Current Events > Someone used my SSN to open up a Vanguard brokerage account.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I went to open up a Vanguard account, to transfer my IRA and brokerage account from Betterment, and during the account creation process, it kept getting me errors. So I called Vanguard, and they looked up my full social, and they said an account already exists with my full social, but under a different name, different birthday, different address... and that account does not have a non-zero balance.

wtf

He's just trying to set up a surprise retirement for you

DKBananaSlamma posted...

He's just trying to set up a surprise retirement for you

Right. What benefit is there to open up a brokerage account using someone else's SSN? It's not like they can steal money that doesn't exist in the new account.

I'm on the phone with Vanguard now, and they transferred me to their fraud department. I'm looking up SEC.gov to see if there's anything I have to do.

Its your evil twin

There's also an actual possiblity that the person doesn't know they have a SSN from someone else, if their parents bought them for them illegally. I'm definitely not say that happened here. Just a thing that I know happened to someone I know. They didn't even know they were actually in fact an undocumented immigrant. They thought they were born here.

Alright, so they told me to mail in a signed W9 form so that they can ask the IRS to verify that I am who I am, and then they'll close out the other account so I can create a new account.

What a shitshow.

If they have access to your social and open a vanguard account then they likely did other things with it. You should look into that quick

withdraw that money bruh

Axiom posted...

If they have access to your social and open a vanguard account then they likely did other things with it. You should look into that quick

How to look into it? My credit has been frozen for years now, and opening up brokerage account doesn't really require a credit check, so I have no idea how to check what would be opened or not.

Possibly helpful information, but my sister recently had this problem when opening account, she later learned that her job (or a previous job?) had set up a retirement account for her without her remembering that information.

Bandit_Keith posted...

There's also an actual possiblity that the person doesn't know they have a SSN from someone else, if their parents bought them for them illegally. I'm definitely not say that happened here. Just a thing that I know happened to someone I know. They didn't even know they were actually in fact an undocumented immigrant. They thought they were born here.

Plot twist: TC is the undocumented immigrant

famfam posted...

withdraw that money bruh

take the money.

i hope they catch the fraudulent one so they can toss him/her into jail.