How did my 4 Tesla shares turn into 12 shares?

Question

I bought 4 shares of Tesla on 3 separate occasions (between October 2019 and September 2020) and recently became aware that my brokerage account lists 12 shares rather than 4. So, my cost basis is $1500 and the value is $8000 rather than $3200.
Putting ethical decisions aside, what happens if or when my large multinational broker performs an audit and discovers their error? Can they simply take back the shares at their present value and thus deplete the value of my account? Or can I negotiate the correction as if I had leveraged the 8 erroneous shares?
In other words, if the extra 8 shares were worth $2800 when the error was committed, will I owe them that or their current $6400 value?
Normally, I would assume the latter; but my father was in a slightly similar situation in the eighties when the same firm mistakenly credited his account with an extra few thousand dollars. His broker suggested they put it into this new risky stock called "Microsoft" until the correction, thus allowing him to keep any profits and not be liable for any losses. A short time later the error was discovered and he had to sell the shares and reimburse only the mistakenly credited amount. (Of course, when he told me this in 2010, he was very sorry he hadn't kept the shares!)
So, I'm wondering if I can negotiate a similar type of settlement.
(Note: Total newbie at investing here. Apologies for any lack of terminology to make this more concise.)

nanoman · Answer

There is almost certainly no mistake. Tesla's stock split 5-for-1 in August 2020. I suspect that you bought 2 shares before the split (which became 10 post-split shares) and 2 shares after the split, for a total of 12 post-split shares. Congratulations on your rightfully large profit.
Note that if the stock had not split, you would theoretically now own 2.4 shares (because your recent purchases would be for 0.4 shares instead of 2 shares), and each share would be worth 5 times the actual current price, so you would still have the same profit.

gnasher729 · Answer

Apart from the explanation, if there had been an error on Schwab's side: It is very, very, very, very extremely unlikely that they would have put shares into your account that you didn't pay for, or that they took your money without buying the shares, so it is very, very, very, very extremely unlikely that anyone owes anybody money. And if you owed them money, it is also very unlikely that they would force you to pay, since it was their mistake and it would hurt their reputation if they made customers pay for the company's mistakes.
It is much more possibly that someone commits the wrong order. Say your wanted to buy 13 shares, and for some reason they buy 31 shares and charge you for 31 shares. That might go undetected for a while if you had enough money in your account. In your particular case it seems you wouldn't complain about that mistake, if the shares had dropped by half you might have a fight on your hand, and I suspect Schwab would have covered themselves legally if you took too long to complain.

How did my 4 Tesla shares turn into 12 shares?

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