I’ve been an advisor for 34 years. Your synopsis lacks enough details.
Here is what I can tell you.
800 number employees at any financial institution are licensed but are generally very inexperienced and work in focused bit roles, so they lack experience and depth.
An investment account under Finra requires identity verification and knowing the customer. Even a discount firm for diy are responsible. There were lawsuits from dot com era.
Money laundering, regulation best interests, fraud, etc are heavily policed in my industry and the fines for non compliance are significant.
All that said, I suspect fraud today in the us financial markets make anything in the past look like a joke. We are in the golden age of fraud.
Yes, it does, because it is my coworker’s business. Just wondering if something happened with that process that I had not read.