5 ms·

Her life savings mysteriously disappeared after a systems glitch

75 points by danso 6mo ago

danso 6mo ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/your-money/fidelity-investments-fraud-alert.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dlA.2bK0.gN47H93flP5j&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/your-money/fidelity-inves...
alex43578 6mo ago
NYTimes with the clickbait title. A glitch prevented her account from being displayed for a few days, then was resolved. Your money, when covered via FDIC/SIPC and federal regulations, doesn’t just “disappear”.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  I don't know that I'd call it clickbait, that's underselling it a bit. If you can call your bank and they flat out pretend you don't even exist, that you are not a customer, or whatever -- that's more than just a display error. Her accounts weren't even visible to bank staff. That's a pretty significant error.
  - teeray 6mo ago
    That's why you save local copies of records (statements, etc.). "Computer says no" can be fought with "judge says yes".
    - abracadaniel 6mo ago
      Paper statements are now opt-in most places, so most people won’t have local copies of the records anymore. It’s extremely important, because there is no duty for a company to provide historic data. None of my banks provide detailed data back more than a couple of years.
      - roysting 6mo ago
        That is a good point and at the very least it’s a good idea to download electronic statements, maybe with a script to retain the most recent n statements
      - SenHeng 5mo ago
        Many banks don’t even provide bank books anymore. The only physical thing I’ve got from my bank is an ATM card.
    - nytesky 6mo ago
      Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set. My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
      - pwg 6mo ago
        > Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set. Which is why all of my accounts mail a physical statement each month. Yes, just about every time I log on they beg me to switch to electronic only, I say no and move along. > My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement. Yep. If they had implemented it just like the mail, they'd just email me the PDF (encrypted if necessary). But they don't, so I don't ever agree to "go electronic statements".
  - BobbyTables2 6mo ago
    One had a bank do that with a safe deposit box. They had no record of it. Pretty much had to physically find it myself. Was the last time I let that happen…
    - xethos 6mo ago
      The irony of this username being dropped or forgotten about by a large institution
- mothballed 6mo ago
  FDIC usually doesn't protect against attacks on individual depositors. Fraud, scams, and theft for instance arent covered. If your bank just steals it FDIC usually won't be for that. Deposit insurance coverage protects depositors against the failure of an insured bank; it does not protect against losses due to theft or fraud, which are addressed by other laws https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/brochures/deposits-at-a-glance https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/brochures/d...
  - alex43578 5mo ago
    And that's why I said federal regulations. FDIC covers failure of your regular savings, SIPC for brokerages, and the myriad of federal regulations (Reg E, Reg CC, OCC/Federal Reserve, CFPB) covers these edge cases.
- quadrifoliate 6mo ago
  > prevented her account from being displayed for a few days ...and prevented her from having any access to money? That's way more than a glitch, that's essentially a temporary version of theft. Think about how comfortable you would be with such a "glitch" preventing you from having access to any of the money in your main spending account? One day? One week? A month? How about a year, with court battles? If you get uncomfortable at a month or a year, remember that the only difference between you and some other people is one of magnitude. Some people can't wait two weeks or even a week for financial institutions to get their shit together and fix their "glitches". This can upend their entire life and needs to be treated with the appropriate seriousness.
  - alex43578 5mo ago
    If it is a week, a month, or a year, those are all different levels of seriousness, and I'd expect it to be handled differently. If she has damages, she's welcome to sue the bank for recourse. As an aside it's always a good idea to have a level of resiliency built into your life and avoid single points of failure. Accounts at two different banks, access to credit via credit card (even if you don't carry a balance), etc. Just like with planning for a disaster, while it's infeasible to store food for a year in an apartment, not having 3 days of food and water stored to cover an emergency is also risky: the same planning should extend to financial matters.
- delfinom 6mo ago
  It was a glitch that was a little more that "prevented her account from being displayed". The reps could not see it ever existed. Meaning the backend really snafued. But there was more than likely post mortems and days of meetings over it. Since it sounds it was a edge case upon edge case they didn't plan for. >When she called on Monday, she received some more clues on what went wrong: Since her account was originally opened with a tax identification number (she was a permanent resident at the time), a system glitch emerged when she recently opened a custodial Roth I.R.A. for her daughter using her own Social Security number. Even though she said she had used her Social Security number at Fidelity for years, it appears her profile and accounts hadn’t been properly merged and updated. A work profile set up by a former employer more than a decade ago with her Social Security number may also have complicated matters. (She said she had never activated or used it.)
