Big Bank Abuses Widowed Senior With Disabilities: Merrill Edge vs. Janet West

My friend Janet West is a fellow activist and member of We the People Rising.

She is an avid reader and research on all key legislation in Sacramento. She helped spearhead the fight against unlimited development in her Long Beach area home following the passage of SB 35. She has taken on legislators of both parties for putting corporate interests or foreign nationals ahead of American citizens.

Now she is the victim of corporate banking abuse.

Check out her statement to me this past week:

My said sorrowful story

If this was not happening to me, I wouldn't even believe this story was true. 

Shortly before my husband unexpectedly passed away, we filled out the paperwork to have his 401(k) rolled over into an IRA at Merrill Edge, a Bank of America Corporation. 

I'm the beneficiary on both the 401(k) and the rollover IRA at Merrill Edge and everything else my husband had. We were married for 40 years.  A U.S. Treasury check was issued (my husband worked for the Postal Service) before he passed away, but that check was lost and never negotiated. I had multiple conversations with the Federal Reserve with multiple "must do" solutions, multiple promises of forms for me to fill out (which I'd never receive) and multiple changing unknown time periods to wait. 

Finally someone took charge who seemed as if she knew what she was doing. She said they could not change the name on the check because when the check was issued, my husband was alive and that it would need to be deposited in the Merrill Edge account and then at that point Merrill Edge could change if over to my name since I'm the beneficiary. My financial advisor had also talked to her several times and she told him the same thing. 

It took me four months, and during that time the funds have been in limbo and not earned a penny of interest, and finally the necessary form was completed and the Federal Reserve

reissued the U.S. Treasury check payable to Merrill Edge fbo [For the Benefit of Of] Daniel

West. Merrill Edge is refusing to negotiate the check because my husband is deceased and is insisting I make the Federal Reserve reissue the check in my name. That's impossible. 

In addition to the check being issued when he was still alive, as a former banker, I also don't

understand why they can't negotiate the check because it's not even really payable to my husband. It's payable to them for benefit of my husband which it's undisputed he wanted the funds to benefit me. So after waiting four months I now sit here with a check I can't negotiate.

I'm the victim of a Wall Street firm - me, a senior disabled widow. As I have no other option, does anyone know of an attorney they'd recommend?

Janet West

If you have any advice or directions as to what Janet can do to rectify this problem, please contact me me.

Email: arthurschaper@hotmail.com