I am writing this letter to voice my frustration and request for help. As a result of a fraud committed upon us, my wife and I have lost majority of our life savings.
My wife and I were recently out of the country for about a month. Upon returning from our overseas trip, we noted problems in our E*Trade brokerage account statement. We unexpectedly discovered that approximately $174,000.00 in equities and cash had been wired from our E*Trade brokerage account.
This discovery completely floored us, as we had not performed any type of transactions in months. We found that 6 transactions had occurred in about one and a half weeks. Each transaction was interestingly slightly under $30K. E*Trade was contacted about the matter and it was found that the funds were transfered into a Wells Fargo business account, with no further information provided. We do not have a Wells Fargo account and never have in the past.
When we contacted E*Trade, we were told that it made several attempts to contact us at home and work after the 6th transaction, but we obviously were unavailable because we were overseas. The transactions occurred even though it should have been obvious to E*Trade that there was fraudulent activity in the brokerage account.
We repeatedly contacted E*Trade about our money without any success.
When questioned about the transactions and the proposed plan to retrieve the funds, they indicated that the FBI had been contacted regarding the matter. When pressured for a response, they began to blame us, indicating that they are trying to help us but ultimately the money is our responsibility. We indicated that we put our funds in their system trusting their security.
It is clearly stated on the e-Trade website that a notarized letter is required for any sum of money to be transferred to a third party account, such as the Wells Fargo account that the money was transferred into. This comment has been avoided and no action appears to be taken on their part to retrieve the money. E*Trade claims that the hackers sent e-mails stating that the funds be wired out to a Wells Fargo account falsely claiming that the Wells Fargo account is in our name while it turns out it is indeed a business account and not in our name. E*Trade did not care to check before wiring out funds.
We have contacted the FBI, SEC, FTC, state attorney general's office, FTCC, Wells Fargo security, and our local police.
We worked very hard for this money and someone was able to easily steal it from us. E*Trade has refused to take responsibility, has refused to acknowledge that it violated its own policies in allowing our life savings to be taken from us, and has refused to refund our money.
Please help us retrieve our funds and protect others from the fraud that so easily occurred to us through E*Trade.
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