Is Pension Benefit Information (aboutmyletter.com) legitimate?
"I have no personal knowledge of this company; I've only looked over what I found on the web.  Overall, my judgement is that Pension Benefit Information, Inc. of San Rafael, CA is likely legitimate and aboutmyletter.com is one of two sites run by them (the other being pbinfo.com). These two sites are registered to Pension Benefit Information, Inc. (aboutmyletter uses Network Solutions privacy service but gives the company name; pbinfo uses their name and San Rafael address.) They are in the BBB.  The president (of the 8 employee Co.), Susan McDonald, has testified (PDF on .gov site) before Congress about business uses of SSNs.  They made a (very schlocky) video, which has an interview with McDonald after several canned, generic, ""impressive"" introductions.  I found the interview convincing of a person actually running a small, real business of this type.  A short version is on their site, long version here. There are some queries about their legitimacy online (like this one), but I found nothing negative on them, and one somewhat positive. One article talks about the suspicions they run into when contacting participants, and has some advice.  Also, scammers are unlikely to pay the U.S. Postal Service money to send paper letters. So what are the dangers? Money or identity.  So don't pay them any fees (now or later), especially since it looks like their clients (retirement funds) pay on the other side.  As for identity information: What's in the letter?  Don't they show that they already know a bunch about you?  Old employer?  Maybe the last four digits of your SSN?  Your address (if this is not the forwarded-by-IRS type of contact letter).  Other things, maybe?  What information would you be giving up if you did respond to them fully? You could try contacting your old company directly (mentioning PBI, Inc,), although on their website PBI says you'll have to go through them.  (They probably get paid for each successful contact, and deserve it.)  Still, responding through mail or telephone to PBI seems like the reasonable thing to do." To boil down what mgkrebbs said: Yes, you should send back the form, provided that it doesn't ask for any more information than address, current telephone number, and email address.  Don't ever, ever provide any bank account information. Nor social security number unless you're absolutely positive of the validity of the requestor. Phishing via regular mail is very rare.  It's way expensive compared to email, which is basically free, plus the U.S. Postal Service takes mail fraud fairly seriously (and has the legal statutes to prosecute).   So: don't obsess; send the form back.
The conclusions of this report seem to conflict with some of the long-term trends in asset management. The gradual decline of defined-benefit plans (e.g. pensions) and the growth of defined-contribution (401k) have altered the asset mix.  The biggest investors in hedge funds have traditionally been pension management funds; given the long-standing decline in private sector pensions and the (seemingly) near-future decline in public-employee pensions, the funds that can only be accessed by institutional investors or accredited investors (eg all hedge funds) stand to lose.   Explained another way: right now, only rich people and institutional investors get access to hedge funds. Your 401K money can't go into them, and neither can your IRA. If you're not an accredited investor (income of &gt;$250K, net worth of $1MM+ excl. primary residence) you can't subscribe. You can only get into hedge funds through buying into a 'fund of funds' type of investment, where you buy a fund (and pay that fund) so that they can pay a hedge manager to manage the money. Think of a pass-through entity that skims some off the top and manages portfolio risk. So, as fewer people get pensions (and the pensions that they do get are smaller), these pension funds have fewer assets left to invest in hedge funds.   Most hedge funds return zero alpha after fees and arguably have lower risk-adjusted returns than simpler investments. But 15-20% of all hedge funds do pretty well. Picking which 15-20%....that's difficult.   Bottom line: what is Citi pushing with this report? Defined Benefit Plans: Defined benefit plans are disappearing because of their high cost to the companies that provide them.  When an employee retires, the company must pay his pension for the rest of his life, even longer if the pension includes a survivor option.  Thus the company's financial burden grows as more employees retire.   By law, they must provide a fund that has sufficient resources to pay all present and future pensions.  Low interest rates, such as we have now, place a greater burden on the amount that must be in these funds.   For these reasons, most companies, including large ones like IBM and Lockheed Martin, have discontinued their pension plans and provide only defined contribution plans.   Defined Contribution Plans: These require the company to only make contributions while the employee is working.  