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Up To 1.4M More Fake Wells Fargo Accounts Possible (siliconvalley.com)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
Castor. Pfft.. quit whining. Was the system being gamed? We these guys smarter than the feds? smarter than the regulations. How would you advise we keep 2007/2008 crash from being repeated?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
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.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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.
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 Pollock sucks....) because the freedom of too little regulation means that certain things are assumed - in this case the people actually creating the accounts were just following orders instead of being criminals (they thought). If "I was following orders" wasn't a good defense (and it seems to be a good defense so far), then why say "no" to your boss who wants to color outside the lines?
>This was clearly illegal behavior, from several different angles.
I know, but see, I lived through some of this stuff up close and personal (I was involved in the RE market in RI as a land surveying technician and thus got an up-close look at this stuff - the 2007-2008 debacle was just bigger - the motivations were the same). If you thought, for certain, you were going to jail if you committed fraud, most people wouldn't. But this was a huge scale at WF, and I am /sure/ the underlings doing the book-cooking didn't think they were doing "too fraudulent."
> The CEO is using flowery language because he has too, there is on going litigation and if he comes out and says "our ass hat employees broke the law because we setup a framework that pretty much drove them to do it" then he's violating his obligation to Wells Fargo's investors are they are going to turn around and sue him for devaluing the company (forgot the legal term for it).
Fiduciary Responsibility.
The CEO is supposed to be an employee, also. Even though far too many act as sole owners. (they only are if they own >50 percent of total stock).
Why the CEO is not behind bars is fucking telling, because I'm fucking /sure/ there would be evidence if someone attempted discovery. But nobody at the Justice Department is interested in discovery, because discovery is hard - it involves work.
> Chances are they'll be doing that anyway if Wells Fargo loses any of the pending cases.
Breaching fiduciary responsibility is hard to prove. If it was easy, Carly Fiorina would be a pauper.
>Tighter regulations might have led to this being caught sooner (though I don't see how) but they wouldn't have prevented it... they were breaking the law from the outset.
Tighter regulations and actual enforcement would have created an environment where people wouldn't break the envelope.
Various "free marketers" use the trope of "regulation wouldn't have stopped this anyway" as an argument against all regulation and support of lessaiz faire principles. Which is bullshit because between the Depression and the 80s, there weren't any large scale banking crises. Since the deregulation madness in the 80s, we have had the S&L crisis, RISDIC, (and possibly others I don't know of), the Dot Boom Dot Bust (because investment bankers bought into any company that had a name - fuck fundamentals) and the 2007-2008 mess.
Gordon Gekko was supposed to be a villain.
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BMO
The same way every other business learns.. You let them go bankrupt, then you sell off their assets. When banks realize that a stupid decision will have actual consequences....
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 $133 million. Such severe punishment will surely serve as a warning to others!
http://fortune.com/2016/10/13/wells-fargo-ceo-john-stumpfs-career-ends-with-133-million-payday/
Obama created the Consumer Finanical Protection Board (CFPB) and they are the agency that went after Well Fargo (after a banking employees union identified the problem).
Of course the republicans hate, hate, haaaaate the CFPB because congress can't neuter it like the way they neutered all other enforcement agencies - by starving them.
WF did me in 2003.. I took a 3.5%$ HELOC & disbursed from an unauthorized 16% line of credit. I have all the docs. DOJ is not interested.
If a company instructs tellers to sell bogus policies, and heaps huge pressure on them to sign up customers - or be sacked - then those ARE their values. Wells Fargo may as well own that shit because no believes for a second that it happened without the full knowledge and direction of those in charge. The bank didn't stray from it's values, it changed the values to suit its bottom line.
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.
Yeah, that's a cute story.
But banks are making all-time record profits.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u...
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.