Fidelity brokerage IRS scam
On Friday 8/14, I woke up to a ACH withdrawal initiation of $4025 from my brokerage account. The initiation was made at fidelity at 0508 am. It was listed as “DIRECT DEBIT IRS USATAXPAY” and was still “processing.” I immediately called the 24 hr CS line where after I was put on hold multiple times, I was finally informed that fidelity typically will get requests from the IRS and are “obligated” to let them go in your account and just take your money!! I find this incredulous since they also said they are NOT obligated to inform the customer!!
I promptly voiced my displeasure with such practices if true, ‘cos why? I never received any notices in any form from the IRS, I DO NOT NOW OR HAVE EVER OWED THE IRS, plus I literally just opened my brokerage account in July!!!! Anyway, after throwing a fit, I was told to fill out the fidelity written statement of unauthorized debit form and send to them, which I promptly did! I also called IRS and was basically told “It wasn’t us!” And I’ve logged into my IRS account everyday since Friday and my balance since I’ve started paying taxes is “$0”
At this point, I’m very frustrated! I called Fidelity \~8-10 times on Friday, just to get some clarity on how such a thing could happen but got no reasonable response. I was told by the “back room” crew to wait for their investigation, “oh maybe the IRS hasn’t updated their records, keep checking your account” (this is AFTER I told them that I just spoke with IRS, and it’s NOT them!!) I asked for my account to be frozen, that was declined! I asked if they could tell me where the payment was going to, that was declined!!! By 10 am on Friday, $4025 left my account and fidelity did NOTHING to stop it!!
In addition to opening this brokerage, since JULY, I have also moved a prior 401k into a rollover IRA, opened a ROTH IRA, and just the day before all this mess, initiated my baby’s 529 account to be transferred into Fidelity!!! Now I’m rethinking what seemed like a good idea prior to 8/14!!
Has this ever happened to anyone and what was the outcome/Fidelity’s attitude? After raising hell on Friday, I was given a name and reassured that instead of the standard 10-14 days it takes for an investigation, mine would be expedited to 5-7 business days! I guess I should feel special, thankful and grateful to Fidelity for working hard to clean up their mess!!!