Seems to me...
...that the dumbasses who BOUGHT the "stock" from her should be arrested for being stupid.
A Wisconsin woman has been charged over claims she tried to sell $1m worth of Facebook shares that she didn't own. Prosecutors said that Marianne Oleson had told friends that she received the shares because her daughter knew Mark Zuckerberg, and managed to persuade a few different people to take the fake stock off her hands. …
Her victims presumably knew and trusted her, and she defrauded them.
"Trust, yet verify" -- an excellent idea, but how?
I would not accept stock documents in lieu of cash from anyone. Why? Because I have no way of knowing what "legitimate" stock documents look like.
If I call a broker, and say, "I want to buy 1000 share of Intel stock", how can I verify that after paying the broker, I truly "own" 1000 shares of Intel stock?
Because "a computer says so"? No. Computers can (and many times, have been) been fradulently manipulated.
How do I verify that my brokerage company isn't just keeping the money I paid them to buy stocks with?
How to I verify that my brokerage company isn't raiding my account, and issuing faked account statements?
How do I verify my bank (or, dishonest employees of the bank) have not raided my accounts and issued faked account statements?
Answer: I cannot.
If they're defrauding me, I won't find out about it until I try to pull my money and it's "not there", or I see a headline about "Broker/Bank X Stock/Fraud Scandal".
I guess it's criminally-stupid to put money in a bank, or to buy stock.
keeping £10,000+ in your home doesn't seem like a rational idea either. Money that's idling and not gaining interest is criminal also! Lucky for us we've got a little insurance to go with banks. The downside to the modern economy is that 97% of all money in the UK are just numbers in a computer. So honestly I'm not surprised at this story.
Cash is great, but let's be reasonable. The banks aren't out to get you..... mostly.