Wells Fargo Fires 5,300 Employees For Creating Millions of Phony Accounts (cnn.com) 341
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: Everyone hates paying bank fees. But imagine paying fees on a ghost account you didn't even sign up for. That's exactly what happened to Wells Fargo customers nationwide. On Thursday, federal regulators said Wells Fargo employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts -- without their customers knowing it -- since 2011. The phony accounts earned the bank unwarranted fees and allowed Wells Fargo employees to boost their sales figures and make more money. Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees related to the shady behavior over the last few years. Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said. The scope of the scandal is shocking. An analysis conducted by a consulting firm hired by Wells Fargo concluded that bank employees opened up over 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized, according to the CFPB. Wells Fargo is being slapped with the largest penalty since the CFPB was founded in 2011. The bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines, along with $5 million to refund customers. The report says that "employees moved funds from customers' existing accounts into newly-created accounts without theier knowledge or consent," which resulted in "customers being charged for insufficient funds or overdraft fees," since their original accounts didn't contain the money. What's more is that "Wells Fargo employees also submitted applications for 565,443 credit card accounts without their knowledge or consent," causing customers who had unauthorized credit cards opened in their names to be "hit by annual fees, interest charges and other fees."
Typical (Score:5, Informative)
That's what they get for putting unrealistic quotas on the employees.
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
I am certain that none of those people fired were the managers who established the unrealistic quotas and instructed their staff to create the phoney accounts.
Hiring managers is expensive. Hiring tellers is as easy as calling up Express Personnel and ordering another six-pack of desperate unemployed middle class peons.
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desperate unemployed middle class peons
I think you mean "middle lower class".
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
America doesn't have a "lower class". We have a "middle class" and a "working class". There's a lot of overlap in the pay, the distinction is mostly social, not economic. Banking teller is a middle-class job.
This class distinction is why so few people are willing to enter the skilled trades, despite a lot of advantages to that in our increasingly-outsourced world.
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
which will then immediately sell it off to the same company WF did.
Stop linking to CNNMoney. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stop linking to CNNMoney. (Score:5, Funny)
That's not even the worst of it!
Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers
The PIN numbers weren't even real! It's amazing this fraud was detected at all, they looked just like actual PIN numbers!
Re:Stop linking to CNNMoney. (Score:5, Funny)
That's not even the worst of it!
Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers
The PIN numbers weren't even real! It's amazing this fraud was detected at all, they looked just like actual PIN numbers!
My PIN isn't real, either. It's 342i
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Did you RTFA? (Score:4, Insightful)
That sounds pretty awful to me. Grow up in a bad neighborhood thanks to 250 years of institutionalized racism (google it if you don't understand the term), Go directly to Jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
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You should actually read that link rather than just it's (not entirely accurate) title.
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You should actually read that link rather than just it's (not entirely accurate) title.
Which part of "Math is Racist" is not entirely wrong?
Apparently they've run out of people and policies that they are willing to point at as racist (for instance, they are unwilling to call out Bill Clinton's 3-strikes crime bill as racist, even though it clearly is...)
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This story is from the same CNNMoney that declared that Math is Racist [cnn.com]
The story declared no such thing, but don't let that stop you. It describes how statistics and computer algorithms and models are used to perpetuate inequality and racist dynamics. It says math is being used to perpetuate racism, not that math is racist.
Re:Typical (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed OP. We actually had the same thing happen to us WAY back in the day when I was going to school and working for Gamestop part time.
Story time kids:
They would force employees to push gaming mag subscriptions onto customers and the quota was 7 per week. Now nobody wanted this crap. Customers wanted to come in to buy some games, and maybe talk shop. Subscribe to something that requires a credit card tho? OH HELL NO. Also, half of them weren't even old enough to have a card in the first place, but our DM would literally threaten the manager to fire him, who would threaten his employees to fire us if we didn't produce at least 1 subscription per day per week. So... in desperate times we as a collective of employees (who were actually much closer among retail stores than you'd think) all got together with a fiendish plan to game the system. We took pre-paid visa cards and threw 10 bucks on them and spent most of it on our lunch break. With the few pennies left on the card we'd then subscribe customers for them, giving them a subscription they couldn't be billed for and blowing our quotas out of the water. At first corporate was elated so many stores were suddenly producing a BOOM of subscriptions but like all good things it didn't last. Eventually the magazine publishers caught on, and everything started rolling downhill until literally 5 stores worth of employees and management were all fired and replaced within a month. I just barely escaped the shit-storm by hearing about the crack-down rumors and quitting ahead of time.
