Up To 1.4M More Fake Wells Fargo Accounts Possible (siliconvalley.com) 91
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Wells Fargo may have opened as many as 3.5 million bogus bank accounts without its customers' permission, attorneys for customers suing the bank have alleged in a court filing, suggesting the bank may have created far more fake accounts than previously indicated. The plaintiffs' new estimate of bogus bank accounts is about 1.4 million, or 67%, higher than the original estimate -- disclosed last year as part of a settlement with regulators -- that up to 2.1 million accounts were opened without customers' permission... The attorneys covered a period from 2002 to 2017, rather than the previously scrutinized five-year stretch from 2011 to some time in 2016 in which the bank acknowledged setting up unauthorized accounts.
Wells Fargo terminated 5,300 employees for creating fake accounts, and their CEO now acknowledges that "we had an incentive program and a high-pressure sales culture within our community bank that drove behavior that many times was inappropriate and inconsistent with our values." In a possibly-related story, Wells Fargo plans to shut 450 branches over the next two years.
Wells Fargo terminated 5,300 employees for creating fake accounts, and their CEO now acknowledges that "we had an incentive program and a high-pressure sales culture within our community bank that drove behavior that many times was inappropriate and inconsistent with our values." In a possibly-related story, Wells Fargo plans to shut 450 branches over the next two years.
Glad we left (Score:2, Interesting)
Closed our accounts with WF when the fake accounts issue first appeared and moved everything to a credit union, best move ever, customer service much better and I get small interest dividends and other perks like discounted tickets to the state fair in our area. Hope to refinance the mortgage with them soon too, and get away from the "for profit" lender.
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Closed our accounts with WF when the fake accounts issue first appeared and moved everything to a credit union, best move ever, customer service much better and I get small interest dividends and other perks like discounted tickets to the state fair in our area. Hope to refinance the mortgage with them soon too, and get away from the "for profit" lender.
Don't worry, the friendly Wells Fargo reps opened several additional accounts for you. So you are still a customer! Isn't that nice of them?
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I didn't see them open accounts without permission (though I wouldn't be surprised if they did) but my mom had a mortgage with another company until Wells Fargo bought the mortgage. Somehow it was worked out that she couldn't pay the payments without physically walking into the bank, and each time they hustled her HARD to open a checking account. She finally opened one, mostly just to get them to shut up, and it turned out that they still had another really old personal loan account that she chapter 7'ed ag
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Wells Fargo reps opened several additional accounts for you. So you are still a customer! Isn't that nice of them?
You can't be part of a class action if they didn't open accounts without permission. So yes, it is nice when they open an account behind your back if you want a portion of the payout.
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robbed by it own employees who, it seems, were subject to pressure to open more bank accounts. They have been fired (5,300 of them), but I would like to know if the managers who put the 5,300 under pressure have also been sacked.
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Do you really have to ask?
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no no no no no no.
You prosecute and JAIL actual higher ups. Don't imagine for a second that higher ups give a crap about the health or future of the companies they work for. The will keep the cash they got paid during their tenure regardless. A possible stretch of jail time will be a much more effective deterrent.
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Without regulation, we'd have a wild west with the customers' money. There's really nothing "left" about regulating an industry that can plunge most of capitalism into a world-wide crisis just because they can make a few bucks more that way. It's not the "left" that requires capitalism to keep working, it's capitalism itself that suffers from the behaviour of a small part of its members. Hence, they get regulated.
Without regulations, private profit will go hand in hand with public bail-outs and crises like
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You obviously do not work for a bank (Score:5, Insightful)
The banks make plenty of money. If you don't know how to make money being a bank, you're in the wrong business. It's like running a casino, and you're always the winner. There's a fee for everything and everything has a fee. Plus, I get to take your money and invest it in risky financial constructs, plus, I get to act as broker for every financial transaction that passes through me, which also allows me to charge more fees.
The true reason for this was pure greed, you're shilling for billionaires crying about regulations that prevent them from being trillionaires, mostly by stealing even more of your money.
