Accounts Looted, Customers Watched Helplessly
Have a problem at Robinhood? Well, that’s too damn bad.
Robinhood might take 3 weeks to get back to you, even in cases of fraud in progress.
Please consider No One at Robinhood to Call
It took Soraya Bagheri a day to learn that 450 shares of Moderna Inc. had been liquidated in her Robinhood account and that $10,000 in withdrawals were pending. But after alerting the online brokerage to what she believed was a theft in progress, she received a frustrating email.
The firm wrote it would investigate and respond within “a few weeks.” Now her money is gone.
Pruthvi Rao, a Chicago software engineer, said his account was hit on Oct. 6. His bet on Netflix Inc. was liquidated and $2,850 was soon withdrawn. He said he’s sent more than a dozen emails to Robinhood’s customer support address, and that he even tried messaging some of the brokerage’s executives on LinkedIn.
Rao showed Bloomberg the same emailed response from Robinhood that Bagheri received. “We understand the sensitivity of your situation and will be escalating the matter to our fraud investigations team,” Robinhood customer service agents wrote them. “Please be aware that this process may take a few weeks, and the team working on your case won’t be able to provide constant updates.”
Robinhood Blames the Users
“A limited number of customers appear to have had their Robinhood account targeted by cyber criminals because of their personal email account (that which is associated with their Robinhood account) being compromised outside of Robinhood,” a spokesman for the company said in an email. “We’re actively working with those impacted to secure their accounts.”
No doubt people had weak passwords. But it appears Robinhood had no controls preventing the change of critical information.
Financial institutions, including Robinhood, should have a two-stage authentication system to prevent such fraud, and it should work.
Two-stage authentication ought to be mandatory, not optional.
Rao claims to have setup two-stage authentication. If so, something went wrong.
I smell lawsuits.
Question of the Day
Should the SEC shut down this pathetic operation?
Mish
I finally got my issues resolve with the customer support, it took one month but is done, all my funds are back
I got hack as well, is there anything we as user can do? I dont even have access to my account anymore and I lost all my year savings 🙁
I overheard some people the other day talking about their trades on Robin Hood. They invested in 1 share of Google and made $20 or so. Thought they were geniuses. Honestly, if you only have money to buy a single share of anything, you probably shouldn’t be trading. One bad day can get you evicted.
The hackers hit my accounts with them to on 0ct6
Was this only for those holding bitcoin inside their accounts ? Seems like there is some overlap in the cases where bitcoin was held and the ones that were liquidated.
Platform named after a famous robber – check
No commissions for stock and ETFs – check
Email support outsourced – check
What could possibly go wrong?
I wouldn’t touch Robinhood with a 3.048 meter pole. It’s a machine to generate lawsuits.
Nobody could have possibly seen this coming.
Game Over. Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.
LOL….
My prediction based on a quick search is they get shut down. They clearly lack internal controls.
Investors should not wait and move their assets to a more reputable firm
I expect we will be hearing from regulators soon. No comment probably means active case
Finra and the SEC declined to comment.
Oooh. Big fine! [lol]
I’m surprised FINRA and SEC are not involved. This will be a class action lawsuit. If Robinhood was notified and failed to act and was shown to be negligent I expect they lose. The clients need to make legal claims. Again I’m gobsmacked that FINRA and the SEC are silent on this
Now we can come to expect the same level of customer service from stock trading platforms…..that we’ve always enjoyed with the crypto exchanges. LOL.
Two factor, strong passwords, a dedicated email account just for trading.
And some reasonable suspicion on the part of gullible people…..everyone should be smart enough by now to spot phishing attempts.
These people being robbed work in tech? Really? Software engineer? Really?
I work in tech, and was for a year or so involved in online games (standalone app, no public web address). The only incident that I’ve heard was an inside job, someone with database access. If he wasn’t greedy and stole just a little making it up on volume, might have gotten away with it.
50% of the people are dumber than the other half. Also, many Millennials don’t seem to give a hoot about technology/personal security online. They seem to share far too much personal detail.