While regulators may not be able to get you your money back, brokerage firms have a strong incentive to compensate consumers for losses.
“With most of these firms, the judgments are really reputational,” said Adam Fee, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York who is now a partner at Milbank, a law firm. “When something bad happens, they are asking, ‘Do we want a bunch of articles about how people are out money because we messed up and didn’t react?’”
After alerting their brokers, investors should also file a complaint with law enforcement. The most direct way to do that in the U.S. is with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. This isn’t going to fix the problem right away though. And it might not ever get you your money back. According to Fee, this step simply helps formalize and document the complaint.
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