I got let go for admitting I returned computer items from over 3 years prior. Repurchased but eBay goes back only 3 years and PayPal 2 years. Don't think it would of mattered even if I could get them. If you are called into investigation by internal director, I highly recommend you say nothing and tell them you want to discuss with your legal council. you may be let go any way but at least you can force their hand. They may have got records from the stores without your consent which is better to show if it goes to court.
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200 plus people all guilty of fraud? Doubtful. Just think of the logistics involved with interviewing and documenting over 200 cases and determining without a shadow of a doubt that almost 200 individuals in fact acted fraudulently. The decisions came back in days to fire people. Come on be serious. You don’t actually think they were objective and fair in these investigations when it’s publicly known they’re reducing staff while this is all going on.
Just disgusting treatment by Fidelity and it’s clear this was done to reduce headcount. I’ve been with Fidelity for more than 12 years and now I’m spending my lunch hour looking through job ads. Thankfully Schwab is expanding nearby. If the goal was to chase away good employees, congratulations! You lost me and many others will follow! Maybe that’s what you wanted all along. Go ahead and keep believing your bulls**t pulse surveys that nobody trusts enough to answer honestly.
Too sad. People”s life and family got ruined for this? They don’t care about their employees, period!
As an employee just learning about this today, this ordeal is extremely concerning. It seems it opens up opportunities for Fidelity to legally fire employees for oversights. SSC, the group that is in charge of paying product commission, overpays and underpays sales reps on a weekly basis. Now it seems if a rep is over compensated by SSC, and the rep misses it or does not report it, they would run the risk of being fired too. Why would Fidelity ruin rep/client relationships over hundreds of dollars?
I think Fidelity management is over reacting way too much on this. Not a good way to keep morale up, as everyone will worry about what’s next and who’s next. Fix the policy and warn everyone not to break it...
So I was referred to this thread by a colleague. A former co worker was let go. This person had complained of s-xual harassment and hostile work environment from a superior. And essentially nothing was done. After the article came out talking about how Fidelity handled the s-xual harassment claims by firing individuals this person felt betrayed. This person then contacted HR for clarification on why this situation was handled drastically different from theirs. HR said they would be following up and reviewing internal documentation. Two investigators showed up the next week and this person was under the assumption it was about the previous s-xual harassment claims, it was to question about the computer reimbursement instead. Guess what happened next. Placed on leave and fired.
These troll posts are a direct result of Fidelity holding an emergency meeting this morning to discuss the WSJ article and combat this thread. Talking points will follow. Cats out of the bag now.
The numbers are too high for this not to be a policy error.
To the "investigators", the policy never stated any rule about returning equipment. I left Fidelity years ago, and frankly, this is incredibly infuriating to hear about. This was a reimbursement program for PERSONAL computer equipment, and the reimbursement form had zero guidelines on how long one had to hold on to the equipment after getting reimbursed. A simple statement saying, "for returns, please resubmit forms to Wageworks or contact HR" would have sufficed. And okay, we can play the same game - if my father gave me $1500 and said "you can use this money to buy yourself a personal computer. The computer will be yours, and not mine", am I obligated to tell him if I decide that I don't like the first laptop and decide to exchange for a replacement a few months later? No, because the implication is that the laptop was a gift, and I can do with it what I please. But hey, my father did something nice for me, so it'll probably make me help him out too in the future. To answer your question, "Why is this any different, just because Fidelity is a billion dollar company? The dollar amount is irrelevant." It was an incentive to get your employees to do better work. Don't punish employees for your ambiguously written reimbursement policy. You need to stop acting like blind justice warriors and start thinking logically.
