Stollen I’m sorry you lost a few dollars but you don’t need to tie yourself in moral knots to defend these fuckers. They knew what was going on. We need to punish behavior like this to discourage it in the future. Real punishments, like jail time,not with just fines because they made way more money scheming and stealing than the fines take away. Breaking the law and stealing from people is a good investment and paying the fine is just a line item expense.
EDIT: Seriously, fuck banks and the people who own them. Fuck them with the power of 1000 suns. Did I ever tell you all about how Citizens Bank decided to foreclose on me earlier this year? I’ve never missed a mortgage payment, and I’ve never even been late on a payment ever in the 5 years I’ve had my house. They just decided to do it, because fuck you what are you going to do about it? Thank god for the CFPB that was the only thing that saved me from losing my house because some fucking bank decided they wanted to steal it from me.
This is the craziest set of mental gymnastics I’ve seen for a stockholder to justify a shitty illegal banking incident. Despite what you say, you should be in sales!
@Strollen I understand the position you are taking, but I am ultimately unsympathetic. It is hard to grasp the full complexity of downstream effects. Though you write these off as small actions, only a fraction of the banking business, it has potential for huge effects on customers.
At a basic level this undoubtedly did some level of harm to a large number of people’s credit scores. What harm beyond that? Well it speculates at some further potential from just the credit ding of opening a new credit card. And of any balance transfers? If someone falsely made a payment from an account that had money removed without their knowledge, how much damage could be done in overdrafts, late payments on mortgages, hospital bills, and so on.
This had the potential to financially ruin some people. People who are getting by often have small margins of error. A single late payment can easily spiral. This is a serious issue. Those issues are far more serious than investors losing some of the capital value of the stock.
EDIT: and just to be clear, I say this as someone who stood to have some theoretical financial loss from the stock. While not a direct investor, as you are, I do have funds that most likely did. But that is so meaningless to me compared to the potential harm others who were scammed by Wells Fargo could experience.
It’s simply impossible for something this widespread in the company to have remained secret from the folks running things. Especially when the whistleblowers were fired. I really hope Stumpf and his pals go down in flames. Blaming it all on the peons and leaving them holding the (empty) bag is absolutely disgraceful.
No argument that various fees, credit cards etc. I know that Stumpf said they refunded all of the fees and any charges associated with fake accounts, he also talked about other compensation but I don’t have the details. One would hope some of the $200 million that Wells Fargo was fined would go to compensate the victims (it would work out to $2,000 per fake account quite a bit more than average $25 in bogus fees that was rung up.).
Obviously, management knew this was going on. Hell they were firing 1,000 people for doing a year.
This NY Times article makes it clear that were aware and taking steps to address it.
The message to the dozens of Wells Fargo workers gathered for a two-day ethics workshop in San Diego in mid-2014 was loud and clear: Do not create fake bank accounts in the name of unsuspecting clients.
Similar warnings were being relayed from corporate headquarters in San Francisco to regional bankers in Texas, as senior management learned that some Wells employees had been trying to meet exacting sales goals by creating sham bank accounts and credit cards instead of making legitimate sales.
Across the vast retail bank, more “risk professionals” were deployed in efforts to stamp out the illegal activity.
The article goes on to say that folks up to the district manager were compensated.for new accounts, and they changed the incentive as they tried dealing with the issue to focus less on raw numbers and more on customer satisfaction.
The problem is that Elizabeth Warren and the folks here want to fire and/or jail the senior leadership. So I’ll repeat my question. What crimes are you charging the senior executives with?.
As I’ve show senior management had every incentive to crack down on this fraudulent accounts, not because they are great guys because it’s bad business and hurts the bottom lime. I’ve yet to see any proof, from this forum or Elizabeth Warren that there was any financial incentive for a senior manager to encourage this practice. Much less any proof that actually did so. In fact, the evidence points to the exact opposite they gave lectures telling people not to do it and they fire anybody caught doing it.
I didn’t watch the testimony, but I haven’t seen any proof that even middle managers encouraged the practice. If you want to convict people based on innuendo fine, but when you get to the point that you are finding people guilty of doing something illegal when it hurts not helps them financially that’s just crazy.
It looks like the crime that Wells Fargo is accused of is encouraging and providing incentives for their front-line employees to sell their products. The horrors.
The problem is that with 5,000 people it was systemic. It was being taught at some level. And over the years it is really hard to believe some people in upper management didn’t know about it and didn’t encourage it.
That and HR apparently firing people who complained about it tells you someone in upper management new about it.
And did nothing until the state (or was it city of LA) sued over it.
No they knew about for at least 5 years, and they have been firing 1,000 people a year.
My theory is that low-level and perhaps some supervisors or branch managers taught each other.
New employee to old employee who was honored as employee of the month for signed up 150 accounts.
“Dude, congratulation, hey I’m really struggling to do 1/2 your numbers, could you help me out.”
Old Employee “ok I’ll let you in on secret, what you do is when you get somebody opening a checking account, you also open a savings and credit card account. The trick is as soon we get credit for the end of the month new accounts, you then go and close the fake account”
Actually, I’m guessing the procedure is posted on the internet somewhere.
She didn’t just wake up and make up facts though. I saw parts of the last testimony, she has stacks of papers, of statements this guy made to his stockholders that counters his warm and fuzzy claims.
If you’re telling your employees not to do something and then you turn around and brag about the results of them doing what they’re not supposed to do, that’s a top down problem.
Also, I think you should watch some of the testimony. Their questions and his responses, and the questions being asked are being backed by documentation… he’s not defending his company very well at all. And based on these exchanges, I can’t see how you can walk away and think it was a few low waged under-performing employees that just came up with this scam on their own.
Seriously…the CEO gained value of over $200M while this scam went on and you continue to blame the peons. I consider $200M to be strong financial incentive. They fired employees that complained about the scam. They fired a woman that complained directly to Stumpf. They never disclosed anything about the scam in their quarterly filings. Those poor innocent executives - I hope this scandal doesn’t tarnish their reputations!
I listened to all of Elizabeth Warren’s testimony that Mr Grumpy linked (sorry)… After reading today’s reports on the testimony it sounded more like typical Congressional grandstanding so I’m not wasting my time. Again if somebody wants to post a link showing that senior management encouraged or condoned this behavior, (which I suspect would be a crime) I’m happy to read it.
You must be mistaking me for someone else. I didn’t link anything. I absolutely know she’s correct though. Wells Fargo touts the number of accounts they have per customer to their stockholders.
Have you worked in sales? I have, and this is not really how salespeople in a high-pressure situation act. Helping someone get better numbers means your numbers don’t look as good.
A few decades of management consulting have taught me that corporate culture comes from the top. There’s little chance such widespread fraud could develop without it being encouraged from the C-Suite. It’s possible that they nonetheless retained plausible deniability, but that would have been a purposeful exercise.
How would creating fake accounts,which generated a whopping $2.6 million in fees benefit the C-Suite?
Encouraging front line employees to aggressively push existing customers to open new accounts makes sense. Because if you can get a Wells checking customer to also open a credit card, and car loan that makes more revenue, profits and leads to a higher stock price.
