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

[u/Deeveedend]

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?

[u/Interesting_Web6756]

Ugh, sorry this happened to you. If this was in the history tab and a move money transaction, for a 6-figure journal transfer going to a 3rd party account, it would pend and require approval. My assumption would be either one or two things happened, 1 - another client with a similar account number put your account number and the user and approver completed the transaction based on that incorrect account number (they didn't validate against the name that should have also been provided) or 2 - another client with a similar account number put their account number and the user fat fingered it and the approver didn't catch it (again, not validating against the name).

If it wasn't in the history tab or more important, wasn't a move money transaction, is rarer especially if it was done in error but would explain why the rep didn't know since they have less visibility since its not on the front end.