To the "investigator", you fired a very good employee at our location that bought a computer, returned it because it was not working properly, this employee then exchanged it for another computer that they kept. Years go by and out of nowhere you fire this employee. Not only do you fire the person, but you check a fraud box. It's just not right, then you post on here like what you are doing it is somehow protecting clients? This whole operation is just wrong. The timing of it is suspect, why wait years to commence this operation, and do it immediately following a VBO that did not work? Did years later protecting clients become important from employee computer reimbursements? Does not make any sense. Active employees are pissed that you are doing this to our colleagues.
To the person responding to the investigator. What you said is completely false. No one posed as anyone. The merchants were called and were told exactly what was happening and that we were conducting an audit on behalf of Fidelity and the reimbursement policy was explained to the merchant, and that as an auditor there were suspicions that the equipment may have been returned and we just wanted confirmation if you returned or exchanged the equipment. It was 100% truthful and no one acted as anyone else. If your father gave you $1500 to go out and buy a computer and you only spent $1400, would you not offer to give him back the $100 in change? I think you would. At least I hope you would. Why is this any different, just because Fidelity is a billion dollar company. The dollar amount is irrelevant. What you did is wrong and you could have easily avoided the consequences by contacting Wageworks or Acclaris to resubmit your paperwork.
To the investigator. You posed as me in order to gain access to my private 3rd party return transaction. That is not right. Also, say I bought a computer for $2000, then decided I wanted a different model for $1500. Returned first model and bought second model. 99% of people honest or not would just say f--- it and not go thru the trouble of paying back the money and then resubmitting the new claim just because back in 2013 is wasn’t so easy. We are talking about small dollars here. Still fired over the fact that I didn’t resubmit and kept the difference which was like $100.
Most of the posts here are inaccurate. These employees tried to take advantage of a generous offer by Fidelity. What they did is simply wrong and they are trying to put the blame back on the company. I am one of the investigators that tracked down and caught those committing these fraudulent activities, Every single employee is given the benefit of the doubt and assumed to have a legitimate reason for returning their equipment and is given every opportunity to show proof that they repurchased it elsewhere. Even if they couldn't show receipts, they are allowed to show physical proof that still owned what they claimed to have purchased. Many were able to show proof and return to work, but many were just trying to cheat and steal from the company. Fidelity manages billions and billions of investments and I feel strongly that they must protect the company's reputation and integrity, and maintain trust from their customers.
This hasn't been a secret internally, so, doubtful.
With the news out, a wave of resign will come?
Pretty soon they’ll start firing people for taking distributions from their 401k when they matched their contributions.
There is only 1 troll, all the other trolls have been fired.
The more trolls showing up means it’s becoming a problem for Fidelity.
Troll
Email the President
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
I always knew there were a lot of idiots who worked at Fidelity when I was there. Frauds and folks who stayed too long and felt entitled to something they never earned in the first place. These "victim" posts prove it. When you use your company benefits as currency to extract cash with publicly traded companies that your employer who is a broker that trades shares of said company that's fraud. End of story. It's an easy mistake to make if you're an idiot just like speeding. You deserved to get fired, good luck with your lawyers, you won't win.
Does anyone know of anyone that admitted to returning or canceling and was spared a job? Or would that be dreaming at this point? (Coming forward before they come to you...)
Does anyone know of anyone that admitted to returning or canceling and was spared a job? Or would that be dreaming at this point?
You want to do something bold, send a message to the President, tell him your story. If the White House gets 200 messages over this, and there is active press coverage like there is now, there is a decent chance Trump blasts out a tweet supporting the common citizens that have been slandered in this witch hunt by a big Wall Street firm.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Listen everybody, until a legit law firm posts on here with an 800 number, stop with posts requesting people send personal information.
Fidelity wants this free press, it shows they are being proactive, this is like child's play for their PR team. Customers don't know how delayed these firings are or the internal environment leading up to this, nor do they care. We all know this was dirty if you are wrapped up in this, even active employees know its dirty too. But come on people, no one here stands a chance going one on one vs Fidelity with the media. GET AN ATTORNEY! If you want to go to battle, have your attorney speak to the media if you've been wronged. Stop giving Fidelity layups in the press with quotes from people that are no longer in the industry.