Ah greed and corporate fuckwittery. Good times... sad times.
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I once bought something at Best Buy and they asked me which of their magazines I wanted, a sports one or and entertainment one. I said neither, and then was told they were free and he stuck an entertainment one in my bag. Best Buy then gave my credit card number to the magazine company which charged me $40 and began sending me the magazine to my house.
I had to call the magazine and explain it was credit card fraud (cardholder not present for transaction is the correct wording to use there) and they could
Re:Typical (Score:4, Interesting)
"I once bought something at Best Buy and they asked me which of their magazines I wanted, a sports one or and entertainment one. I said neither, and then was told they were free and he stuck an entertainment one in my bag."
(OP posting) That's exactly what we did with customers at gamestop.
Told them they could have a "free" subscription then signed them up using our visa pre-paid cards with nothing on them so the magazine publishers and Gamestop corporate would get screwed for placing the burden of such stupid quotas on us. No regrets, and regulars got free mags for a while.
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Everyone participated
They were all getting fired anyways
He just quit first
There were no honest employees in this situation
Remove that high horse from your ass, or something
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All the honest employees had already been fired.
The WF thing is interesting since WF has been unusually profitable compared to other banks for several years now. It was claimed to be better managment but now you have to wonder how deep the rot is?
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Unpossible.
How can India have more qualified criminals than the US? Look who we have running for president! Or are our criminals going to lose their jobs to criminals willing to work more hours for less money?
Of course! The stockholder must be served, and cheaper criminals only makes perfect sense!
Re: Typical (Score:2)
All politics is local.
And all crime is personal.
Re: Typical (Score:2, Interesting)
That wasn't capitalism it was fraud. For capitalism to work you have to actually produce something of value, and that doesn't happen with fraud.
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Yeah sure, and the USSR wasn't communism, etc...
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>>Yeah sure, and the USSR wasn't communism, etc...
Correct, it was Leninism/Stalinism, allegedly designed to evolve into communism after creating the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Go read a book.
Loose Ends Being Tied Up? (Score:3)
How much you wanna bet most of those people were involved in robo-signing, [investopedia.com] or some other form of shenanigans OTHER than creating false accounts?
Just like police (Score:5, Insightful)
Bankers are just like police. If you get caught doing something illegal, the worst possible penalty you face is losing your job. And you can just hop to another city and get employed again, it's just a lateral career move, not even really a firing. No criminal consequences, no jail time, nothing.
And people wonder why bankers and police are so hated in America.
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And they profited through the experience - if they're told 'meet certain goals or lose your job' ...or... 'conduct illegal activity and you might lose your job if caught, meanwhile earn your bonus'...if anything, these people know how to maximize their expectation value.
rotten at the top (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been documented and interviews with these employees recorded that they were under such pressure from bank managers (and they from VPs, etc) under threat of losing their jobs, that they felt they had to make their numbers in any way they had at their disposal. Including taking people's information that they'd been given for other legitimate purposes, and misusing it to create fake accounts.
1. Volkswagen engineers being pressured to have their vehicles pass emissions
2. Bank employees being pressured to sign up customers regardless of how infeasible
3. Cable/credit card company call center agents being pressured not to let a customer go under any circumstances
4. etc. etc. etc.
The list goes on and on -- these all come from the assholes at the top demanding something that's not possible and effectively incentivizing / requiring front-line employees to lie, cheat and steal from consumers.
Those are the people who should be even more aggressively prosecuted.
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Yes, and since the people at the top giving incentives to cheat almost never face consequences, the behavior will continue.
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this is what happens when they are too big (paid too much money (free speech) to the legislators) to fail.
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This is indeed how the scam works.
Create an environment in which your employees are forced to break the law to retain employment, even though such behavior runs counter to official written policy.
