Wells Fargo bogus accounts balloon to 3.5 million: lawyers

[Julian Englis]

Source: Reuters

Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) may have opened as many as 3.5 million unauthorized customer accounts, far more than previously estimated, according to lawyers seeking approval of a $142 million settlement over the practice.

The new estimate was provided in a filing late Thursday night in the federal court in San Francisco, and is 1.4 million accounts higher than previously reported by federal regulators, in what became a national scandal.

Keller Rohrback, a law firm for the plaintiff customers, said the higher estimate reflects "public information, negotiations, and confirmatory discovery."

The Seattle-based firm also said the number "may well be over-inclusive, but provides a reasonable basis on which to estimate a maximum recovery."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-accounts-idUSKBN1882UV

---

Yes, even though the national disgrace that is Trump has monopolized the headlines, evidence continues to roll in that banks are blood sucking leeches.

[Aristus]

1. I was an accounts and loans officer for Wells Fargo for a little over a year.

The pressure to increase accounts and loan volumes was huge.

I was fired for what they no doubt considered poor performance. But less than a week before I was let go, I saw my sales numbers. They were seventh-highest in the state. Just not high enough to please the powers that be.

Truth is, the day they fired me was one of the happiest days of my life. I hated, hated, HATED the job. I was just doing it to put my wife through school. She wanted me to stay on for a while after she graduated to keep our finances steady. She was actually already making good money, so when they fired me, we landed on our feet, plus I got to collect unemployment. My search for a new career led me back to the family business (so to speak): medicine. I took my first steps toward becoming a Physician Assistant within a few months after being fired from Wells Fargo.

[rocktivity]

2. Well, that's the thing -- we're not talking about a handful of employees going rogue

this was accepted company policy handed down from management. By the way has anyone actually been fired or jailed over this?

Apparently they've learned nothing of their Bush II-era policy of foreclosing on the homes of people on active duty during the Gulf War -- which just happens to be a violation of federal law!


rocktivity

[Mosby]

3. The CEO quit

And some of the top management was fired. The company is going to take back the stock options that they left with.

[NBachers]

4. Every one of those bogus accounts should result in a criminal penalty; they should run consecutevely

[Mosby]

5. The accounts were opened by low level branch employees

Thousands of them were fired from their 12-14 dollar per hour jobs.

Prosecuting them might be the right thing to do, but it's not going to look good considering no WF execs are going to jail with them.

[Yonnie3]

6. I had a discussion with one of their advisors in 1999 and ...

was told that I was dumb to follow my plan not his.

My plan was to cash in my tech heavy Janus Funds account and pay off my mortgage.

His plan was to refinance my home (with him), get all the cash out I could and put it in his front loaded funds. This was my only possible path to wealth according to him.

I terminated our meeting.

I believe that this predates the bogus account scamming in the news. My point is that the screw the customer culture was there long ago.