“Yeah, it’s not official, as far as I can tell. From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s something more personal. I’ll need access to someone at your bank to confirm who froze the accounts, though.”
“Is your brokerage account connected to the bank?”
“Yeah, it’s connected to my savings account,” I said.
“Well, at least that solves a little bit of this. It all seems to originate at the bank, or at least that’s one of the big areas we need to look.”
As Billy and Dick started to coordinate their attack, I sat quietly and let them work. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but I was becoming more and more confident that it was going to come out very soon.
“Hey, guys, my ex-wife is calling; I’m going to take this out in the hall,” I said when Rose’s number popped up on my screen.
“Hi, Brandon. I hate to bother you but I’ve got some forms I need you to fill out before I get married next month.”
“Sure, what are they about?”
“I’m not sure, just some stuff that Carlos and his lawyer put together. You can come get them and have your attorney take a look, if you like. I think it’s about stock options or something.”
“Stock options?” I asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “You’ll have to look at it. You know I’m not technical like you are.”
“Sure, I’ll come grab them later today. I’ve got to run for now.”
“What was that all about?” Dick asked when I returned.
“I’m not sure. Rose said she needed me to sign something before she married Carlos. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“She probably wants to keep her alimony. It’s no big deal; I’ll take a look at it. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. Billy has the bank on the line and they need to confirm your identity before they will answer any questions.”
“Sure, but I was on with them before and they weren’t very helpful,” I took the phone from Billy and flipped it to speaker. “This is Brandon Baker; what do you need to verify?”
The woman was nice enough, but she went on and on with verification questions for at least five minutes before she would actually answer anything we had to ask. It was comical to me how hard it was for me to get information about my own account, considering how easily someone seemed to be able to block my account.
“Mr. Baker, your account was flagged for fraud last week; is that correct?”
“Yes, but it was a misunderstanding with my ex-wife. Everything was straightened out.”
“Okay, well, it appears an outside agency has frozen your accounts. They accessed them through your credit cards. So, you could start by looking for who had access to your card ending in zero-two-seven-eight.”
“Wait, so it’s fraudulently frozen and you can’t unfreeze it?”
“At this point, I’m going to ask for an investigation because I can’t tell who has actually activated the freeze. Normally if it was activated by a court order or government agency, we would have that legal document on file. So, from what I’m seeing, it appears to be an illegal freeze.”
“Great, so you can fix it?” Dick asked.
“No, sir. I can ask for it to be investigated.”
“So, you think it is frozen by an illegal means, yet you won’t unfreeze any of his accounts?” Billy asked. “How long will it take for your investigation?”
“Three to five weeks.”
All three of us burst into laughter at the same time. The bank was practically admitting that some illegal person had frozen my accounts, yet they were in absolutely no hurry to fix the problem or offer me any sort of timely assistance.
“So what should Mr. Baker do for money until the time that your bank can verify this is a fake freeze?”
“You are welcome to come in and open up a line of credit if you’d like. I see you are a loyal customer and we’d be happy to extend the credit to you while this is getting straightened out.”
“Fine, I will come down right away,” I said grumpily. “How long will it take to get the funds from the loan?”