I'm hoping your collective wisdom can help me retrieve my lost $2,500.
Here's the situation: I sent a $2,500 check to Vanguard via snail mail* to top off my 2013 contribution to my Roth IRA. The check went through. But on the same day the check went through, my checking account records show another $2,500 charge through Vanguard, this one via electronic transfer. I did not authorize Vanguard to make this purchase.
Neither my nor my wife's accounts show any record of the second transaction. I spoke with a few different reps at Vanguard, and they all verify that the check went through, but they have no record of the $2.5k electronic transfer. They claim they can't do anything and that I need to pursue this through my bank.
So far I've filed a dispute through my bank, but I don't have much confidence that they'll be able to make this go away. It looks like a perfectly normal transaction from the outside--I shoveled $11,000 into Vanguard in 1-3k increments over the last two months.
I'm thinking I need to try to escalate this with Vanguard and see where this goes when I stomp my feet a little. What else can I do? Anyone have any theories about what happened? Should I be treating this as fraud/account theft and not as an error on Vanguard's part? (Does anyone actually buy index funds with stolen money...?!)
*I had to validate my identity via mail, so I was unable to make an electronic transfer before April 15.
