I just received futures in my brokerage account which I didnt trade... Strangely, these futures are in an expiry where nothing has been traded.. I win some good money on these futures. Then, I wonder what would be the good move to keep the money for me ? I am under american law on this account.
I would announce my attempt to defraud the brokerage by searching for a way to keep funds which knowingly do not belong to me on a public message board. Then I would save those funds to pay my attorney fees.
This used to happen to me daily. Now it's about twice a month. Some brokers are faster than others. The most likely scenario is that someone else who is missing those trades will be proactive and the trades will be removed by tomorrow. It sometimes happens, if you call them up they won't be able to figure out who the trades belong too. Then you get them to send you an email that those trades will not be removed from your account and you can feel free to exit them. But don't just assume that if they are still there in a few days that they aren't going to do anything. I've heard of 6 figure losses from people who didn't realize the trade wasn't theirs who hedged out only to have the entry trade removed months later. The probability that you'd be able to exit, close your account and wire money out before they figure it out isn't very high. I'm not sure it's technically illegal but since you might run up a six figure attorney bill trying to keep it - probably not worth it.
I was just wondering, how these guys pay for their mistakes. Now I am afraid that they give me a position which is so big that I dont have the margin and they they liquidate all my holdings ?
Why are you asking here? You should already have been in contact with your Broker the moment you realized the error...