Why don't you look up the CEOs salaries of say, the three largest banks in America, and tell me again how banks are not making any money? You do understand that banks make billions in profits quarterly. And that's despite paying the top dogs salaries and bonuses that the average person would never see after a lifetime of work.
But sure, go ahead a cry a river about how the ultra rich aren't ultra ultra rich because of a few regulations. I can only assume I'm addressing Jared Kusher or his dad. Or maybe his paid Russian shill.
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Deregulate and when they do stupid shit, they go bankrupt. No more bailouts, no more lifelines... Do stupid shit and your business will cease to exist.
We tried that. And guess what happened? The bank's customers got fucked out of their life savings and the bank's owners squirreled away the money so that when the bank went bankrupt they could retire to their own tropical islands.
Regulation has its own set of problems. But we are where we are today because we tried it your way first and it sucked.
Re:You obviously do not work for a bank (Score:5, Informative)
Without irony, you advocate for Credit Unions, which were established by federal regulations in the midst of the great depression to deal with the fact that lightly-regulated banking had destroyed the economy.
Contrary to the Ayn Rand libertarian fantasy ideals, regulation often creates stability, which is fundamental to economic growth. Chaos, which libertarians believe is a requirement for freedom and everything that is "good", is absolutely disastrous for real (not theoretical) markets.
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I'm happy to cede your point (regulation often creates stability), but it should also be recognized that regulation can create problems (ossification, inefficiency, and corruption).
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Retail depository banking is not
And by your logic... (Score:2)
Lots of people are in jail because we have laws against drugs. And yet, drug companies and doctors have drugs. But some drugs are just illegal because of regulation. We need to remove these excessive regulations regarding drugs, then we would not have to pay so much in taxes to imprison people. It started with Reagen and his war on drugs. It's all the right's fault. They are the reason we pay too much in taxes to support jails full of prisoners because we have too much regulation regarding drugs.
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No, it started with Nixon, young grasshopper. And it is "Reagan", not "Reagen".
And too much regulation regarding drugs is in the eye of the beholder, unless you feel safe taking Joe's Bait and Elixir Shop selling you back pain pills.
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Addendum: recently the Right has been joining hands with the liberals to reduce sentencing laws.
The Right does not include Jeff Sessions, he's with the KKK.
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Define "excess regulations". Regulations (implementations of legislation) have been added incrementally as problems arose. Don't like it? Have Congress rescind those laws. But be careful what you wish for, because businesses can't operate in a lawless environment [memeguy.com]
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Yeah, that's a cute story.
But banks are making all-time record profits.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u... [wsj.com]
No Jail Time (Score:3, Interesting)
There will be no jail time.
The DoJ is rotten to its core.
It's senior officials are inextricably linked with banking oligarchs.
It gives immunity to bank insiders, and enforces their private codes.
The Fed will make good all insider losses, at public expense.
Market will not save us.
Technology will not save us.
Politics will not save us.
Law is fallen.
All is lost.
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All is lost.
Nah -- the banks are doing pretty well.....
What Regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Good to see all those people prosecuted for fraud, what, not one, not even the executives who planned it, not one single individual custodial sentences for mass fraud, I am sure that will kerb the banksters criminal behaviour, excellent precedent set by Uncle Tom Obama, bankers never go to jail, bankers always keep their bonuses, arms dealing, banking for warlords and terrorists, drug dealing, all a token percentage of the profits made by those criminal operations, thankyou for that precedent Uncle Tom Obama the Choom Gang Coward.
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Since when is the chief of the executive branch responsible for legal prosecutions? Take a civics class.
Or, for that matter, when is the executive branch responsible for writing or repealing regulations on banks? Put this one squarely on Congress.
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The Attorney General prosecutes violations of law (sometimes), but is not supposed to invent law on his/her own. Note that nothing has worked the way it's supposed to for decades at least, but that's the way it's supposed to work on paper.
