ETRADE Believe every negative report you find on this company Arlington Virginia

I experienced the securty freeze in 2013, again in 2014. They refuse to unlock when i call these human bots with all personal info verify and no change in any account status.  They just want to lock Your money forany tiny excuse and wont unlock without lengthy charade of notary signed letter photo id.  Final insult they holdup my tranfer out for a month claimimg a nonexistant lien without telling me. There was a dismissed lien in 2009 they finally acknowledged. Run away fast from this shop if you want peaceofmind of able to access your money in difficult times or slightly unuusual circumstances without having to jump through months of hoops in their security charade

I am investor and I too am having trouble removing money from eTrade, but new information I received this morning suggest the problem appears to be the entire US financial system, and not just the broker dealer eTrade.  My problem started when i tried to change the registration on one of my two accounts, and transfer the account to a non-profit.  eTrade refused to transfer the account, and found that really odd. 

Subsequently I contacted Bank of New York Melon, the administrator for the international security held in the account.  In this particular case the security was Royal Bank of Scotland.  BNY Melon referred me to an Andrea in London, who never answered the phone, and has no voice mail.  Additionally she refused to respond to any emails, requesting that the security be converted from street name, to our own name.  Nor did eTrade offer to provide an explanation, or advise me that the security had to be transfered through by DRS through a company called DTCC. I then sent a ten day letter to Gerald Hassle, the CEO of BNY Melon, but he refused to respond. 

The issue has come again, and I have again asked eTrade to convert all bonds to our own name from street hame, and now eTrade indicates that the SEC prevents them from doing this.  I contacted the SEC, and this is what the SEC provided:

http://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/dtc/2008/34-59033.pdf

The DTCC also issued notices on this topic which can be viewed at:

http://www.dtcc.com/news/newsletters/dtcc/2008/dec/paper_certificates.php

http://www.dtcc.com/news/newsletters/dtcc/2009/apr/dematerialization.php

The net effect of these new rules is that the broker dealer can no longer issue certificates recorded in the name of the investor, and that the DTCC, upon the request of the broker, must transfer the certificates to the issuer or to the transfer agent/administrator.  And only the administrator can issue a certificate.  The SECs crooked rhetoric appears to indicate that the intent is to prevent the loss of paper certificates.  Howevever, I don't see it that way. 

As I see it, the intent is to make it more difficult for investors to retain control of their securities, and the reason they want to make it more difficult is so that the administrators can leverage the investors funds, without their knowing.  A few days ago, I contacted Chase Bank Palo Alto, and request information on how I can buy a bond recorded in my name, with a flat rate fee.  Chase Bank advises they don't allow this, and that they would charge a percentage of the yield, and keep the bond in street name.  The fee the Chase Bank Rep reported was 3%.  So if an investment grade bond yielded 5%, they would get 3%, and I would get 2%.

I then contacted Lou, a broker dealer at HSBC Seattle, who reported that HSBC clears through Pershing.  Lou did confirm that Pershing no longer allows investors to own bonds recorded in their own name.  I then called Interactive Broker, and they too indicated that investors are not allowed to record bonds in their name. 

As many of you are aware, BNY Melon is one the largest custodian agents in the country, and many of these clearing authorities work with them, so it looks like the bank is trying to steal investors money.  And while I have no like for eTrade, the problem does appear to be much more serious than merely one broker dealer gone bad.  The entire industry has conspired with the bank, to steal your money.  My solution to the problem is to create a Bank of the State, so that you can have something to say about such corruption.  A Bank of the State needs to directly compete in the private sector markets, such as housing, commerce, broker dealer transactions.  You will never get any help from the SEC or the federal government.  Remember the old slogan, "don't steel, the government hates competition".  The federal government is definitely not looking out for your best interest and could care less. They are there to get everything you have, whatever you make, and anyone who gets in their way will be squished and disposed off.

We should all be going door-to-door carrying petititions, to get an initiative on the ballot, for creating a Bank of the State.  It is easily one of the most important economic issue of the century because with such a petition you potentially will put an end to bank bail outs.  Did you know that the national banks are only carrying a loan loss reserve of 6%-7%?  What this means is that all of the money spent in 2008-2009 could be spent again. The horror must stop, and we must stop the banks, at whatever costs.

No country is left untouched. Most recently I started contacting attorneys, and did speak to an attorney who told me the problem of banks leveraging customers bond and stock assets has moved to a global scale. This has been my experience as well.  I contacted some of the largest banks in Hong Kong, and found out all of them will not allow you to hold the bonds in your own name, and want fees based on a percentage yield.  What this means is that the traditional bond fees of $20-$50, can be $350 or greater.  The word horrism has reached a state that to where the dictionary can not adequately describe its character.

I am having the same problems, I have an brokerage account with them since year 2000. I have all ready sent the fax and they lost it.. Then they asked to fax them the recipe of the fax; I told them that I do not have it, because of that I was told that I can not send them again a fax now I have to send the same documents by UPS, it will arrive next Wednesday to Virgina.
Today I tried to buy some stocks in order to use all the cash that I had on the account, I was told that only selling is permitted.