- danso 5mo ago
  Sorry but this is rich. The vast, vast majority of times that Github goes down, even though the issue is almost always resolved within the day if not in the next couple of hours. Yet we'd all agree that "Github is down" posts are worth their time on HN, even though everyone knows how to access to status API, because it's not so much about being notified about the outage but understanding why it happened. What exactly is "clickbait" here? Is the disappearance "mysterious" or not here? I'm not a banking tech engineer, so I don't have the slightest clue how a bank's app could completely glitch out for days about something as critical to people as their life savings. Were you even aware that this is something that could just happen? Do you have a notion that this issue would have resolved itself without the aggressive petitioning by the account holder? Explain to us how you would go to the FDIC with a claim when the FDIC covers customers with provable losses, and the article reports that this person was so ghosted out of the system that Fidelity's customer support was telling her, “Are you sure you shouldn’t be calling Schwab”? From the article: > Ms. Gruntmane felt she had little choice, and was forced to cancel her 20 or so patients for the day. After a quick stop at home to retrieve her personal computer, identification and other records, she got back into her car and started driving. “It just felt out of, like, a psychological thriller,” she said. > As she was driving through Vail, she called her mother, who suggested trying to reach Fidelity’s fraud department one more time. She pulled over, and finally reached a rep who was more helpful. He also couldn’t immediately find any evidence of her accounts, but she had found one account number to share with him. After a second hourlong call, he promised they would continue to investigate, but said it was most likely a systems-related issue. Explain to me how this isn't of interest to people who touch online systems? Is there a status.fidelity.com that we have access to, that you could point out how systemic or non-systemic this kind of incident is?
  - kelnos 5mo ago
    > Yet we'd all agree that "Github is down" posts are worth their time on HN I don't. I flag them whenever I see them. They're annoying and not interesting or useful.
- kotaKat 5mo ago
  And it's a glitch that the 'average' person will probably never somehow trigger in their life. The amount of overlap required to trigger this issue is such an edge case. Apparently Fidelity's systems went wild after realizing the same person had both a TIN and a SSN and multiple overlapping accounts somewhere. > Since her account was originally opened with a tax identification number (she was a permanent resident at the time), a system glitch emerged when she recently opened a custodial Roth I.R.A. for her daughter using her own Social Security number. Even though she said she had used her Social Security number at Fidelity for years, it appears her profile and accounts hadn’t been properly merged and updated. A work profile set up by a former employer more than a decade ago with her Social Security number may also have complicated matters. (She said she had never activated or used it.)
OutOfHere 6mo ago
https://archive.ph/xeMtb https://archive.ph/xeMtb
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
dcrazy 6mo ago
> “There was no warning that I would not be able to access my accounts for five days,” she added. “If I had to use that money, it was completely inaccessible.” A good reminder that your emergency fund should be held in cash at a bank, not in shares a brokerage. Not that a glitch like this couldn’t block access to your bank account too, but rather that the process of liquidating and transferring securities is much slower than ACH or Zelle.
- justinclift 6mo ago
  Safety deposit box as a 2nd backup maybe? ;)
  - jsw97 6mo ago
    I know you're joking, but safety deposit boxes aren't nearly as safe as you think they are. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box...)
    - justinclift 6mo ago
      Not totally joking after some thought. If the problem that a person experienced is "complete loss of bank account" then having a physical backup - not at a bank! - would help to cater to that scenario. And yeah, looks like that's not a foolproof solution either. 3rd backup option might be needed... :D
- khuey 6mo ago
  Something like Fidelity's Cash Management Account (has a debit card, automatically liquidates money market funds to cover spending) works fine as an emergency fund. But you need your emergency fund in two separate accounts at two different financial institutions to be safe from shenanigans like this. This is not merely a theoretical risk. Patelco (a Bay Area credit union with half a million members) got hit with ransomware back in 2024 that disrupted banking services for two weeks.
  - 6mo ago
mcoliver 6mo ago
Can we update the title to append "and came back 5 days later" we don't need click bait titles on hn.
- smcin 6mo ago
  I think it's time to revise HN guidelines, when the original title is clearly intentionally misleading/clickbait/omitting key facts ("temporarily disappeared in this case). Editorializing to fix that should be encouraged, not just allowed.
  - handoflixue 6mo ago
    Very much seconded
freakynit 6mo ago
"The money you can't touch is the money you don't own". If someone else can freeze, deny, censor, or condition your access to your money, then your "ownership" is incomplete, and definitely, not yours. Never let cash go away. Never.
AkiraHsieh 6mo ago
[dead]
lateforwork 5mo ago
[dead]