When caught: Pay lawyers to deflect blame and wave about the written policy, fire employees, walk away with a slap on the wrist fine.
We see this all the way from fast food workers to top tier finance account managers.
If a company benefits from fraud, they are guilty of fraud. Why does basic conflict of interest go
unpunished (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company benefits from fraud, they are guilty of fraud. Why does basic conflict of interest go unpunished today?
... because they have the congress critters in their pocket. Koch brothers concluded many years ago it was better being the script writer behind the scene than being the actors on stage.
Re:rotten at the top (Score:4, Insightful)
So... if I have a business unit that's losing money and I tell it to either turn a profit or they'll be laid off, am I responsible when the employees cheat and break the law to save their jobs because there's no other way? If you hand in your resignation, can I make you a counteroffer or is "ok" the only acceptable response? A lot of this pressure is natural, everybody's looking for ways to increase volume and price, cut costs and reduce losses. And then somebody takes it too far, but how far is too far? Who started it, who's doing it, who's in on it might not be so crystal clear.
I mean it's a little easy to just blame it on your manager who'll blame it on their manager and so on all the way to the top until only Hitler is guilty and the rest were just following orders and trying to fulfill impossible goals. Sorry to Godwin the thread but this is a criminal conspiracy and while there's certainly leaders who should be doing hard time it should be pretty obvious to everyone that when you're faking customer accounts you're doing something blatantly illegal. I say aggressively prosecute everyone you can prove was in on it, top to bottom.
Re:rotten at the top (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:rotten at the top (Score:5, Interesting)
So... if I have a business unit that's losing money and I tell it to either turn a profit or they'll be laid off, am I responsible when the employees cheat and break the law to save their jobs because there's no other way?
If you give the employees an unreasonble goal with insufficient tools to reach it, and tell them that they will be fired if they cannot reach it - I think that makes you responsible for their actions. In fact, that sounds like the definition of coercion.
Now lets say your business isn't losing money, and the stock price has increased steadily since the fourth quarter of 2011 (like, say, Wells Fargo.) In this case, you have misrepresented the health of your company for the purpose of eliciting bad behavior. You don't have much of a defense in claiming ignorance because you have needlessly and intently set up the environment for this to happen. I would say that is absolutely criminal.
Re:rotten at the top (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone here believes the employees are to be excused here, just that the managers share in the responsibility and shouldn't be excused either.
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When asked, most managers all the way up to the CxOs will claim they get the big bucks because they have the big responsibility. Well, here comes the responsibility and there they are ducking it.
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It's not the employees' job to make the company profitable.
No really, hear me out:
The company makes a contract with an employee. His or her skills and time in exchange for a salary.
Now your employee either holds up his side of the deal or not. If he or his business unit do not turn a profit, its one of several possible reasons. A they suck. B the product sucks. C the processes suck. D marketing sucks.
In all these cases, except A, it's management's job to recognize this and do something about it. And even in
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Yeah, well, when you see this many people engaging in such widespread consumer fraud and malfeasance, it comes from the top. It has been documented and interviews with these employees recorded that they were under such pressure from bank managers (and they from VPs, etc) under threat of losing their jobs, that they felt they had to make their numbers in any way they had at their disposal. Including taking people's information that they'd been given for other legitimate purposes, and misusing it to create fake accounts. 1. Volkswagen engineers being pressured to have their vehicles pass emissions 2. Bank employees being pressured to sign up customers regardless of how infeasible 3. Cable/credit card company call center agents being pressured not to let a customer go under any circumstances 4. etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on -- these all come from the assholes at the top demanding something that's not possible and effectively incentivizing / requiring front-line employees to lie, cheat and steal from consumers. Those are the people who should be even more aggressively prosecuted.
This attitude is common across many industries. Maybe I was naive in my 20s but the idiots you went to high school with never smartened up. There is no miraculous supply of intelligent people who manage companies. The people who manage companies are usually the people who are best at overselling, overpromising, underdelivering, screwing people to make a buck, and don't think the rules apply to them.
Hoping for a refund (Score:3)
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If you're paying somebody to hold onto your money for you, you're doing something wrong.
