A new bill from Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes personal, criminal liability for top executives of companies turning over more than $1B/year when those companies experience data breaches and scams due to negligence (many of the recent high-profile breaches would qualify, including the Equifax giga-breach, as well as many of Wells Fargo's string of scams and scandals). Read the rest
Wells Fargo is America's largest bank and it also leads the nation's banks for scandals, having stolen from rich people, poor people, veterans, active-service military personnel, homeowners, small businesses, etc, as well as 2,000,000 ordinary customers who had fraudulent accounts opened in their names in order to bleed them of transaction fees, sometimes at the expense of their good credit and even their financial solvency. Read the rest
According to Wells Fargo, a "computer glitch" caused the improper denial of 870 loan modification requests, which led to 545 foreclosures in which Wells Fargo customers lost their homes; the bank is now offering those former homeowners -- some of whom saw the breakup of their marriages as the result of the stress of foreclosure -- insultingly small sums, like $25,000. Read the rest
Wells Fargo has asked a court to block a shareholder lawsuit that seeks to punish the company for lying when it promised to promptly and completely disclose any new scandals; Wells Fargo claims that the promise was obvious "puffery," a legal concept the FTC has allowed to develop in which companies can be excused for making false claims if it should be obvious that they are lying (as when a company promises that they make "the best-tasting juice in America). Read the rest
Wells Fargo is America's most scandal-haunted bank, which is quite an accomplishment in a heavily competitive field; now the bank has started closing its branches and cutting jobs (after pressuring employees to commit mass fraud on pain of being fired and blacklisted from the industry). Read the rest
Nikki Fried is a Florida Democrat running to be the state’s agriculture commissioner. Medical marijuana is legal in Florida, but when Fried said she was going to accept campaign contributions from the medical marijuana industry, Wells Fargo terminated her account.
From The Washington Post:
At a news conference on Monday, Fried said that “Wells Fargo’s actions against my campaign are emblematic of what is wrong with our government and politics today," adding that she was “kicked out of a bank for voicing support of a law that is literally codified in the Florida constitution.”
In a statement, Wells Fargo spokeswoman Bridget Braxton declined to comment on the specifics of Fried’s case but said that “it is Wells Fargo’s policy not to knowingly bank or provide services to marijuana businesses or for activities related to those businesses, based on federal laws under which the sale and use of marijuana is illegal even if state laws differ.” By phone, she clarified that “activities related to those businesses” would include donations, to politicians or any other account holders.
In its latest round of shareholder disclosures, Wells Fargo admitted that it "unnecessarily foreclosed" on 400-odd householders (that is, stole their houses) and failed to grant loan modifications to 625 qualified borrowers (this is just the latest revelation about Wells Fargo stealing houses); it's also being investigated for its practice of purchasing low-income housing credits. (via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest
Last week, Wells Fargo defiantly announced that it would not follow its competitors' examples and cease lending to gun manufacturers; this week, the American Federation of Teachers dropped Wells Fargo as the preferred mortgage lender for its 1.7 million members. Read the rest
Wells Fargo defrauded 800,000 car loan borrowers, forcing 274,000 of them into bankruptcy and stealing ("wrongfully repossessing") 25,000 cars; they also ripped off mortgage borrowers by failing to send them their paperwork until after the deadline for filing it and then fining them for not filing it on time. Read the rest
Wells Fargo, America's dirtiest bank, has proudly announced that it will continue to lend money to gun manufacturers, unlike its competitors at Citi and Bank of America. Read the rest
When you look at the list of people that Wells Fargo stole from -- ordinary depositors, struggling mortgage borrowers, 800,000 car loan borrowers, mom and pop businesses, medium businesses and home owners -- a commonality emerges: they're all poor people, or middle-class people, or slightly rich people. Read the rest
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan has only been on the job since October, but he's earned a 35%, $4.6m raise, despite flat earnings and a series of scandals since Sloan took over from the cartoonishly villainous John Stumpf. Read the rest
Wells Fargo has admitted wrongdoing in defrauding 110,000 mortgage borrowers, and to make good on it, they're sending out letters that look like junk-mail, containing a form that customers have to fill in to confirm that they want their stolen money back; if Wells doesn't get a reply, it will assume that those customers are donating their settlements back to the bank's shareholders. Read the rest
The Federal Reserve has concluded its investigation into Wells Fargo's decades' long practice of pressuring employees to open fraudulent accounts in the names of its customers to inflate its quarterly figures and rack up service charges. Read the rest
A class action suit by some of the 3,500,000+ Wells Fargo customers defrauded in the company's fake account scam was foundering in Utah, thanks to the company's insistence that its binding arbitration clauses also applied to the accounts it fraudulently opened (that is, by agreeing not to sue the company for defrauding you over the accounts you opened, you were also agreeing not to sue them if it opened a bunch more accounts and forged your signature on the papers). Read the rest
Wells Fargo didn't limit its fraud to robbing 2,000,000 ordinary depositors, struggling mortgage borrowers, 800,000 car loan borrowers, mom and pop businesses, and home owners -- the bank's top foreign-exchange desk bankers robbed hundreds of the company's large business customers, in a move that inflated the Fargo execs' annual bonuses. Read the rest
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (previously) is practically the only US regulator we can be proud of -- founded by Elizabeth Warren before she ran for the Senate, the CFRB is a consumer protection agency that has been at the forefront of reining in criminal activities like Wells Fargo's nationwide frauds and Equifax's dox attack on the USA, as well as being the best defense Americans have against predatory loan-sharks masquerading as "payday lenders," abusive debt-collectors, racial discrimination in lending, and the student loan racket. Read the rest
