ATLANTA — Concerned retirees from across the country have been reaching out after the story of an 86-year-old Georgia woman who had $50,000 stolen from her Fidelity account.
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“Somebody was asleep at the switch. Somebody was not doing their job, or this would have never happened,” Nancy Smith told WSB-TV consumer investigator Justin Gray.
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In September, three new joint accounts were created in Smith’s name.
Each of the accounts was linked to a different person Smith said she did not know and had never met.
“Eleven different transfers had been made by these three bogus people,” Smith said.
Smith said she never authorized the transfers or the changes to her accounts.
Robin Gunnink reached out to WSB-TV from Wisconsin.
“My 96-year-old mom had the same thing happen to her. On Oct. 11, a joint account was opened in her name. There was a withdrawal of $20,000. $10,000 was immediately put in another Fidelity account and left the Fidelity platform. She has not gotten it back,” she wrote.
Mark McConnell contacted WSB-TV from Renton, Washington. He said in October he discovered someone else’s name was added to his Fidelity trading account.
“This person had had access to my account for over a month,” McConnell told Gray.
McConnell said that while no money was stolen, he has filed three complaints with the Federal Trade Commission about the incident with his Fidelity account.
“There’s something wrong. And the problem, is they’re not being open and transparent,” he said.
A Fidelity representative told McConnell it was not fraud in his case, but instead “a representative processing error.”
Fidelity wrote, “We confirm that the appropriate steps were taken to close the impacted account and transfer the assets to a new account.”
McConnell worries that his personal information could have been compromised.
“All I want to know is if anybody clicked into my account one and two, did they download anything? Because I now need to protect myself,” McConnell said.
It is important to note that account maintenance errors, such as this one, are rare.
While Fidelity will not discuss individual cases, a spokesperson tells WSB-TV fraud investigations can take several weeks.
Fidelity sent the following statement to WSB-TV:
“To protect customer privacy, we do not discuss individual matters and work with our customers directly to answer any questions they may have concerning suspicious activity. We understand scams can impact individuals and their families and encourage everyone to take steps to protect themselves and their accounts, including monitoring accounts frequently for suspicious activity and contacting financial institutions directly should anything out of the ordinary, including phone calls or texts from unknown parties, occur.”
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