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A lone participant in Estee Lauder's 401(k) plan is suing her former employer and the service providers to its retirement plan for the $99,000 that was stolen from her account.
In October 2016, the plaintiff, who had been separated from Estee Lauder for about a decade but still had an account balance in the $1.4 billion plan, began receiving a series of letters confirming payments from her account on company letterhead.
Two letters confirmed distributions of $37,000 and $50,000, which were sent to accounts at SunTrust Banks and TD Bank.
A third unauthorized distribution of $12,000 was noted on the plaintiff's account statement. That distribution was never confirmed to the plaintiff, according to court documents.
The complaint says the plaintiff never authorized the distributions and never held accounts at the three banks where the distributions were wired.
Between October 24, 2016, and January 2, 2017, the plaintiff made 23 calls to the plan's recordkeeper, Alight Solutions, which was then branded as Aon Hewitt.
The Hewitt Customer Service Center said it would investigate the distributions. Upon completion of the investigation, no money had been recovered, and the plaintiff was told her account would not be made whole. Alight is a named defendant in the suit.
State Street, which was a custodian and investment manager to the Estee Lauder plan, did file forgery affidavits from the plaintiff. State Street is a named defendant in the complaint.
According to the complaint, "none of the Defendants contacted her (the plaintiff) prior to the distributions to obtain her authorization to make the distributions, and none of the Defendants notified her of the distributions by any means other than the mailed Confirmations of Payment and third-quarter account statement, until she telephoned the customer service center."
The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated their fiduciary obligations under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Under one allegation, the defendants breached their fiduciary duties by allowing the plan to make unauthorized distributions, failed to confirm the requests for the money, failed to provide timely notice of the distributions by phone or email, failed to identify suspicious requests that were wired to different bank accounts, failed to have in place processes to safeguard against unauthorized withdrawals, and failed to monitor the distribution process.
A second allegation under ERISA claims the defendants failed to comply with the plaintiff's requests for plan documents in a timely fashion.
The plaintiff is seeking $99,000 plus lost investment earnings from the time of the distributions, and the $110-per day that ERISA prescribes as the fine on delays in distributing requested plan documents. The plaintiff is also seeking to recover legal fees.
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Nick Thornton
Nick Thornton is a financial writer covering retirement and health care issues for BenefitsPRO and ALM Media. He greatly enjoys learning from the vast minds in the legal, academic, advisory and money management communities when covering the retirement space. He's also written on international marketing trends, financial institution risk management, defense and energy issues, the restaurant industry in New York City, surfing, cigars, rum, travel, and fishing. When not writing, he's pushing into some land or water.
