“Received $90k personal injury settlement, deposited in Vanguard, account disabled, told to dispute deposits, now what? Can my recordings prove innocence?”
#personalinjury #settlement #checkdispute #Vanguard #accountdisabled #investing #financialconfusion
Not a lawyer, but I am a banker. Front line customer service will unfortunately say stupid shit when they don’t know what they are looking at. Don’t touch the second deposit you made, it will get returned as a duplicate if vanguard did indeed make the deposit the day you first deposited it. You can simply explain what happened, that you were told your first mobile deposit did not go through, but it actually did. If the bank isn’t out any money because you didn’t touch it, there is no harm there. If you get charged a fee you can ask for vanguard to cover that, might take you awhile to get to the right person. In general, holds can be expected for large check deposits, we would have done what your second bank did. Why vanguard suspected fraud and placed a full hold, who knows.
It must have been something flagged in the system when you did the mobile deposit/possibly the duplicates that caused it to get flagged. It will sort itself once it’s rejected from the bank, I’d give it a week or two at most. If you have investments still I’d put them into cash in the vanguard account to make this more seamless. I wouldn’t worry about it, it shouldn’t have any harm on you ultimately except time out of the market which has been down so not the worst thing that could happen.
Yeah, I think the only way this would turn into legal trouble is if you don’t say anything, and touch the money.
Still might be worth checking out legal counsel, especially if any bank demands a fee, but if this was me, I’d be contacting Vanguard and the second bank and telling them what happened. Between the three of you and you being proactive with them, things should hopefully work themselves out.
I’d be telling Vanguard my account should be closed and the check not cashed based on employee instructions/documentation and that you went to another bank per their instructions and want that money to go to that bank.
I’d be informing the second bank that you had an issue with your account at Vanguard and they instructed you to go to another Bank, and that you want to make sure there aren’t any issues, and ask them what you should be doing.
Document everything.
I’d also wait a week or two to touch the money, after things do seem to be settles/confirmed from both banks that everything is okay and you only get the 90k.
If they do try to give you some kind of fee, I’d challenge that.
Vanguard will figure it out. The duplicate deposits will return, you just need to give it a few days to shake out. You can expedite the process by filing a claim.
Don’t try to discuss the issue with a CSR -the first line of the phone bank – call and file a claim about a bank error with a deposit. They are ignorant and won’t have all the details or have squat to do with the process. A claims representative will investigate and correct the error. This will NOT HAPPEN on a single phone call.
They are likely giving you 3x margin ($270k), not that they deposited it 3x.
Well first of all keep all your recordings for sure, back them up somewhere too just in case. Not touching the money is a good call. If you just leave it they should end up handling things themselves once they get their shit together on this, but being proactive would be better. You don’t necessarily need a lawyer yet, but researching and having one in mind I’d a good plan in case things don’t actually resolve themselves. Ask for an email explaining what is going on with the account, and make sure you keep evidence that you informed them of the error. You shouldn’t need a lawyer as long as they actually fix things though. But make sure you get confirmation on what’s going on