My account has been blocked since September 18th

Now I have to flight to US from Spain in order to open an brokerage account with other entity.

I would like to take some legal actions.


Juan

The basic scam is: When you try to withdraw funds, E*Trade alleges suspicious activity on your account so it is placed on hold for security reasons. Then E*Trade insists on a ludicrous process of sending a notarized letter to them. (see ConsumerAffairs.com Post from serviceman in Iraq). This entire process is designed to insure maximum time delay. Generally it takes about 30 days to get your money if you are proactive in follow-up, otherwise, it may take longer. If you look critically at the process, you can see that its sole motivation is to create delay, not enhance security.

None of the Federal regulators (SEC and OTS in this case) get excited about a handful of customers who appear to have been treated badly by E*Trade in holding up their withdrawals for a few weeks before releasing the funds, based on E*Trades bogus security concerns of accounts being compromised. E*Trades explanation to regulators will be: Things unintentionally ran amuck with improper supervision of the lowest level employees in an offshore call center, and unintentionally poor internal coordination. E*Trade should not be criticized for an overabundance of caution when it comes to security and fraud prevention in their customers best interest.

However, given E*Trades current precarious cash flow position, suppose this was a process orchestrated by upper management to be intentionally applied to thousands of E*Trade customers, rather than by accident and incompetence to a handful of customers?

What if
an E*Trade executive devised a scheme to withhold meaningful amounts of funds from significantly more than a few hundred of its customers? First, what is a meaningful amount to a company the size of E*Trade? E*Trade claims on its website, in April 2008, to have $176 Billion in Customer assets, and 4.3 Million accounts. That is an average of $41,000 per account. In November 2007, E*Trade was on the brink of bankruptcy. Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago based hedge fund, provided an infusion of $2.5 Billion in Capital for which E*Trade paid dearly. Part of E*Trades ongoing turnaround plan is to sell off three divisions of its company, anticipating those sales will bring in $350 Million by the end of 2008. It could be argued that the threshold of a meaningful amount to E*Trade in their current situation would be in the neighborhood of $50 Million to $100 Million, which is 14 to 28 per cent of their expected proceeds from a significant component of their turnaround plan for 2008. How implausible would it be for E*Trade to obtain an additional interest free loan of $100 Million from its 4.3 million customers as unwilling lenders? [E*Trades current policy on availability of funds already gives then significant interest free funding from their customer base.] Actually, not very implausible!

Net customer withdrawals of funds from E*Trade have averaged over $14 Billion per month for the 4 month period ending 2/29/2008. Since some customers also have deposited funds during that time period, the gross amount of withdrawals had to have been even larger. From 1/1/08 to 2/29/08, E*Trade claims to have signed up 59,000 new retail accounts. [Apparently Ripoffreports.com and other similar sites are no match for E*Trades aggressive 2008 marketing plan when it comes to consumer awareness] Conservatively, let's assume $10 Billion per month as an average gross withdrawal rate going forward.

Suppose that E*Trade initiates a procedure to randomly select 1% (by dollar volume) of the requested withdrawals and temporarily restricts those accounts from being accessed by their owners based on a bogus finding of suspicious activity. Further suppose that on average, those withdrawals could be delayed by one month. If E*Trade can continue to do this each month for a random selection of 1% of its withdrawal requests, this becomes the equivalent of getting a new interest-free cash infusion of $100 Million. [Double all the quantities presented herein and the amount becomes $200,000,000. Still not an implausible proposition]

Assume that customer requests for withdrawals in the amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 and averaging $25,000 are targeted for the delay process. It would take only 4,000 such requests to make up $100 Million. [4,000 is only1/10th of 1% of E*Trades total accounts.] It might be as much as 1% to 3% of the accounts seeking withdrawals in any one month. Even if E*Trade totally alienates the targeted customers, it is not unrealistic to assume they could still point statistically to a better than 95% customer satisfaction rate to their regulating agencies. One should not necessarily rely on traditional statistical measures to assure themselves that all is OK at E*Trade.

Viewed from a different perspective: If E*Trade were serious about implementing a plan of introducing bogus security issues to intentionally delay the transfer of customer funds, what would be required to put their plan in place. A lot of phone calls from 4,000 Irate Customers, (ICs) should be anticipated. E*Trade would need to create a process to handle that anticipated call volume. How many calls should be anticipated? If each IC averages 3 calls per week, (a little more than 1 every other business day), and the average phone call duration is hour, they would need a staff of about 120 persons. [This estimate may be conservatively high since most ICs with brokerage accounts have better things to do than to make unproductive phone calls 3 times per week.]

