Ask HN: Recover Stocks Worth $1m | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recover Stocks Worth $1m

5 pointsthrowaway-m110 comments

Hello HN folks. I received an email from someone who says they're an asset locator and that they've found an account of mine that has n number of shares of a FAANG stock worth about $1m. I did work for a startup that was acquired by FAANG but I had cashed out completely. They're asking 10% to recover this for me. But if there is such an account is there a way I can recover these without paying the 100K they're asking? Maybe by finding out from the acquired company's finance department? Or some other way?

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By all means investigate with your own due diligence using reputable lawyers, if you think its worth the cost (think of it like a casino - what do you assess is the probability of getting $1M - is there even likely to be $1M lying around that you forgot about)?

But DO NOT for any reason contact this company that cold emailed you because I'd put it at 99.99% probability that it's a scam. It's the same scam format as the classic 419 scam. But you kind of know this already, because you asked on HN!

This absolutely sounds like a scam to me. If you cashed out entirely, you don't own shares.

If they're coming to you offering to do this it is most likely a scam as others have said or something you could easily do yourself. First place I would check is with your state's unclaimed property (e.g. in california: https://www.sco.ca.gov/upd_msg.html ). It's highly doubtful they would have knowledge of an inactive account held at a company and that company should have been trying to contact you before turning the assets over to the state. Your idea of contacting the acquiring company's finance dept wouldn't hurt either.

Yes, between the finance department and HR you should be able to identify the company that is holding the stocks. Or you can look for old statements identifying them.

You could then contact the firm and say you're trying to dig up an old account.

If it's real, it'll cost you a lot of time on the phone and probably some notarized letters, scanned IDs and such.

That doesn't make any sense. If you own the shares, then you own the shares. Check your papers... No one can ask you 100k to "recover" shares that are yours, whatever that means...

If the shares are held in an account of yours that you don't have access to. Just ask for access or call the police...

Payment up front = scam. But... if they want 10% of what you get, that sounds reasonable to me.

They do claim that no fees are due until I have the stocks/funds.

That is still the "bait" - they can say anything they want at this point because they (and you) are still in "bait" mode. It isn't until you've bitten on the bait that the scam will unfold.

My prediction is one of three things will happen:

1) Once you are well hooked, they will need some money to cover some sort of fees involved in releasing the stocks. When you pay the fees, they disappear.

2) They will give you some really pretty "stock certificates" that look really official, collect their fees, and disappear before you figure out the pretty paper is a forgery.

3) A variant of the "Secret Shopper" scam where they give you a (forged) cashier's check, collect their "finders fee" (in your real money), and disappear before the bank notifies you that the cashier's check is a forgery.

Ref: https://wgntv.com/2017/03/23/new-scam-tricks-victims-out-of-...

Do your own due diligence and ignore this. Either a scam for money or identity theft.

Agreed with other comments here.

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