75 points by danso 6mo ago

danso 6mo ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/your-money/fidelity-investments-fraud-alert.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dlA.2bK0.gN47H93flP5j&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/your-money/fidelity-inves...

alex43578 6mo ago

NYTimes with the clickbait title. A glitch prevented her account from being displayed for a few days, then was resolved. Your money, when covered via FDIC/SIPC and federal regulations, doesn’t just “disappear”.

rootusrootus 6mo ago
I don't know that I'd call it clickbait, that's underselling it a bit. If you can call your bank and they flat out pretend you don't even exist, that you are not a customer, or whatever -- that's more than just a display error. Her accounts weren't even visible to bank staff. That's a pretty significant error.
- teeray 6mo ago
  That's why you save local copies of records (statements, etc.). "Computer says no" can be fought with "judge says yes".
  - abracadaniel 6mo ago
    Paper statements are now opt-in most places, so most people won’t have local copies of the records anymore. It’s extremely important, because there is no duty for a company to provide historic data. None of my banks provide detailed data back more than a couple of years.
    - roysting 6mo ago
      That is a good point and at the very least it’s a good idea to download electronic statements, maybe with a script to retain the most recent n statements
    - SenHeng 5mo ago
      Many banks don’t even provide bank books anymore. The only physical thing I’ve got from my bank is an ATM card.
  - nytesky 6mo ago
    Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set. My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
    - pwg 6mo ago
      > Yeah saving statements is important but banks make it so hard to automate. 2FA for login, and statements have to be navigated to, sometimes time range set. Which is why all of my accounts mail a physical statement each month. Yes, just about every time I log on they beg me to switch to electronic only, I say no and move along. > My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement. Yep. If they had implemented it just like the mail, they'd just email me the PDF (encrypted if necessary). But they don't, so I don't ever agree to "go electronic statements".
- BobbyTables2 6mo ago
  One had a bank do that with a safe deposit box. They had no record of it. Pretty much had to physically find it myself. Was the last time I let that happen…
  - xethos 6mo ago
    The irony of this username being dropped or forgotten about by a large institution
mothballed 6mo ago
FDIC usually doesn't protect against attacks on individual depositors. Fraud, scams, and theft for instance arent covered. If your bank just steals it FDIC usually won't be for that. Deposit insurance coverage protects depositors against the failure of an insured bank; it does not protect against losses due to theft or fraud, which are addressed by other laws https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/brochures/deposits-at-a-glance https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/brochures/d...
- alex43578 5mo ago
  And that's why I said federal regulations. FDIC covers failure of your regular savings, SIPC for brokerages, and the myriad of federal regulations (Reg E, Reg CC, OCC/Federal Reserve, CFPB) covers these edge cases.
quadrifoliate 6mo ago
> prevented her account from being displayed for a few days ...and prevented her from having any access to money? That's way more than a glitch, that's essentially a temporary version of theft. Think about how comfortable you would be with such a "glitch" preventing you from having access to any of the money in your main spending account? One day? One week? A month? How about a year, with court battles? If you get uncomfortable at a month or a year, remember that the only difference between you and some other people is one of magnitude. Some people can't wait two weeks or even a week for financial institutions to get their shit together and fix their "glitches". This can upend their entire life and needs to be treated with the appropriate seriousness.
- alex43578 5mo ago
  If it is a week, a month, or a year, those are all different levels of seriousness, and I'd expect it to be handled differently. If she has damages, she's welcome to sue the bank for recourse. As an aside it's always a good idea to have a level of resiliency built into your life and avoid single points of failure. Accounts at two different banks, access to credit via credit card (even if you don't carry a balance), etc. Just like with planning for a disaster, while it's infeasible to store food for a year in an apartment, not having 3 days of food and water stored to cover an emergency is also risky: the same planning should extend to financial matters.
delfinom 6mo ago
It was a glitch that was a little more that "prevented her account from being displayed". The reps could not see it ever existed. Meaning the backend really snafued. But there was more than likely post mortems and days of meetings over it. Since it sounds it was a edge case upon edge case they didn't plan for. >When she called on Monday, she received some more clues on what went wrong: Since her account was originally opened with a tax identification number (she was a permanent resident at the time), a system glitch emerged when she recently opened a custodial Roth I.R.A. for her daughter using her own Social Security number. Even though she said she had used her Social Security number at Fidelity for years, it appears her profile and accounts hadn’t been properly merged and updated. A work profile set up by a former employer more than a decade ago with her Social Security number may also have complicated matters. (She said she had never activated or used it.)
danso 5mo ago
Sorry but this is rich. The vast, vast majority of times that Github goes down, even though the issue is almost always resolved within the day if not in the next couple of hours. Yet we'd all agree that "Github is down" posts are worth their time on HN, even though everyone knows how to access to status API, because it's not so much about being notified about the outage but understanding why it happened. What exactly is "clickbait" here? Is the disappearance "mysterious" or not here? I'm not a banking tech engineer, so I don't have the slightest clue how a bank's app could completely glitch out for days about something as critical to people as their life savings. Were you even aware that this is something that could just happen? Do you have a notion that this issue would have resolved itself without the aggressive petitioning by the account holder? Explain to us how you would go to the FDIC with a claim when the FDIC covers customers with provable losses, and the article reports that this person was so ghosted out of the system that Fidelity's customer support was telling her, “Are you sure you shouldn’t be calling Schwab”? From the article: > Ms. Gruntmane felt she had little choice, and was forced to cancel her 20 or so patients for the day. After a quick stop at home to retrieve her personal computer, identification and other records, she got back into her car and started driving. “It just felt out of, like, a psychological thriller,” she said. > As she was driving through Vail, she called her mother, who suggested trying to reach Fidelity’s fraud department one more time. She pulled over, and finally reached a rep who was more helpful. He also couldn’t immediately find any evidence of her accounts, but she had found one account number to share with him. After a second hourlong call, he promised they would continue to investigate, but said it was most likely a systems-related issue. Explain to me how this isn't of interest to people who touch online systems? Is there a status.fidelity.com that we have access to, that you could point out how systemic or non-systemic this kind of incident is?
- kelnos 5mo ago
  > Yet we'd all agree that "Github is down" posts are worth their time on HN I don't. I flag them whenever I see them. They're annoying and not interesting or useful.
kotaKat 5mo ago
And it's a glitch that the 'average' person will probably never somehow trigger in their life. The amount of overlap required to trigger this issue is such an edge case. Apparently Fidelity's systems went wild after realizing the same person had both a TIN and a SSN and multiple overlapping accounts somewhere. > Since her account was originally opened with a tax identification number (she was a permanent resident at the time), a system glitch emerged when she recently opened a custodial Roth I.R.A. for her daughter using her own Social Security number. Even though she said she had used her Social Security number at Fidelity for years, it appears her profile and accounts hadn’t been properly merged and updated. A work profile set up by a former employer more than a decade ago with her Social Security number may also have complicated matters. (She said she had never activated or used it.)