Implementation
Set up a special department offshore and staff it with persons known as Fraud Specialists, (FSs). Their exclusive job will be to handle phone calls from ICs, who from the ICs point of view have had their accounts restricted for no apparent reason.
Then Implement the following procedures and policies:
Inflexible and illogical bureaucratic requirements, based on Form over Substance.
Preventing ICs from ever contacting by phone any E*Trade Employee except an FS.
Hiring and Training an overseas FS staff of approximately 100, and approximately 20 in the US. Do not place any importance on accuracy or truthfulness in what is told to the IC. Polite intransigence; the ability to totally ignore an ICs question and provide a canned non-responsive answer by rote; the ability to remain calm and polite and never hang up on the IC no matter how livid this process makes the IC, all seem to be part of the FS training program. Proficiency in understanding spoken English beyond an elementary level, longevity with E*Trade, rudimentary experience or knowledge of the services that are provided to the ICs by E*Trade are apparently not a requirement to obtain employment as an FS.
Intercepting all emails from ICs and having them answered by a different staff of people who are impossible for the IC to contact by phone.
Setting up a procedure that generally will not be quickly complied with by the average IC; [i.e. asking for the original of a notarized letter of authorization which must be physically mailed].
Taking no action on any request made by the IC in any written communication received by E*Trade, no matter how benign or trivial, unless said communication is part of E*Trades specific "identity verification" process.
Making sure there is as little continuity as possible between successive phone calls from ICs by making it statistically improbable that the IC will ever talk to the same FS twice.
Never allowing any incoming call from an IC to be transferred to any other person at E*Trade. E.g. [1] the FS the IC previously spoke to; [2] Anyone in E*Trades Customer Service Department; [3] The FSs supervisor; [4] Any Employee or manager outside of the FSs department.
For "security and privacy reasons", make no information available to the IC except to detail the requirements that are being put on the IC to effectuate unrestricting the ICs account.
For "security and privacy reasons", do not respond to email communication from ICs unless it utilizes E*Trades internal secure email process. Then make sure that an IC with a restricted account has no access to the E*Trade secure email system

Introduce as much delay as possible with practices such as:
Always Leave the burden of all follow up calls on the IC [A good tactic is to promise a return phone call to the IC, and then dont make it]
The FS should never be knowledgeable of any past account history prior to the phone call he is currently handling. Let the IC start from the beginning on each successive phone call.
If the IC insists, or it becomes otherwise awkward, the FS should ask the IC if he minds being put on hold for 3 to 5 minutes while the FS researches the computer file to become knowledgeable on the past history of the account. [This is a good time for the FS to take a coffee or cigarette break. Frequent paid breaks are a good amenity to provide at offshore facilities to counter activist allegations of utilizing low-paid, offshore "sweat shop" labor]. After the break, the FC should always apologize for the delay. [Is any of this sounding familiar to graduates of the E*Trade fraud prevention program?]
Always insist on receiving original documents to insure that they cant be quickly transmitted by fax or email by the IC.
Include in the process illogical procedures such as having documents overnighted by ICs to one address, and then take 3 business days to physically transfer them to a different facility 400 miles away so that they can be electronically scanned into the computer.
Never commit to a time certain as to when the account can be unrestricted.
Never explain the full process to the IC. Only divulge the existence of the additional time delay involved in the next step of the process when you get to that step.
And on and on and on.

How to maximize the collateral value of the customers assets that E*Trade is holding hostage? Inconsistently allow the IC, (whose funds are being held hostage because his identity cannot be verified by E*Trade) to convert any security in the accounts portfolio into cash, and offer to waive the higher fee for having a broker perform the transaction over the phone. In fact, have the FS's make an unsolicited offer to immediately liquidate securities in the ICs account when the (unverified) IC calls in, being sure to point out however that the proceeds cannot be released until the restriction on the account is removed.

CONCLUSION
There is significant and convincing evidence that E*Trade has put all of the above, and much more, in place. The above patterns will sound very familiar to Etrade customers who have already posted complaints. It is very hard to believe that E*Trades Fraud Prevention procedures are justified, benign and in the best interests of their customers. Circumstantial evidence? Yes! But, what other explanation makes any sense?

The basic scam is: When you try to withdraw funds, E*Trade alleges suspicious activity on your account so it is placed on hold for security reasons. Then E*Trade insists on a ludicrous process of sending a notarized letter to them. (see ConsumerAffairs.com Post from serviceman in Iraq). This entire process is designed to insure maximum time delay. Generally it takes about 30 days to get your money if you are proactive in follow-up, otherwise, it may take longer. If you look critically at the process, you can see that its sole motivation is to create delay, not enhance security.

None of the Federal regulators (SEC and OTS in this case) get excited about a handful of customers who appear to have been treated badly by E*Trade in holding up their withdrawals for a few weeks before releasing the funds, based on E*Trades bogus security concerns of accounts being compromised. E*Trades explanation to regulators will be: Things unintentionally ran amuck with improper supervision of the lowest level employees in an offshore call center, and unintentionally poor internal coordination. E*Trade should not be criticized for an overabundance of caution when it comes to security and fraud prevention in their customers best interest.

However, given E*Trades current precarious cash flow position, suppose this was a process orchestrated by upper management to be intentionally applied to thousands of E*Trade customers, rather than by accident and incompetence to a handful of customers?

