Wells Fargo to pay $3 billion to settle civil lawsuit over fake account scandal
By: Pete Williams
Personally 'we' have been with these douchebags for decades as they gobbled up and merged with smaller banks voluntarily at first,
then as mandated by the banking crisis in 2009-2010.
I hate them and their adherence to 5 day banking. They screw us over every time there is a payment due on a weekend or holiday.
I have moved payments up 2 weeks in advance and still get notices from insurance companies that even though the bank shows the bill is paid, the insurer does not. Their technology sucks to their advantage.
It's maddening when you transfer $$ from checking or savings to your debit card and the $$ disappear from the parent account
IMMEDIATELY
but takes 3 or 4 days to be posted to the debit or credit account.
So much for the information highway.
There ought to be an enforceable law...
The agreement was reached with the bank itself, not with any individuals responsible for the fraud. But last month, the bank's former chief executive, John Stumpf, was fined $17.5 million by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for his role in the scandal. Other former bank executives were hit with smaller fines.
and I would have to ask, how much did they profit from this criminal action....
and still be allowed to keep their damned jobs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Wells Fargo, the nation's fourth-largest bank, agreed Friday to pay a $3 billion fine to settle a civil lawsuit and resolve a criminal prosecution filed by the Justice Department over its fake account scandal.
Under pressure to meet sales quotas, bank employees opened millions of savings and checking accounts in the names of actual customers, without their knowledge or consent. Since the fraud became public in 2016, the bank has faced a torrent of lawsuits. The scheme lasted more than a decade, Justice Department officials said, and was carried out by thousands of Wells Fargo employees.
"This settlement holds Wells Fargo accountable for tolerating fraudulent conduct that is remarkable both for its duration and scope and for its blatant disregard of customer private information," said Michael Granston of the Justice Department's Civil Division.
Department officials said the bank took several steps to conceal the accounts from customers, such as forging customer signatures and preventing other Wells Fargo employees from contacting customers during routine surveys about their accounts.
None of the money to be paid to the government under this settlement will go to compensate victims. But officials said Wells Fargo has separately made efforts to compensate victims for potential losses -- such as fees they might have been charged or harm to their credit ratings, if any.
"We take seriously the rights of customers, creditors, and investors, all of whom were harmed by this conduct, where the bank was making up sales activities to get a competitive advantage over its customers," a senior Justice Department official said.
As part of the settlement, Wells Fargo admitted that employees were pressured to sell large volumes of new products to existing customers as a way of generating more business, often with little regard for a customer's actual needs. Bank employees began calling the practice "gaming," and it included opening accounts without a customer's knowledge, issuing credit and debit cards, and moving money from existing accounts to the fraudulently opened ones.
As part of Friday's settlement, the Justice Department agreed not to criminally prosecute the bank during the tree-year term of the agreement, provided that Wells Fargo continues to cooperate with government investigations.
The agreement was reached with the bank itself, not with any individuals responsible for the fraud. But last month, the bank's former chief executive, John Stumpf, was fined $17.5 million by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for his role in the scandal. Other former bank executives were hit with smaller fines.
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I have a love hate relationship with this mess that used to be First Union, then Core States then Wachovia
and actually so far ahead of the customer service curve that I actually bragged to friends and relatives about the technologies
that Wachovia demonstrated 12 years ago.
What an miserable mess they have become......................
Absolutely no politics, please, these two armed bandits do not discriminate, neither should you.
My least favorite bank.
A large corporation too large to fail while we had to bail out it and the system. A system lent Billions by US taxpayers at NO INTEREST, then 'LENT'' back to US via bank loans and or credit card fees at substantial interest rates. In my experience, their own slow ("allegedly") rate to process transactions, caused my main customer, a Major Insurance company, and another Billion dollar corporation, to retard my payments from such, thus giving them an alleged rationalization to increase MY interest rates.
WTF ? Our own money lent to banks for free, and they loaning our own money they received for free to US at increased interest rates because they themselves, retarded the payment process.
Yea, no gamed system for the rich here, nothing to see here< Just one big giant level playing field for all