Wells Fargo didn't just steal millions from its customers with crooked overdraft fees, didn't just create 2,000,000 fraudulent accounts and threaten to blackball employees who tried to stop the frauds; didn't just defraud broke mortgage borrowers by the bushel-load -- they also defrauded 800,000 customers with car loans, forcing 274,000 of them into deliquency and "wrongfully repossessing" (that is, stealing) 25,000 of their cars.
For borrowers, delinquencies arose quickly because of the way the bank charged for the insurance. Say, for example, that a customer agreed to a monthly payment of $275 in principal and interest on her car loan, and arranged for the amount to be deducted from her bank account automatically. If she were not advised about the insurance and it increased her monthly payment to, say, $325, her account could become overdrawn as soon as Wells Fargo added the coverage.
The report tried to determine how many Wells Fargo customers were hurt and how much they should be compensated. It estimated that the bank owed $73 million to wronged customers.
State insurance regulations required Wells Fargo to notify customers of the insurance before it was imposed. But the bank did not always do so, the report said. And almost 100,000 of the policies violated the disclosure requirements of five states — Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Tennessee and Washington.
Wells Fargo Forced Unwanted Auto Insurance on Borrowers [Gretchen Morgenson/New York Times]
(via Naked Capitalism)
All-black but for the hashtag #knifefree, the official chicken boxes of Her Majesty’s Government are presented as a warning about the dangers of knifecrime. The Home Office has suborned some takeout chains into using them. It’s not going down well. Policing Minister Kit Malthouse says they “will bring home to thousands of young people the […]
Insider attacks, cell-site simulators, SIM-swap attacks, thriving markets in super-cheap, fine-grained location data, robocalls, fictitious coverage maps, and more: does the fact that all this terrible shit keeps happening, and only gets worse, mean that mobile companies and the FCC just don't give a fuck if your mobile phone is a crime wave you carry […]
All the participants at the 3-day Volusia, Florida orgy were naked and used aliases, and for obvious reasons, DNA-based identification "is not going to be an option, which means we'll probably never find out who stole the Glock from the bedside table. (Image: Eyes Wide Shut/Warners; Askild Antonsen, CC BY-SA, modified) (Thanks, Gnat!)
If your office works at all, it uses Microsoft Office. Those icons for Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook are as familiar around some workplaces as the coffee machine. So familiar, in fact, that they get taken for granted – and rarely used to their full potential. Whether you need a crash course in the essential tools […]
It’s a great time to be a maker. 3D printers are on store shelves for anyone to buy, and coder kits like Arduino and Raspberry Pi are letting kids as young as 9 or 10 dive into the Internet of Things. Here are a few examples of our favorite tech toys, all priced low enough […]
Want to make a hit? The right software is out there for anyone, but any music producer will tell you that finding the right sound can still take time and talent. Still, the right tools are a great shortcut, which makes this Synth & Sound Pack Bundle absolutely priceless. And now that it’s on sale […]