What if
an E*Trade executive devised a scheme to withhold meaningful amounts of funds from significantly more than a few hundred of its customers? First, what is a meaningful amount to a company the size of E*Trade? E*Trade claims on its website, in April 2008, to have $176 Billion in Customer assets, and 4.3 Million accounts. That is an average of $41,000 per account. In November 2007, E*Trade was on the brink of bankruptcy. Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago based hedge fund, provided an infusion of $2.5 Billion in Capital for which E*Trade paid dearly. Part of E*Trades ongoing turnaround plan is to sell off three divisions of its company, anticipating those sales will bring in $350 Million by the end of 2008. It could be argued that the threshold of a meaningful amount to E*Trade in their current situation would be in the neighborhood of $50 Million to $100 Million, which is 14 to 28 per cent of their expected proceeds from a significant component of their turnaround plan for 2008. How implausible would it be for E*Trade to obtain an additional interest free loan of $100 Million from its 4.3 million customers as unwilling lenders? [E*Trades current policy on availability of funds already gives then significant interest free funding from their customer base.] Actually, not very implausible!

Net customer withdrawals of funds from E*Trade have averaged over $14 Billion per month for the 4 month period ending 2/29/2008. Since some customers also have deposited funds during that time period, the gross amount of withdrawals had to have been even larger. From 1/1/08 to 2/29/08, E*Trade claims to have signed up 59,000 new retail accounts. [Apparently Ripoffreports.com and other similar sites are no match for E*Trades aggressive 2008 marketing plan when it comes to consumer awareness] Conservatively, let's assume $10 Billion per month as an average gross withdrawal rate going forward.

Suppose that E*Trade initiates a procedure to randomly select 1% (by dollar volume) of the requested withdrawals and temporarily restricts those accounts from being accessed by their owners based on a bogus finding of suspicious activity. Further suppose that on average, those withdrawals could be delayed by one month. If E*Trade can continue to do this each month for a random selection of 1% of its withdrawal requests, this becomes the equivalent of getting a new interest-free cash infusion of $100 Million. [Double all the quantities presented herein and the amount becomes $200,000,000. Still not an implausible proposition]

Assume that customer requests for withdrawals in the amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 and averaging $25,000 are targeted for the delay process. It would take only 4,000 such requests to make up $100 Million. [4,000 is only1/10th of 1% of E*Trades total accounts.] It might be as much as 1% to 3% of the accounts seeking withdrawals in any one month. Even if E*Trade totally alienates the targeted customers, it is not unrealistic to assume they could still point statistically to a better than 95% customer satisfaction rate to their regulating agencies. One should not necessarily rely on traditional statistical measures to assure themselves that all is OK at E*Trade.

Viewed from a different perspective: If E*Trade were serious about implementing a plan of introducing bogus security issues to intentionally delay the transfer of customer funds, what would be required to put their plan in place. A lot of phone calls from 4,000 Irate Customers, (ICs) should be anticipated. E*Trade would need to create a process to handle that anticipated call volume. How many calls should be anticipated? If each IC averages 3 calls per week, (a little more than 1 every other business day), and the average phone call duration is hour, they would need a staff of about 120 persons. [This estimate may be conservatively high since most ICs with brokerage accounts have better things to do than to make unproductive phone calls 3 times per week.]

Implementation
Set up a special department offshore and staff it with persons known as Fraud Specialists, (FSs). Their exclusive job will be to handle phone calls from ICs, who from the ICs point of view have had their accounts restricted for no apparent reason.
Then Implement the following procedures and policies:
Inflexible and illogical bureaucratic requirements, based on Form over Substance.
Preventing ICs from ever contacting by phone any E*Trade Employee except an FS.
Hiring and Training an overseas FS staff of approximately 100, and approximately 20 in the US. Do not place any importance on accuracy or truthfulness in what is told to the IC. Polite intransigence; the ability to totally ignore an ICs question and provide a canned non-responsive answer by rote; the ability to remain calm and polite and never hang up on the IC no matter how livid this process makes the IC, all seem to be part of the FS training program. Proficiency in understanding spoken English beyond an elementary level, longevity with E*Trade, rudimentary experience or knowledge of the services that are provided to the ICs by E*Trade are apparently not a requirement to obtain employment as an FS.
Intercepting all emails from ICs and having them answered by a different staff of people who are impossible for the IC to contact by phone.
Setting up a procedure that generally will not be quickly complied with by the average IC; [i.e. asking for the original of a notarized letter of authorization which must be physically mailed].
Taking no action on any request made by the IC in any written communication received by E*Trade, no matter how benign or trivial, unless said communication is part of E*Trades specific "identity verification" process.
Making sure there is as little continuity as possible between successive phone calls from ICs by making it statistically improbable that the IC will ever talk to the same FS twice.
Never allowing any incoming call from an IC to be transferred to any other person at E*Trade. E.g. [1] the FS the IC previously spoke to; [2] Anyone in E*Trades Customer Service Department; [3] The FSs supervisor; [4] Any Employee or manager outside of the FSs department.
For "security and privacy reasons", make no information available to the IC except to detail the requirements that are being put on the IC to effectuate unrestricting the ICs account.
For "security and privacy reasons", do not respond to email communication from ICs unless it utilizes E*Trades internal secure email process. Then make sure that an IC with a restricted account has no access to the E*Trade secure email system

