Proper Document Destruction

Apr 5, 2008 8:54 pm

Recently, an investment firm had moved out of our building.



I take out the trash this morning, and find at least 2000 lbs of client statements, social security numbers, authorization documents that list bank routing and account numbers, and lots of other information. This is a major wirehouse, by the way.



Needless to say, I’m floored at this discovery.



Any comments, and what should I do? Should the NASD be notified of this serious issue? I put in a call to the branch manager, but nothing has been returned yet. I took some photos of an unbelievable sight.



What happened to proper document destruction!!!

Apr 6, 2008 12:21 pm

Ice is right. That kind of flagrant disregard for clients’ privacy needs to be reported so that 1 - The documents can destroyed appropriately. 2 - Clients can be contacted & told they were put at risk.

Apr 7, 2008 2:47 pm

Apr 8, 2008 8:33 pm
joedabrkr:

For some reason I suspect this is a troll, inclucing the fact that it is their first and only post.

Having said that, based upon my experience at UBS I wouldn’t be shocked if this was true.   In 2001 when the market got bad and corporate told us to cut costs, our BOM actually canceled the shredding service for our very large branch to save money.

  UBS Joe?  Yeah they settled for $89 million: http://registeredrep.com/news/Wirehouse_Millions_In_Overtime_Cases/index.html   If you were a broker you got a check.  Your Welcome.  Wanna talk about compliance??   -Toby Harris