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Or the fact that they don't show you debit transactions for days and then process them all at once BEFORE any pending deposits... it's all a scam to try make you overdraft.
I left WF behind a long time ago and I have been happy ever since.
"The CFPB declined... (Score:5, Informative)
.... to explain how it came up with the $100 million penalty figure."
Ooh Ooh pick me!
They sat down with Wells Fargo lawyers and accountants and came to an agreed upon amount.
I don't know how people continue to bank with a place that has repeatedly been shown to do everything they can to screw their customers, it wasn't too long ago they were appealing the class action suit because they were stacking debit transactions largest to smallest to maximize overdraft revenue.
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I don't know how people continue to bank with a place that has repeatedly been shown to do everything they can to screw their customers
I bank with Wells Fargo because they bought the bank I was going to before, and it's a little bit of a pain in the ass to change banks. I don't pay any fees for my various accounts there. I also don't keep very much money there, because their interest rates are comparable with other national banks: 0.01% APY on a savings account, 0.05% on a CD. You can trivially do better than that with on-line options.
But, basically, inertia. I haven't had sufficient motivation to switch.
Re:"The CFPB declined... (Score:4, Insightful)
"I don't know how people continue to bank with a place that has repeatedly been shown to do everything they can to screw their customers.."
That has always been my question. About 6 months ago I noticed that my local community bank had opened a branch next to the grocery store/pharm that I stop at at least 4 times a week. I went in an opened an account and could not be happier. I hardly ever have to show ID, they know me by name. I'm support local a local business and the local businesses that use the bank (most of their customers are commercial.) I recognize most of the board as local civic leaders and business-people. It's a small bank with a dozen locations, serving just my county. My checking account number is under 1500 and my savings account number is under 500. The provide good e-services with 2FA. Their ATM is an off brand model that I've never seen so the chances of someone making a skimmer for it is slim. The checking account is free as long as I keep $300 in savings, not an issue. I've never been asked to upgrade or add accounts. They mail me a one page statement each month that is thoughtfully 3 holed punched for storage in a binder. Financial reviews on the web give it an A rating or 4 stars. The health of assets is considered excellent.
Why, in the tangle of FSM's noodles do people go with these huge national banks? Good local banks and S&Ls are all over the place!
If one employee had done this (Score:5, Insightful)
If only a single employee had done this, they'd be sent to prison for fraud, right after being fired. But because this behavior was so widespread and apparently came from top levels, what is corporate person that is Wells Fargo to face? A fine that amounts to a slap on the wrist. After all, we can't jail anyone who might be rich and powerful enough to have allowed such fraud to be perpetuated, can we? Too big to fail = too big to jail. And this exposes the blatant hypocrisy inherent to the notion of "corporate personhood."
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Re:If one employee had done this (Score:4, Insightful)
They committed the sin of getting caught. Therefore they have to pay. Nobody sees the inside of a jail though, that's for the little people not bankers.
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Question 2: How many of those 5300 ex-employees will face criminal charges for identity theft?
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*cough* Hillary Clinton *cough* It's not corporate personhood that's the problem. It's the idea that too big to fail or important to jail should have any legitimacy in our society.
Re:If one employee had done this (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate personhood absolutely lies at the heart of the problem, because it is this legal doctrine that grants corporations those rights, privileges, and protections normally granted to actual persons; and in turn, corporations are, as a single legal "person," able to wield their disproportionate economic power to influence policies, and more importantly the enforcement thereof, in their favor, regardless of politics. This is the very definition of plutocracy, and it is why, while partisans on both sides of the political spectrum bicker ceaselessly about who is to blame for systemic corruption, nothing has been fixed: because corporations have bought the favor of everyone in government whose favor can be bought, which of course is the overwhelming majority.
The real struggle in the United States is not about Democrat versus Republican. That ideological division is perpetuated by those who are in real power--the corporate plutocrats and the companies they control, from Silicon Valley to the mainstream media to traditional manufacturing and energy production. It is in their interests to continue to pit the voting public against each other in an ultimately futile battle, because it hides who really calls the shots.
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Sure, just as soon as you explain the difference between gross negligence and extreme carelessness, and then explain how Jeb and Colin violated that statute.
