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Wells Fargo Employee Informed the Bank of Fake Customer Accounts in 2006 (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the body-of-lies dept.

Wells Fargo recently paid fines totaling $185 million for the creation of 2 million unauthorized accounts since 2011. But the international banking and financial institution could be committing this fraud since as early as 2005, according to a letter obtained by Vice News. From the report: A Wells Fargo bank manager tried to warn the head of the company's regional banking unit of an improperly created customer account in January 2006, five years earlier than the bank has said its board first learned of abuses at its branches. [...] A letter written in 2005 and obtained by VICE News details unethical practices that occurred at Washington state branches of the bank, suggesting the conduct began years before previously understood. Dennis Hambek, a former branch manager in West Yakima, Washington, sent a certified letter in January 2006 to Carrie Tolstedt, then Wells Fargo's head of regional banking, outlining unethical "gaming" activity at area branches. In 2007, Tolstedt was made the company's head of community banking, the division where many of the unethical practices occurred.

3 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Well this is exciting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm super stoked to see absolutely nobody see the inside of a prison cell over this, Wells Fargo slapped with a fine a tiny fraction of a percentage of what they took in by this scam, and then go about business as usual.

    1. Re:Well this is exciting by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not like they did something reprehensible, like pee in the woods and get spotted, or smoke MJ recreationally.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  2. Risk Management: Playing the odds by ADRA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As anyone who's watched Mr. Robot knows, Just cheating the system doesn't stop a company from doing it, even when they're aware of it happening.

    If the fees minus inflation are less than the profits, why would a profit maximizing company ever decide to do the right thing? Its ludicrous. The company is simply charged a fee. The middle-managers and peons are rarely prosecuted and the executives always feign that they had no idea what was happening. There's no requisite paper trail to audit, so the only thing that could catch them is conspiracy to evade prosecution, but there'd have to be caught with a lot of 'shredding' in order to get that to stick.

    The laws are 100% stacked so that profit maximization is the only goal to achieve. Being a purely law abiding corporate citizen is a losers bet.

    --
    Bye!