Introduce as much delay as possible with practices such as:
Always Leave the burden of all follow up calls on the IC [A good tactic is to promise a return phone call to the IC, and then dont make it]
The FS should never be knowledgeable of any past account history prior to the phone call he is currently handling. Let the IC start from the beginning on each successive phone call.
If the IC insists, or it becomes otherwise awkward, the FS should ask the IC if he minds being put on hold for 3 to 5 minutes while the FS researches the computer file to become knowledgeable on the past history of the account. [This is a good time for the FS to take a coffee or cigarette break. Frequent paid breaks are a good amenity to provide at offshore facilities to counter activist allegations of utilizing low-paid, offshore "sweat shop" labor]. After the break, the FC should always apologize for the delay. [Is any of this sounding familiar to graduates of the E*Trade fraud prevention program?]
Always insist on receiving original documents to insure that they cant be quickly transmitted by fax or email by the IC.
Include in the process illogical procedures such as having documents overnighted by ICs to one address, and then take 3 business days to physically transfer them to a different facility 400 miles away so that they can be electronically scanned into the computer.
Never commit to a time certain as to when the account can be unrestricted.
Never explain the full process to the IC. Only divulge the existence of the additional time delay involved in the next step of the process when you get to that step.
And on and on and on.

How to maximize the collateral value of the customers assets that E*Trade is holding hostage? Inconsistently allow the IC, (whose funds are being held hostage because his identity cannot be verified by E*Trade) to convert any security in the accounts portfolio into cash, and offer to waive the higher fee for having a broker perform the transaction over the phone. In fact, have the FS's make an unsolicited offer to immediately liquidate securities in the ICs account when the (unverified) IC calls in, being sure to point out however that the proceeds cannot be released until the restriction on the account is removed.

CONCLUSION
There is significant and convincing evidence that E*Trade has put all of the above, and much more, in place. The above patterns will sound very familiar to Etrade customers who have already posted complaints. It is very hard to believe that E*Trades Fraud Prevention procedures are justified, benign and in the best interests of their customers. Circumstantial evidence? Yes! But, what other explanation makes any sense?

The basic scam is: When you try to withdraw funds, E*Trade alleges suspicious activity on your account so it is placed on hold for security reasons. Then E*Trade insists on a ludicrous process of sending a notarized letter to them. (see ConsumerAffairs.com Post from serviceman in Iraq). This entire process is designed to insure maximum time delay. Generally it takes about 30 days to get your money if you are proactive in follow-up, otherwise, it may take longer. If you look critically at the process, you can see that its sole motivation is to create delay, not enhance security.

None of the Federal regulators (SEC and OTS in this case) get excited about a handful of customers who appear to have been treated badly by E*Trade in holding up their withdrawals for a few weeks before releasing the funds, based on E*Trades bogus security concerns of accounts being compromised. E*Trades explanation to regulators will be: Things unintentionally ran amuck with improper supervision of the lowest level employees in an offshore call center, and unintentionally poor internal coordination. E*Trade should not be criticized for an overabundance of caution when it comes to security and fraud prevention in their customers best interest.

However, given E*Trades current precarious cash flow position, suppose this was a process orchestrated by upper management to be intentionally applied to thousands of E*Trade customers, rather than by accident and incompetence to a handful of customers?

What if
an E*Trade executive devised a scheme to withhold meaningful amounts of funds from significantly more than a few hundred of its customers? First, what is a meaningful amount to a company the size of E*Trade? E*Trade claims on its website, in April 2008, to have $176 Billion in Customer assets, and 4.3 Million accounts. That is an average of $41,000 per account. In November 2007, E*Trade was on the brink of bankruptcy. Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago based hedge fund, provided an infusion of $2.5 Billion in Capital for which E*Trade paid dearly. Part of E*Trades ongoing turnaround plan is to sell off three divisions of its company, anticipating those sales will bring in $350 Million by the end of 2008. It could be argued that the threshold of a meaningful amount to E*Trade in their current situation would be in the neighborhood of $50 Million to $100 Million, which is 14 to 28 per cent of their expected proceeds from a significant component of their turnaround plan for 2008. How implausible would it be for E*Trade to obtain an additional interest free loan of $100 Million from its 4.3 million customers as unwilling lenders? [E*Trades current policy on availability of funds already gives then significant interest free funding from their customer base.] Actually, not very implausible!

Net customer withdrawals of funds from E*Trade have averaged over $14 Billion per month for the 4 month period ending 2/29/2008. Since some customers also have deposited funds during that time period, the gross amount of withdrawals had to have been even larger. From 1/1/08 to 2/29/08, E*Trade claims to have signed up 59,000 new retail accounts. [Apparently Ripoffreports.com and other similar sites are no match for E*Trades aggressive 2008 marketing plan when it comes to consumer awareness] Conservatively, let's assume $10 Billion per month as an average gross withdrawal rate going forward.