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If only a single employee had done this, they'd be sent to prison for fraud, right after being fired. But because this behavior was so widespread and apparently came from top levels, what is corporate person that is Wells Fargo to face?
If 5300 people got sent to prison, the entire culture of underlings doing awful things to please asshole bosses would be interrupted. But, ahem, that would not be good for the Corporatist Oligarchy [bbc.com].
Was this possible because of SSNs? (Score:4, Insightful)
This sounds like a reason to make it finable for a company to have your SSN, unless they are the Social Security Office, or are your employer and are contributing to social security on your behalf.
Having a unique ID, that's so easily obtainable, is ripe for abuse.
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Good luck. Banks are required by law to have your SSN, and to report any interest income you get on your money.
The real corruption in this is that nobody will go to prison, despite 1.5 million instances of identity theft. Not a single person will spend a single day behind bars.
Why on earth would banks not do this? There is no downside. The fine is going to end up less than the ill-gotten gains. Pure profit.
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That;s going to make those 1099s hard to issue and of course complying with CIP.
It would also do exactly nothing about this case - if you already have an account at that particular bank then creating another one is obviously going to be possible - it's just a number in a database after all.
Of course 5300 people should be going to prison, but that's not going to happen.
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The SSN wasn't important in this case. By definition, your bank has whatever information is required to open an account, and can thus duplicate it. Now, some form of digital signing could be used to fix those issues, but...
Office Space... (Score:2)
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https://youtu.be/GlRG9x0JRMc [youtu.be]
Opps, correct time start - https://youtu.be/GlRG9x0JRMc?t... [youtu.be]
Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
In capitalist America, stagecoach robs you!
Refunds? (Score:3)
The bank agreed to pay $185 million in fines, along with $5 million to refund customers.
So they created millions of fake accounts and charged them fees ... and now they're required to only refund $5million to customers? Is each account only going to be refunded $5, or am I missing something here.
If this was an individual and not a bank, he (or she) would be going to jail. This sounds like a collaborative effort. Why isn't a racketeering investigation taking place?
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A couple weeks ago I was in a Wells Fargo to deposit a check (I hate going to banks for numerous reasons). It wasn't busy and I overheard a teller dealing with a client next to me.
The client spoke broken English and I heard the teller explaining to him that he was being charged a fee because the balance in his checking account was below the required minimum. No compassion. No effort to try to mitigate the fee or move him into a no-fee account. The individual was sheepish and thanked the teller and just
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Banks do not exist solely for your convenience; they exist to make money. Free checking accounts will lose the bank money unless enough money can be earned on the interest charged by loaning the money in the account to other people. For a moderate activity checking account, the breakeven point will be several hundred dollars. That covers the cost of processing checks, sending a monthly statement, paying employees and paying rent on the office.
Banks have booklets of their fees, either out in the open or avai
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Even if they honestly gave back every last bad fee to every individual account owner present and past (which they should be required to do), it still wouldn't be enough. Unexpectedly unavailable funds can cause a ripple effect in a person's life, which can potentially last for years. I can think of one such sequence just off the top of my head: insufficient
I'm sure most retail banks do this (Score:3)
This explains... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I assumed that her trashed memory meant she checked some box or inadvertently opted in along the way without realizing it.
But of course!
Money laundering, mortgage fraud, this, the list goes on and on. Once again we confirm that the banks are criminal organizations [slashdot.org] that are too big to punish. And now, let's watch who will come running to their defense one more time with more hand waving denials :-)
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No jail? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why aren't these people going to jail?
You know, at this point Wells Fargo needs to go to jail. Yeah, I mean the company. Maybe they can build a huge freaking jail around the headquarters while everybody's at work.
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Just around the office of the CEO, and the boardroom during a board meeting. And leave them there.
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Bathory-style, is a fitting punishment for d'em blood-suckers.
Because throwing a whole bunch of minimum wage (Score:2)
I wonder (Score:2)
I wonder if Wells Fargo is still using TekPortal. That thing is such a pile of crap that I would not trust my money with those assholes.
their upsell system sucks (Score:2)
This happens over and over at companies who incentivize their customer service people to push services and accounts. If you ever go to Wells Fargo they always try to shift you into a new kind of account or something. And so I'm sure if not enough people walk in they just resort to making up fake people or changing account signups for people who didn't even show up.
