Quote Originally Posted by hongkonger View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
Some light reading:

Wells Fargo employee: "It was a real shit show over there"

Pocohantas to grill Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf on September 20

Wells Fargo to "eliminate sales goals", but for some reason won't be doing it until January 1.

CEO John Stumpf won't step down



This whole story really bothers me.

Wells Fargo fired 5300 people for this over a period of 5 years. This means that upper management had to be well aware of what was going on. They can't plead ignorance when over 5,000 people were fired over a period of time for the same offense.

While a Wells Fargo apologist could claim that the firings were indicative that management always took the problem seriously, I assert it means it opposite. Instead, it is clear that Wells management knew that the company had an environment full of illegal activity as a result of unrealistic sales goals, but preferred to take the approach of only firing those who got caught. That is, I'm sure they were well aware that far more than 5300 people were pulling these fake account shenanigans, but looked the other way as long as those people dodged official complaints.

Since upper management had to know about this, and took no action to stop it for 5 years, there should be serious penalties involved, both criminal and civil. The $185 million fine is a slap on the wrist to Wells Fargo (and that money all goes to the government -- victimized customers don't gain anything from this fine!)
Unfortunately it's extremely rare that criminal corporate executives face serious consequences. They all got rich and they'll stay rich.

They should be required to make triple restitution with interest to all victims and however much that is pay an equal amount to the government.
I agree. It's a joke.

I don't care which party makes the moves to remedy this situation. Honestly, both are very much in the pocket of big corporate America, but it needs to be done.

The sad thing is that, at the moment, the only politicians willing to take on corporate America are the unrealistic whack jobs like Bernie Sanders, so it's not going to get done. Anything reasonable Bernie says gets lost in all of his other socialist nonsense.

Oh... and here's something really sickening:


Carrie Tolstedt, the executive behind the hyperaggressive Wells Fargo account sales tactics, will walk away with $125 million.

Amazingly, even with the recent outing of this scandal, CEO Stumpf does not seem interested in "clawing back" some of her retirement package, even though the company has that option!

Her "retirement" earlier this year was also curious, as she is in her 50s. I believe Wells Fargo realized that the shit could possibly hit the fan soon enough, so they let her quietly exit with her retirement package. I think they were still hoping they would be able to dodge the story hitting the mass media, so they were afraid to fire her and thus attract the media's curiosity. They also might be hesitant to "claw back" her $125 million, because perhaps then she will talk and reveal that everyone (including Stumpf) knew what was going on.

What a fucking mess.