Suppose that E*Trade initiates a procedure to randomly select 1% (by dollar volume) of the requested withdrawals and temporarily restricts those accounts from being accessed by their owners based on a bogus finding of suspicious activity. Further suppose that on average, those withdrawals could be delayed by one month. If E*Trade can continue to do this each month for a random selection of 1% of its withdrawal requests, this becomes the equivalent of getting a new interest-free cash infusion of $100 Million. [Double all the quantities presented herein and the amount becomes $200,000,000. Still not an implausible proposition]

Assume that customer requests for withdrawals in the amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 and averaging $25,000 are targeted for the delay process. It would take only 4,000 such requests to make up $100 Million. [4,000 is only1/10th of 1% of E*Trades total accounts.] It might be as much as 1% to 3% of the accounts seeking withdrawals in any one month. Even if E*Trade totally alienates the targeted customers, it is not unrealistic to assume they could still point statistically to a better than 95% customer satisfaction rate to their regulating agencies. One should not necessarily rely on traditional statistical measures to assure themselves that all is OK at E*Trade.

Viewed from a different perspective: If E*Trade were serious about implementing a plan of introducing bogus security issues to intentionally delay the transfer of customer funds, what would be required to put their plan in place. A lot of phone calls from 4,000 Irate Customers, (ICs) should be anticipated. E*Trade would need to create a process to handle that anticipated call volume. How many calls should be anticipated? If each IC averages 3 calls per week, (a little more than 1 every other business day), and the average phone call duration is hour, they would need a staff of about 120 persons. [This estimate may be conservatively high since most ICs with brokerage accounts have better things to do than to make unproductive phone calls 3 times per week.]

Implementation
Set up a special department offshore and staff it with persons known as Fraud Specialists, (FSs). Their exclusive job will be to handle phone calls from ICs, who from the ICs point of view have had their accounts restricted for no apparent reason.
Then Implement the following procedures and policies:
Inflexible and illogical bureaucratic requirements, based on Form over Substance.
Preventing ICs from ever contacting by phone any E*Trade Employee except an FS.
Hiring and Training an overseas FS staff of approximately 100, and approximately 20 in the US. Do not place any importance on accuracy or truthfulness in what is told to the IC. Polite intransigence; the ability to totally ignore an ICs question and provide a canned non-responsive answer by rote; the ability to remain calm and polite and never hang up on the IC no matter how livid this process makes the IC, all seem to be part of the FS training program. Proficiency in understanding spoken English beyond an elementary level, longevity with E*Trade, rudimentary experience or knowledge of the services that are provided to the ICs by E*Trade are apparently not a requirement to obtain employment as an FS.
Intercepting all emails from ICs and having them answered by a different staff of people who are impossible for the IC to contact by phone.
Setting up a procedure that generally will not be quickly complied with by the average IC; [i.e. asking for the original of a notarized letter of authorization which must be physically mailed].
Taking no action on any request made by the IC in any written communication received by E*Trade, no matter how benign or trivial, unless said communication is part of E*Trades specific "identity verification" process.
Making sure there is as little continuity as possible between successive phone calls from ICs by making it statistically improbable that the IC will ever talk to the same FS twice.
Never allowing any incoming call from an IC to be transferred to any other person at E*Trade. E.g. [1] the FS the IC previously spoke to; [2] Anyone in E*Trades Customer Service Department; [3] The FSs supervisor; [4] Any Employee or manager outside of the FSs department.
For "security and privacy reasons", make no information available to the IC except to detail the requirements that are being put on the IC to effectuate unrestricting the ICs account.
For "security and privacy reasons", do not respond to email communication from ICs unless it utilizes E*Trades internal secure email process. Then make sure that an IC with a restricted account has no access to the E*Trade secure email system

Introduce as much delay as possible with practices such as:
Always Leave the burden of all follow up calls on the IC [A good tactic is to promise a return phone call to the IC, and then dont make it]
The FS should never be knowledgeable of any past account history prior to the phone call he is currently handling. Let the IC start from the beginning on each successive phone call.
If the IC insists, or it becomes otherwise awkward, the FS should ask the IC if he minds being put on hold for 3 to 5 minutes while the FS researches the computer file to become knowledgeable on the past history of the account. [This is a good time for the FS to take a coffee or cigarette break. Frequent paid breaks are a good amenity to provide at offshore facilities to counter activist allegations of utilizing low-paid, offshore "sweat shop" labor]. After the break, the FC should always apologize for the delay. [Is any of this sounding familiar to graduates of the E*Trade fraud prevention program?]
Always insist on receiving original documents to insure that they cant be quickly transmitted by fax or email by the IC.
Include in the process illogical procedures such as having documents overnighted by ICs to one address, and then take 3 business days to physically transfer them to a different facility 400 miles away so that they can be electronically scanned into the computer.
Never commit to a time certain as to when the account can be unrestricted.
Never explain the full process to the IC. Only divulge the existence of the additional time delay involved in the next step of the process when you get to that step.
And on and on and on.

How to maximize the collateral value of the customers assets that E*Trade is holding hostage? Inconsistently allow the IC, (whose funds are being held hostage because his identity cannot be verified by E*Trade) to convert any security in the accounts portfolio into cash, and offer to waive the higher fee for having a broker perform the transaction over the phone. In fact, have the FS's make an unsolicited offer to immediately liquidate securities in the ICs account when the (unverified) IC calls in, being sure to point out however that the proceeds cannot be released until the restriction on the account is removed.