OutOfHere 6mo ago

https://archive.ph/xeMtb https://archive.ph/xeMtb

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

dcrazy 6mo ago

> “There was no warning that I would not be able to access my accounts for five days,” she added. “If I had to use that money, it was completely inaccessible.” A good reminder that your emergency fund should be held in cash at a bank, not in shares a brokerage. Not that a glitch like this couldn’t block access to your bank account too, but rather that the process of liquidating and transferring securities is much slower than ACH or Zelle.

justinclift 6mo ago
Safety deposit box as a 2nd backup maybe? ;)
- jsw97 6mo ago
  I know you're joking, but safety deposit boxes aren't nearly as safe as you think they are. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box-theft.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box...)
  - justinclift 6mo ago
    Not totally joking after some thought. If the problem that a person experienced is "complete loss of bank account" then having a physical backup - not at a bank! - would help to cater to that scenario. And yeah, looks like that's not a foolproof solution either. 3rd backup option might be needed... :D
khuey 6mo ago
Something like Fidelity's Cash Management Account (has a debit card, automatically liquidates money market funds to cover spending) works fine as an emergency fund. But you need your emergency fund in two separate accounts at two different financial institutions to be safe from shenanigans like this. This is not merely a theoretical risk. Patelco (a Bay Area credit union with half a million members) got hit with ransomware back in 2024 that disrupted banking services for two weeks.
- 6mo ago

mcoliver 6mo ago

Can we update the title to append "and came back 5 days later" we don't need click bait titles on hn.

smcin 6mo ago
I think it's time to revise HN guidelines, when the original title is clearly intentionally misleading/clickbait/omitting key facts ("temporarily disappeared in this case). Editorializing to fix that should be encouraged, not just allowed.
- handoflixue 6mo ago
  Very much seconded

freakynit 6mo ago

"The money you can't touch is the money you don't own". If someone else can freeze, deny, censor, or condition your access to your money, then your "ownership" is incomplete, and definitely, not yours. Never let cash go away. Never.

AkiraHsieh 6mo ago

[dead]

lateforwork 5mo ago

[dead]