Now Occupy Wall Street has something to talk about.. again.
But this time it isn't naughty Goldman making billions off A.I.G's bankruptcy, but it's Wells Fargo that's causing trouble by creating MILLIONS of FAKE CUSTOMER ACCOUNTS.
“For the past five years, thousands of Wells Fargo employees collectively participated in a scam to systemically defraud and abuse its customers. Bank employees created new accounts for customers using fake email addresses, issued credit cards without customer consent, and set up sham accounts. In many cases, customers only became aware of the scheme when they received credit or debit cards they hadn’t applied for, or were hit by overage charges on an account they didn’t know existed. <...> The plan, as practiced by several thousand Wells Fargo employees, seems to have been to sign up new customers for an account, move a small amount of money into that account, and then close the account and transfer funds back several days later. This way, the rep gets to count the account opening towards their own goals and the consumer, theoretically, is none the wiser.”
I wonder if they honestly thought that they can just come up with millions of fake accounts and consumers won't eventually notice?
The only good question is here:
What are they doing over there at Wells Fargo?
This actually happened to my brother... a Wells Fargo retail banker took his info after opening a checking account and filled out and opened a credit card as well so he could hit his numbers. My brother had no clue until a card showed up in the mail
ahhh, brings me back to my retail banking days...
this is what happens when you give a salesforce 3 products (checking, savings, credit) and have them measured on daily (yes, daily) goals lest they be fired. I guarantee some derivative of this goes on at other big banks, wells was just the one who got caught.
happens for many sales businesses. I know people who are banned from Comcast and AT&T because they inflated sales with junk accounts so they can get commissions.
Exactly. When you demand the unrealistic, you get the unethical.
Small-time. It's like: Wells got caught trying marijuana behind the high school gym, while all the other guys are free-basing over in the mobile home park
wish I could SB that.
This is Wells Fargo employees taking money from WF shareholders by scamming the bank's incentive systems, not WF taking money from Main Street. Not really an Occupy Wall Street thing (assuming a perfectly informed population, which is a dubious assumption).
Correct. This is 100% hurting the bank and not its consumers by forcing WF to pay slightly higher bonuses than it normally would. Given retail bankers, it costs what, $5k in bonus? That's the most my friend from HS ever received working at Wells Fargo doing the same thing. Nothing to see here.
If my retail bank started to ding my credit store I would fucking light it on fire.
How come? People got charged random services they didn't ask for
Smoking them exotic sandbagging packs
The CEO is going to testify In the Senate next week. Expect a lot of grandstanding from politicians and little to no substantive questions. If he tries to answer thoughtfully, he will get cut off and yelled at so these politicians can run some clip showing how tough they are on big bad banks.
Trust me, I have a little experience with this.
Isn't that the state of bipartisan politics in the US? Little substance, say what you need to in order to appeal to your voter base's emotions, get re-elected
Lizard Brain you're absolutely right. Reminds me of the saying where "people deserve the politicians they get because the politicians are a reflection of the people" or something along those lines.
I've been short on WF for 2 days and think I should hold off from covering until he testifies? Bad idea?
Unless you have access to >3x lev, what are you doing...
Yep, you sure do..
Sounds like WF retail banking incentive program needs to change. Pretty small time though when it comes to bank related crime
Lol - I closed my bank account after 6 months. Such a shit bank.
lol as an outsider (ie European who's never visited USA #1!), I had the ipression that Wells Fargo was a pretty decent retail bank. Maybe even investment worthy.
Speaking of US retail banking, which bank do you guys consider good? (good customer service, online banking, not random fees for nothing etc)
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