Creating this kind of structure is bad business and leads to dumb things like this.. Companies shouldn't be so stupid as to make this mistake ove
The second screwing burns even worse! (Score:2, Interesting)
Then imagine you try to sue them for it and it's thrown out of court because the cheating agent who signed you up agreed on your behalf to settle any differences in arbitration.
Make the bank really pay (Score:4, Insightful)
by revoking it's banking license. They clearly are not capable of operating with the degree of ethics required, so shut them down. And mark all the executives as ineligible to work in a financial / securities / insurance business for the term of their working life.
It's only okay... (Score:2)
When employees do it, it's fraud and they get fired.
Fired instead of Jail, just like Police Officers (Score:2)
Until now, I didn't know Wells Fargo employees had the same above-the-law protections as police officers. What other occupations allow you to break laws and get away with no legal repercussions?
A list? (Score:2)
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Without their knowledge???? (Score:2)
From a technical standpoint, moving money without your consent I can understand, but how the fuck do you not *KNOW* that you are getting charged an NSF fee?
And what kind of moron doesn't at least investigate into what transpired to cause an NSF charge in the first place?
Even if you had so much money that you wouldn't notice if some went missing due to incidental bank fees, if you're getting charged an NSF fee, then that means you DIDN'T have the money... so how the hell can someone not notice this?
This is breathtaking. (Score:2)
First, the penalties are missing two zeros. This is about as criminal as it gets.
Not only front line reps but management, compliance, legal are either involved or were deceived, both of which are grounds for mass terminations.
Other damages?
- Those overdrafts probably impacted credit scoring. $$$
- overdrafts often cause other fees, higher costs for good and services, deposits for utility accounts, lots of impacts. $$$$
- The privacy violations alone are worthy of higher penalties.
- This should trigger enh
Corporate criminal responsibility? (Score:2)
Somehow I feel it ought to be a crime for a company to create an environment in which crime is highly likely to happen; whether it is through lack of leadership or incompetence. Creating false accounts for profit is clearly fraud, in my view, and the scale of the problem indicates that the company leadership have been appallingly incompetent, at the very least, and they should be banned from running a business - I don't know if this is possible in the US, but it certainly is in UK.
How many employees does it take?... (Score:2)
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Wells Fargo is the biggest bunch of douche tools I have ever had the displeasure of working with. Arrogant but clueless!
I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire!
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Who says they didn't?
Of course they knew. Everyone all the way up the chain was profiting from this, including the corporation itself. But "just following orders" does not excuse doing something illegal or even unethical. Everyone involved deserves to be fired, and should never again be allowed to work in banking or finance.
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"I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire!
Try Bank of America. Worst bank I ever dealt with!"
My generation used to burn B of A branches every weekend for weenie roasts. It does not seem to have changed the bank's behavior.
Re:Fine seems Tiny (Score:5, Funny)
My generation used to burn B of A branches every weekend for weenie roasts. It does not seem to have changed the bank's behavior.
Your generation obviously done a piss poor job of burning BoA branches; they're still in business.
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They're like herpes: they come back after a while.
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(There's probably a Hillary joke in there somewhere.)
Based on my experience in Cubicle-Land, management probably suspected it but turned a blind eye, Sgt. Schultz-style, because it boosted their jurisdiction's sales stats.
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automatic deduction (Score:2)
Have you ever used a bank in America? There is no bill sent to a consumer, there is no choice to pay or not, they simply take the money out of the account.
you've just described all the banks and credit unions that I know of.
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I guess this is what they meant when they said, "Together we'll go far."
As in, "Together, we'll go to jail."
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"This isn't rocket science."
No, but it's social science. We've given up raising children with a sense of right and wrong and of shame. You take shame out of the equation and the fear of what "others" might think of you we end up with 5000+ employees who would rather victimize countless strangers so they can keep what they have rather than look for another job.
I don't give a rip if they were threatened with getting fired. They were selfish prats with no sense of ethics. It's this attitude that ALLOWS the
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