Florida dentist Robert Thousand Jr. victim of $399k steal from retirement accounts

Dr. Robert Thousand Jr., a semi-retired periodontist from World Golf Village, Florida, discovered that nearly $400,000 had been drained from his TD Ameritrade retirement account — and he believes the attack began with an incessant stream of unwanted phone calls. Starting in late November, Thousand began receiving repeated calls: 30-second recordings from a sex hotline, arriving in a pattern that now appears to have been designed to jam his lines and prevent his brokerage from reaching him with alerts.

The withdrawals came in rapid succession. On November 23, $18,000 left the account. Two days later, $82,000 more disappeared. By December 4, the total had reached $399,000 — extracted in five transactions over eleven days. Thousand, then 61, had recently sold his St. Augustine practice and filed a police report stating that the perpetrators appeared to have specifically exploited the distraction of the phone campaign to prevent contact with his broker. His son, Robert Thousand III, had attempted to reach him during this period but was unable to get through.

“It’s a very sophisticated operation, actually,” Thousand told authorities. The case underscores a risk that is easy to overlook: dentists face financial exposure not only from employees inside the practice but from external actors who target practice owners directly. The period around a practice sale — when retirement accounts are active, large sums are in motion, and daily routines change — is a moment of particular vulnerability that merits heightened vigilance over financial accounts.

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