CONCLUSION
There is significant and convincing evidence that E*Trade has put all of the above, and much more, in place. The above patterns will sound very familiar to Etrade customers who have already posted complaints. It is very hard to believe that E*Trades Fraud Prevention procedures are justified, benign and in the best interests of their customers. Circumstantial evidence? Yes! But, what other explanation makes any sense?

The basic scam is: When you try to withdraw funds, E*Trade alleges suspicious activity on your account so it is placed on hold for security reasons. Then E*Trade insists on a ludicrous process of sending a notarized letter to them. (see ConsumerAffairs.com Post from serviceman in Iraq). This entire process is designed to insure maximum time delay. Generally it takes about 30 days to get your money if you are proactive in follow-up, otherwise, it may take longer. If you look critically at the process, you can see that its sole motivation is to create delay, not enhance security.

None of the Federal regulators (SEC and OTS in this case) get excited about a handful of customers who appear to have been treated badly by E*Trade in holding up their withdrawals for a few weeks before releasing the funds, based on E*Trades bogus security concerns of accounts being compromised. E*Trades explanation to regulators will be: Things unintentionally ran amuck with improper supervision of the lowest level employees in an offshore call center, and unintentionally poor internal coordination. E*Trade should not be criticized for an overabundance of caution when it comes to security and fraud prevention in their customers best interest.

However, given E*Trades current precarious cash flow position, suppose this was a process orchestrated by upper management to be intentionally applied to thousands of E*Trade customers, rather than by accident and incompetence to a handful of customers?

What if
an E*Trade executive devised a scheme to withhold meaningful amounts of funds from significantly more than a few hundred of its customers? First, what is a meaningful amount to a company the size of E*Trade? E*Trade claims on its website, in April 2008, to have $176 Billion in Customer assets, and 4.3 Million accounts. That is an average of $41,000 per account. In November 2007, E*Trade was on the brink of bankruptcy. Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago based hedge fund, provided an infusion of $2.5 Billion in Capital for which E*Trade paid dearly. Part of E*Trades ongoing turnaround plan is to sell off three divisions of its company, anticipating those sales will bring in $350 Million by the end of 2008. It could be argued that the threshold of a meaningful amount to E*Trade in their current situation would be in the neighborhood of $50 Million to $100 Million, which is 14 to 28 per cent of their expected proceeds from a significant component of their turnaround plan for 2008. How implausible would it be for E*Trade to obtain an additional interest free loan of $100 Million from its 4.3 million customers as unwilling lenders? [E*Trades current policy on availability of funds already gives then significant interest free funding from their customer base.] Actually, not very implausible!

Net customer withdrawals of funds from E*Trade have averaged over $14 Billion per month for the 4 month period ending 2/29/2008. Since some customers also have deposited funds during that time period, the gross amount of withdrawals had to have been even larger. From 1/1/08 to 2/29/08, E*Trade claims to have signed up 59,000 new retail accounts. [Apparently Ripoffreports.com and other similar sites are no match for E*Trades aggressive 2008 marketing plan when it comes to consumer awareness] Conservatively, let's assume $10 Billion per month as an average gross withdrawal rate going forward.

Suppose that E*Trade initiates a procedure to randomly select 1% (by dollar volume) of the requested withdrawals and temporarily restricts those accounts from being accessed by their owners based on a bogus finding of suspicious activity. Further suppose that on average, those withdrawals could be delayed by one month. If E*Trade can continue to do this each month for a random selection of 1% of its withdrawal requests, this becomes the equivalent of getting a new interest-free cash infusion of $100 Million. [Double all the quantities presented herein and the amount becomes $200,000,000. Still not an implausible proposition]

Assume that customer requests for withdrawals in the amounts ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 and averaging $25,000 are targeted for the delay process. It would take only 4,000 such requests to make up $100 Million. [4,000 is only1/10th of 1% of E*Trades total accounts.] It might be as much as 1% to 3% of the accounts seeking withdrawals in any one month. Even if E*Trade totally alienates the targeted customers, it is not unrealistic to assume they could still point statistically to a better than 95% customer satisfaction rate to their regulating agencies. One should not necessarily rely on traditional statistical measures to assure themselves that all is OK at E*Trade.

Viewed from a different perspective: If E*Trade were serious about implementing a plan of introducing bogus security issues to intentionally delay the transfer of customer funds, what would be required to put their plan in place. A lot of phone calls from 4,000 Irate Customers, (ICs) should be anticipated. E*Trade would need to create a process to handle that anticipated call volume. How many calls should be anticipated? If each IC averages 3 calls per week, (a little more than 1 every other business day), and the average phone call duration is hour, they would need a staff of about 120 persons. [This estimate may be conservatively high since most ICs with brokerage accounts have better things to do than to make unproductive phone calls 3 times per week.]

