wow.
The best advice given was by Attention Surplus Disorder, above. Stay away from lawyers for now unless you want to help them buy that new boat.
You gave the firm fiduciary responsibility to handle your account, but they screwed up, probably honestly. If they are reputable firm, they will have good records and will be able to track the entire chain of custody of your account holdings, and their compliance officer will be more than happy to research it incase it is a systematic failure that could ruin the firm.
Keep calm, gather your account statements, and ask the brokerage to give you the phone number and address of their compliance office. When you call the compliance office, explain clearly what the problem is and ask him when you can expect the stock or funds to be returned to your account. He will probably say he will have to get back to you, then ask him when you can expect him to call you back and what the next steps are.
(For about twenty years I helped Wall Street firms and regulators handle transaction issues, but on a much larger scale than this.)
I would think the broker carries Error and Omission Insurance.
This should be easily traceable.
Hopefully it works out soon. It might be wise to notify the brokers main office if he’s an agent for one of the big companies.
Contact the Securities and Exchange Commission and any other governmental agencies which are supposed to oversee brokerage firms and practices that you can think of and let them know what happened - keep copies of the letters to show the broker if he/she doesn’t get the problem cleared up like yesterday....
You’re wasting time asking on a forum. Lawyer up.
Social security numbers or taxpayer id numbers are tied to the account. Regs for financial institutions require them to obtain your ssn to check for backup withholding.
If they screwed up, they fix it.
To avoid lawyer fees, tell them you are going to report it as theft to the police - either identity theft on the part of the transferee, or “regular” theft on the part of the brokerage.
What a mess. I hope it gets straightened out without any loss to you.
Spoke to them this AM, and they are going to make things whole again...so good all around. Shouldn’t need to lawyer up...