This is coming from someone effected by this today, it is completely stupid to go and talk to reporters unless you have some type of smoking gun story or you are just going to leave the industry like the guy quoted today. If you have an attorney, ask them, if they tell you to speak with reporters, go get another attorney. If you don't have an attorney, go get one.
I don't know how the Wall Street Journal gets all this info from FIRNA, but what I would be interested in seeing is from 2012 through 2016, a 5 year period, how many employees were fired with this same box checked at Fidelity. During this time, someone if not many at the firm had to have botched a real expense report. I am curious to see how those situations were handled to see if Fidelity has been consistent with their markings.
The story doesn’t mention the way Fidelity went about getting the receipts without consent. Or regardless whether or not returns were valid. Doesn’t sound like Fidelity has done anything wrong in the story.
It’s because they knew firing 200 people at once could create a real problem. So they utilize FINRA to further investigate each individual in a guilty until proven innocent fashion to hopefully cut down on how many people will take action against them going forward. You’re literally all being tried in the court of public opinion before Fidelity even has to answer for what they’ve done. And when you do sue them they’ll just try and out wait you all. They won’t respond to your lawyers inquiries and will likely hope you run out of resources to fight them in the long term. That’s why it’s important people come together.
What I would like to know is if Fidelity was required to mark everyone's U5 for "fraud or the wrongful taking of property" or if it was just a company decision to do so uniformly over these reimbursement programs? Could they have fired everyone as they did and not have rung them up? I just find it hard to believe that 100% of these cases fit under the criteria of that checked box. I know licensed people at Fidelity that have been fired for cause or forced to resign, for other issues, and have a clean U4. How is this possible?
Now that the news is public, go to the reporters and tell your story. It’s your only chance to get hired again in the industry. They will write follow up pieces if you give them something to write about. Has Fidelity violated your privacy? Did they abuse their access to your credit card transactions?
Although I never even so much as submitted for a reimbursement for either program, I am sure glad I left on my own terms last June. This is really disgraceful. I’m sad for my former colleagues.
The article was published tonight, in my opinion, paints Fidelity in a positive light.
Fidelity is always sensitive to negative press and sends out “talking points” for reps to use to try to spin or discredit a story that paints them in a bad light. Ruining people’s careers for “allegedly misusing” an ambiguous policy seems unfair. I offered to pay back the difference after letting the investigator know I returned the computer and later bought another computer but was still let go over the phone. Hopefully the WSJ does an article to show how this “family run business that cares about its employees” really acts.
What I find outrageous, yet highly likely, is that the lone troll in this thread is most likely the person in charge of marking all your U5s.
It’s difficult to believe a company that “inappropriately compensates” people for what appears to be years, essentially overnight develops a skill set that allows them to adequately, thoroughly, and objectively investigate individuals to insure that they’re not firing people who maybe didn’t violate company policy.
This is not all that different from the ISR RSR audit on tagged accounts last year. The managers all but encourage maximizing every chance to tag an account but then auditors come along and fire good people.
Those people did not deserve financial life sentences. That’s exactly what Fidelity gave them!
This whole ordeal is the equivalent of getting pulled over doing 75 mph on a highway where the speed limit is 55 mph, but instead of getting a speeding ticket or a warning you are immediately sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camp and forced to prove you are not a terrorist if you want to be released.
Fidelity has a time limit of 30 days to file their paperwork to FINRA.
To the poster who stated their first priority is finding a job, and later seek legal counsel: you have a very limited time window in which to influence the language on your U-5. If your brokercheck language and industry reputation is important to you, you need to hire experienced counsel asap. The typical Fid employee is naive in these matters so Fid is not used to people hitting back strongly. Keep in mind the firm is deathly afraid of negative press.
Sent email to Lauren Weber regarding this. I’ll report back if I hear from her.