T. Rowe Price Sued Over Client Cyber-Hack

- The lawsuit alleges that on June 17, 2025, hackers accessed the 85-year-old's account and, in under an hour, liquidated her $1.14 million portfolio of blue-chip stocks, which included Apple, Microsoft, Disney, and Nvidia. - The funds were then allegedly used to purchase 475,200 shares of a speculative Chinese microcap stock, Planet Green Holdings (PLAG), causing its trading volume to spike to a record 3.5 million shares, compared to its average of 162,000. - The claim asserts that T. Rowe Price's security systems failed to flag suspicious activity, such as "impossible travel" alerts, which showed logins from both California and Florida within minutes while the client was in New York. - After the unauthorized trades were identified and the penny stock was sold, the client incurred a direct loss of $708,552.59 due to the stock's price collapse. - The legal action accuses the firm of violating FINRA Rule 2165, which allows for temporary holds on accounts to protect "Specified Adults" (typically those over 65) from suspected financial exploitation, and Regulation S-ID, which requires programs to detect and mitigate identity theft. - This incident comes after a third-party vendor for T. Rowe Price, Infosys McCamish Systems, suffered a data breach in late 2023 that exposed the personal information of over 6 million customers across several financial firms. T. Rowe Price stated its own systems were not compromised in that specific event. - In a February 2026 10-K filing, T. Rowe Price acknowledged that it has been the target of cybersecurity attacks and expects such attempts to continue, while stating no incident in the prior year had a material impact on the firm's finances or operations. - FINRA has been increasing its focus on protecting senior investors, with rules requiring firms to make reasonable efforts to obtain a trusted contact person and allowing them to place temporary holds on transactions in cases of suspected exploitation.