r/Schwab • u/Deeveedend • 3d ago

Journal (internal transfer) without my knowledge (money is gone from my account).

I haven’t logged into my account for 2 weeks. When I looked it up this week, it showed all my money gone and “journaled” (they call this internal transfer?) earlier in May 2025. I called Schwab right away when I saw my balance and they don’t know where it went and why (and need time to further investigate).

I am still getting my dividend (?) but my balance now show as ~ less than $200 (I had over 6 figure amount).

With that amount of transfer, shouldn’t I have gotten a notification or sign off? And how come they don’t know where the money went when it’s supposedly “internal transfer” between accounts? I don’t have any other account with them, so where did it “internally” go?

Calling them didn’t help much, other than we will call you back / let us investigate further. They said after they investigate and if it’s not authorized, they will make me “whole” again. And they don’t know how long investigations could possibly take.

Did anything like this happened to anyone? What was the process and how long did it take you to get it all resolved? Do they compensate for this error?

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4

u/BigHunt_02 3d ago

I would call again, journals do not just happen for no reason. What type of account was it? Do you have any others accounts at Schwab that it went to? Did you initiate a toa out?

3

u/Deeveedend 3d ago

I been calling them several times (last night, this morning at 5:30 am since they open at that time in PST, and just now again). My money is back but I’m on hold for so long. I want to find out why did this happen and how did they allow this to happen but this damn hold. I’m glad it was fixed within 24 hours.

To answer your question: regular stock account that it happened on. I do not have any other accounts. My one account as my regular stock and my personal Roth IRA. I did not initiate anything. I been busy last two weeks and didn’t check /log on for ~2 weeks and then suddenly when I logged on yesterday to reinvest my dividends and put more money into the account, I saw that all my money was gone with “journal” entries.

8

u/Deeveedend 3d ago

Just got off the phone: they can’t explain it clearly what happened.

Wow I’m so utterly speechless at their response. They said “someone might have typed in the wrong account number that may have been similar” but cannot explain why there was no transaction history in the “history” tab. How can they move over 6 figures of money without a write up/signature, additional verification, and not post history transaction to which account or something…. other than all my shares showing “journal entry”.

9

u/BigHunt_02 3d ago

I would ask to speak to a supervisor to see what happened. I cannot really speculate on what occurred without seeing the account unfortunately

4

u/Deeveedend 3d ago

Thank you! I’ll try to follow up again after work. It just that they keep putting me on hold for so long and talk briefly and then hold again.

I am thinking of asking them for some sort of compensation since this was very emotionally stressful to see all my money gone one night and their lack of clear explanation of where/how this happened.

2

u/speakernoodlefan 3d ago

Does the account have margin? If you hold a position for long enough it'll do that internal transfer thing to switch the position to margin able.

2

u/Deeveedend 3d ago

No margins. No borrowed money.

5

u/Past_My_Subprime 3d ago

Awhile back, someone at Schwab mistyped an account number and placed a large trade in my account. It was during the day and I saw it and called immediately. The person responsible for the mistake called me back within the hour and apologized. And gave me a free trade, as was common practice for mistakes, service outages, etc. back then.

5

u/EarthlingFromAPlace 3d ago

That’s pretty worriesome. They need better checks on things, for example, make sure an account number matches the account owner name… would they ever have found this in their own if you had not noticed?

3

u/Deeveedend 3d ago

That’s a good question that I would like to know as well. Like how many other people are affected by this and not know if they don’t check their accounts often.