Implementation
Set up a special department offshore and staff it with persons known as Fraud Specialists, (FSs). Their exclusive job will be to handle phone calls from ICs, who from the ICs point of view have had their accounts restricted for no apparent reason.
Then Implement the following procedures and policies:
Inflexible and illogical bureaucratic requirements, based on Form over Substance.
Preventing ICs from ever contacting by phone any E*Trade Employee except an FS.
Hiring and Training an overseas FS staff of approximately 100, and approximately 20 in the US. Do not place any importance on accuracy or truthfulness in what is told to the IC. Polite intransigence; the ability to totally ignore an ICs question and provide a canned non-responsive answer by rote; the ability to remain calm and polite and never hang up on the IC no matter how livid this process makes the IC, all seem to be part of the FS training program. Proficiency in understanding spoken English beyond an elementary level, longevity with E*Trade, rudimentary experience or knowledge of the services that are provided to the ICs by E*Trade are apparently not a requirement to obtain employment as an FS.
Intercepting all emails from ICs and having them answered by a different staff of people who are impossible for the IC to contact by phone.
Setting up a procedure that generally will not be quickly complied with by the average IC; [i.e. asking for the original of a notarized letter of authorization which must be physically mailed].
Taking no action on any request made by the IC in any written communication received by E*Trade, no matter how benign or trivial, unless said communication is part of E*Trades specific "identity verification" process.
Making sure there is as little continuity as possible between successive phone calls from ICs by making it statistically improbable that the IC will ever talk to the same FS twice.
Never allowing any incoming call from an IC to be transferred to any other person at E*Trade. E.g. [1] the FS the IC previously spoke to; [2] Anyone in E*Trades Customer Service Department; [3] The FSs supervisor; [4] Any Employee or manager outside of the FSs department.
For "security and privacy reasons", make no information available to the IC except to detail the requirements that are being put on the IC to effectuate unrestricting the ICs account.
For "security and privacy reasons", do not respond to email communication from ICs unless it utilizes E*Trades internal secure email process. Then make sure that an IC with a restricted account has no access to the E*Trade secure email system

Introduce as much delay as possible with practices such as:
Always Leave the burden of all follow up calls on the IC [A good tactic is to promise a return phone call to the IC, and then dont make it]
The FS should never be knowledgeable of any past account history prior to the phone call he is currently handling. Let the IC start from the beginning on each successive phone call.
If the IC insists, or it becomes otherwise awkward, the FS should ask the IC if he minds being put on hold for 3 to 5 minutes while the FS researches the computer file to become knowledgeable on the past history of the account. [This is a good time for the FS to take a coffee or cigarette break. Frequent paid breaks are a good amenity to provide at offshore facilities to counter activist allegations of utilizing low-paid, offshore "sweat shop" labor]. After the break, the FC should always apologize for the delay. [Is any of this sounding familiar to graduates of the E*Trade fraud prevention program?]
Always insist on receiving original documents to insure that they cant be quickly transmitted by fax or email by the IC.
Include in the process illogical procedures such as having documents overnighted by ICs to one address, and then take 3 business days to physically transfer them to a different facility 400 miles away so that they can be electronically scanned into the computer.
Never commit to a time certain as to when the account can be unrestricted.
Never explain the full process to the IC. Only divulge the existence of the additional time delay involved in the next step of the process when you get to that step.
And on and on and on.

How to maximize the collateral value of the customers assets that E*Trade is holding hostage? Inconsistently allow the IC, (whose funds are being held hostage because his identity cannot be verified by E*Trade) to convert any security in the accounts portfolio into cash, and offer to waive the higher fee for having a broker perform the transaction over the phone. In fact, have the FS's make an unsolicited offer to immediately liquidate securities in the ICs account when the (unverified) IC calls in, being sure to point out however that the proceeds cannot be released until the restriction on the account is removed.

CONCLUSION
There is significant and convincing evidence that E*Trade has put all of the above, and much more, in place. The above patterns will sound very familiar to Etrade customers who have already posted complaints. It is very hard to believe that E*Trades Fraud Prevention procedures are justified, benign and in the best interests of their customers. Circumstantial evidence? Yes! But, what other explanation makes any sense?

Oddly enough, about an hour after my conversation with E*TRADE regarding their "security" measures, my 5K became avaiilable.

My guess is that these buttholes freeze your money until you complain and threaten to report them to the SEC.

Do not bank with these crooks.

Yes, that's E*TRADE.

I just got off the phone with an E*TARD from E*TRADE to find out where the 5K I transferred from Wells-Fargo on 4/18 went. After answering 159 questions, I was told that it was being held by E*TRADE for my security until 4/29, but I would be paid interest.

Just a few weeks ago I made a transfer of 10K from HSBC Direct, it took 9 days, again it was for 'security' purposes. And again they told me that they would pay interest while it was restricted.

Both of the external accounts were verified by E*TRADES own verfication process, and I also use their digital security token for extra protection.

Ironically, E*TRADE calls it "Quick Transfer".

The only security these jackasses care about is their own financial security, and they try to ensure it by freezing customer accounts.

Here's there policy regarding external transfers right from their website:

External account to E*TRADE Bank deposit account On the evening of the 3rd business day after the day of deposit

However, they get around this by 'freezing' the account, for your protection of course.

I guess an internet bank is suspicious of Bank-to-Bank transfers.

I think we need to start complaining to the SEC regarding E*TRADES deceptive and fraudulent practices.