Without Obama WF Would Still be Defrauding Us (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama created the Consumer Finanical Protection Board (CFPB) [latimes.com] and they are the agency that went after Well Fargo [consumerfinance.gov] (after a banking employees union identified the problem [prospect.org]).
Of course the republicans hate, hate, haaaaate the CFPB because congress can't neuter it [cnn.com] like the way they neutered all other enforcement agencies - by starving them. [thefiscaltimes.com]
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Yeah, its about time we see some justice. Live and on television and streamed over the web. Sounds good to me.
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There's your problem right there (Score:3)
their CEO now acknowledges that "we had an incentive program and a high-pressure sales culture within our community bank that drove behavior that many times was inappropriate and inconsistent with our values.
Maybe they should hire a guy to be like the head executive or something who would be in charge of the whole company and who would keep an eye out for shady shit like this. Oh yeah - and if that executive let this stuff happen on his watch he could be given a box to empty his desk into before security showed him to the parking lot.
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Wells Fargo took over Wachovia (Score:2)
But regulations are evil. (Score:3)
The magic hand of the market will fix all of it. /sneer
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BMO - who has lived through two major banking crises in his lifetime (you know, the kind that people kill themselves over), and expects more, because bankers are asshats, and most investment-bankers more so.
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The magic hand of the market will fix all of it. /sneer
-- BMO - who has lived through two major banking crises in his lifetime (you know, the kind that people kill themselves over), and expects more, because bankers are asshats, and most investment-bankers more so.
The sick thing is whoever is chosen to fall on their sword this time will get a mighty fine bonus.
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>The sick thing is whoever is chosen to fall on their sword this time will get a mighty fine bonus.
The head of RISDIC walked free while various people with less political pull went to jail. (shit floats).
The fact that /nobody/ went to jail or is going to go to jail over the 2007-2008 nonsense tells me that you're right.
I have more respect for hookers, porn stars, strippers, etc., than anyone in the banking industry, as a result. Bankers and investment bankers (these days, they are one and the same, lega
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The deregulation opened up the banking *environment* to abuses much like the election of Trump has encouraged every hitler-wannabe to Roman-salute in public.
Create the envelope to work in and someone is always going to color outside the lines, but not too far. Make the envelope larger, and you get a Jackson Pollock instead of a Mondrian. (not to say that
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>misuse trope
I meant canard.
Mea culpa (and the Manhattan in my hand).
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BMO
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Same old Same old (Score:2)
Never be a whistleblower (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a recent NPR story about the people inside the bank who complained to management about this. They got black marks on their U5 which made them unemployable at any other financial institution. Good luck getting that cleared up.
Never be a whistleblower in the US.
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No employer really likes whistleblowers. In every company there are corners that are being cut avoiding some requirements from governmental regulations or "standards". Usually this stuff is not really important (like some documentation/procedure stuff), but if revealed it can still hurt the company by being breach of some contract or incurring penalties. If you employ someone that was a whistleblower in the past you have to give yourself an extra question: if he feels discontent with us for whatever reason
CEO Stumpf retired (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the WF CEO, John Stumpf, "retired" last October in the wake of the scandal. He was punished by having $41 million taken away from his retirement package, leaving him with a paltry $133 million. Such severe punishment will surely serve as a warning to others!
http://fortune.com/2016/10/13/wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpfs-career-ends-with-133-million-payday/
"Community Bank"? (Score:2)
Wells Fargo isn't a community bank. It's pretty much the antithesis of a community bank.
wells fargo (Score:2)
"Inconsistent with our values" (Score:3)
Someone Needs Jail Time (Score:2)
How is it that corporations can rip off or defraud tens of thousands of customers/victims and no one is going to jail?
At the very least there should be a $1000 fine per bogus account for the employees opening them, $1000 per account for their supervisors, $1000 per account for the executives responsible and another $10000 per account for the company as a whole. Anyone who can't pay goes to jail.
$35 billion might get Wells Fargo's attention.