Once the employee retires, the company's responsibility ends.  Usually these plans employ a 401K type savings plan for which the employee contributes and the companies matches some or all of that contribution.  Comparison: Although a fully company paid pension plan is the best, it is now almost unavailable.  The defined contribution plan, if it includes company matching, can be a viable alternative if the investments are chosen wisely and perform as expected.  Of course, this is not guaranteed but is probably the best option that most working people have at this time. As you point out, the main benefits of a pension/retirement account over a traditional cash/taxable account are the legal and tax benefits.  Most Western countries establish a specific legal definition for an account which is often taxed less or not at all relative to taxable accounts and which contains some protection for the owner in case of a bankruptcy.  The typical drawbacks for investing within such structures are limited investment choice, limited withdrawal rights (either in terms of age or rate of withdrawal), and maximum contributions.  The benefits are usually very clear, and your decision whether or not to open a pension/retirement account should depend on a careful weighing of the benefits and drawbacks. As to whether you may end up with less than you started, that depends on what you invest in.  As with all of finance, you must take more risk to get more return.  Although the choices inside a pension/retirement account may be worded somewhat differently, they are usually fundamentally no different than some of the most popular investments available for ordinary taxable accounts. One important thing that hasn't been mentioned here is that the vast majority of companies have eventually eliminated their Company provided Pension Plans and replaced it with a 401K with some degree of matching.  There is a cost advantage to doing this as companies no longer have to maintain or work to maintain a 100% vested pension plan.  This takes a great burden off them.  They also don't have to manage the pension/annuity that the retirement benefit entails. This sounds like a scam. Did they email you out of the blue to offer you this 'job', by any chance, and you'd never heard of them before? That's an incredibly large red flag in and of itself. While I don't know quite what the scam is likely to be, here's how I would suggest it might work: Other variants are possible - say using a cheque rather than PayPal, or having Person A be the scammer as well. But this being a legitimate transaction is very unlikely. I think an IOPT is a Dutch warrant.  Someone else might understand what this is. "It's probably a scam or maybe some amateur agency trying to put pressure on their target. Normal garnishment goes through the court system. Just ignore it. Tell your employer they obviously have the wrong person since the SS is wrong.  Suing clowns like this is not worth it. Just to clarify this some more for you: Trying to collect on a random person with the same name is called ""tagging"" in the collection industry. Before 2010 it was common because it was actually easier to legally bully the wrong person (who had money) than the right person who does not have money. That was then, this is now. Various federal and state laws have been passed since that time to prevent identity theft and these laws create big liabilities for debt collectors that try to bully the wrong person. Therefore, it rarely happens anymore, though of course sometimes agencies will still call you if they think they have a soft target. That's what the call to your employer is, just a test. A pro collector (like a law firm) would never call an employer, because they could get sued for doing that, but some amateur working out of his basement might. That's what you are dealing with: some joker in a basement. Such people never sue, they just buy old debt for pennies on the dollar and try random harassing phone calls. Ignore it and he will move on to the next ""John Smith"" on his list. A lot of lawyers will advise you to ""talk"" to the collector, correcting their misinformation, blah blah. Lawyers like talking, because the more talk there is, the more money they make. In the real legal world: never talk to your enemy or give them information. The way real courts and judges work is that they don't like plaintiffs who sue the wrong person. In fact, they do not like it VERY MUCH. Very bad things happen in courtrooms to people who sue the wrong person. Judges have VERY short patience in general and they DO NOT LIKE IT when somebody wastes their time by suing the wrong person. Basically what this means is: ignore the guy and he will go away." It just states that the price doesn't justify the valuation which is not a factual statement. Also this is based on someones opinion of the companies P/E. The P/E was published and public information and idiots on both the buy and sell side jumped in.   The article does not make a factual claim about Fraud (cooking the books), Francine McKenna speculates that management  and auditors cooked the books.