Wells Fargo “sandbagger”-in-chief: $124 million in exit pay

[boutons_deux]

Wells Fargo “sandbagger”-in-chief in charge of phony account division received $124 million in exit payUnlike the 5,300 employees in her unit who were fired, Carrie Tolstedt was rewarded for the firm's malfeasance
http://www.salon.com/2016/09/12/wells-fargo-sandbagger-in-chief-in-charge-of-phony-account-division-received-124-million-in-exit-pay/

[ducks]

think instead of ceo getting a big bonus by leaving they should get a big ass fine

[ducks]

she is almost as corrupt as clinton
except no one died

[Axl Rose]

Well we all know that this is exactly the type of thing that Hillary won't fix

[boutons_deux]

Well we all know that this is exactly the type of thing that Hillary won't fix

neither will Donny Trash. He won't touch BigFinance, and if he proposed to, Congressional Repugs would block him.

Nothing's going to change for the better as long as the anti-govt/kill-govt Repugs run Congress , esp the House where spending/cutting bills are done.

[Axl Rose]

Donald is not an insider politician, he will get it done

[baseline bum]

Donald is not an insider politician, he will get it done

:lmao

[ElNono]

Donald is not an insider politician, he will get it done

:lol

[Axl Rose]

Hillary and her ilk have been in power for decades and nothing has changed, only gotten worse, so what have you got to
lose?

[baseline bum]

Hillary and her ilk have been in power for decades and nothing has changed, only gotten worse, so what have you got to
lose?

Yeah let's just elect our own Hitler since Clinton is crap.

[hater]

she is almost as corrupt as clinton
except no one died

:lmao

[Axl Rose]

Yeah let's just elect our own Hitler since Clinton is crap.
Nice meme :lmao

[baseline bum]

Nice meme :lmao

Donnie's an outsider :lmao
Same shit the retard Palin fans said 8 years ago :lol

[Axl Rose]

Palin was a governor and also was vp, no comparison.

[baseline bum]

Palin was a governor and also was vp, no comparison.

LOL anyone believing in any of the shitty 2016 candidates

[Axl Rose]

You keep jumping around making random statements. You're entitled to your opinion I guess

[baseline bum]

LOL believing in that faggot Trump

[Axl Rose]

Thought provoking

[Spurminator]

Hillary and her ilk have been in power for decades and nothing has changed, only gotten worse, so what have you got to
lose?

That's why I'm writing in Charlie Sheen. He's even more of an outsider than Trump.

[baseline bum]

Thought provoking

Yeah you set the bar high with "Donald is not an insider politician, he will get it done"

[Spurminator]

We need the outsiderest outsider president possible, because America is really in a shithole right now if you don't compare it to 8 years ago.

[Axl Rose]

That's why I'm writing in Charlie Sheen. He's even more of an outsider than Trump.
But Charlie can't win and trump will

[Spurminator]

But Charlie can't win and trump will

Same old establishment "electable" candidates. Ho hum.

[baseline bum]

But Charlie can't win and trump will

Good argument, will consider changing my vote to Donnie

[Axl Rose]

Good argument, will consider changing my vote to Donnie
At least he won't get us into war with Russia by having a seizure and pressing the nuclear button

[baseline bum]

At least he won't get us into war with Russia by having a seizure and pressing the nuclear button

That's good, it's what I'm looking for in a candidate

[Xevious]

Donald is not an insider politician, he will get it done
Bigbank has something like five lobbyists for every member of congress, all throwing around massive amounts of money. Even if Trump wanted to do something (big if), he wouldn't be able to.

[Axl Rose]

You seem to still be underestimating trump. First he wouldn't run, then he'd flame out in a couple of weeks, then he'd never break 30, 40, 50% etc, then he'd never beat Hillary, now it's "he won't be able to get anything done." We will see

[Xevious]

You seem to still be underestimating trump. First he wouldn't run, then he'd flame out in a couple of weeks, then he'd never break 30, 40, 50% etc, then he'd never beat Hillary, now it's "he won't be able to get anything done." We will see
He isn't going to win, but we are talking what-ifs here.

[ElNono]

Hillary and her ilk have been in power for decades and nothing has changed, only gotten worse, so what have you got to lose?

:lol this niglet has admitted repeatedly bribing politicos to great effect, that's an outsider? That's ball and chain in the system.

I'm not voting Shillary either, BTW, just saying, the outsider meme is hilarious.

[Proxy]

That's good, it's what I'm looking for in a candidate

:lol

[101A]

Wells Fargo “sandbagger”-in-chief in charge of phony account division received $124 million in exit pay

Unlike the 5,300 employees in her unit who were fired, Carrie Tolstedt was rewarded for the firm's malfeasance


http://www.salon.com/2016/09/12/wells-fargo-sandbagger-in-chief-in-charge-of-phony-account-division-received-124-million-in-exit-pay/

When I read the thread title I never imagined we would be talking about a woman. Progress!

[101A]

Yeah let's just elect our own Hitler since Clinton is crap.

As bad as Trump is, Hitler actively developed a plan to exterminate an entire race of people from the face of the Earth. He put German engineering and innovation to work in doing so at an amazingly efficient pace and scale. He wiped them out inside, and outside, his own country's borders as he actively and violently expanded those borders. He managed to persuade or coerce a great many people to assist him in this endeavor.

If Trump is elected with less than 40% of the vote, and then the capital burns down a couple of weeks later, and Trump appoints himself as an autocrat with absolute power, and no one stands in opposition, then we can start talking about similarities.

Until then, take it easy.

[101A]

That's good, it's what I'm looking for in a candidate

I was hoping for a triple-digit IQ. I'm not convinced either candidate could manage that right now.

[baseline bum]

As bad as Trump is, Hitler actively developed a plan to exterminate an entire race of people from the face of the Earth. He put German engineering and innovation to work in doing so at an amazingly efficient pace and scale. He wiped them out inside, and outside, his own country's borders as he actively and violently expanded those borders. He managed to persuade or coerce a great many people to assist him in this endeavor.

If Trump is elected with less than 40% of the vote, and then the capital burns down a couple of weeks later, and Trump appoints himself as an autocrat with absolute power, and no one stands in opposition, then we can start talking about similarities.

Until then, take it easy.

I call him a Hitler because he's a white nationalist who is always pissed off and yelling in his speeches, it really is like watching Hitler sometimes. And then his talk about silencing the press sounds like him too. But I don't expect Trump to setup camps to exterminate 6 million Muslims if he gets elected.

[baseline bum]

I was hoping for a triple-digit IQ. I'm not convinced either candidate could manage that right now.

They're both very smart. It always bugs me when people complain about how stupid politician X or politician Y are. They're not stupid, they're evil.

[boutons_deux]

When I read the thread title I never imagined we would be talking about a woman. Progress!

BigFinance corruption is gender-neutral.

[boutons_deux]

Ex-Wells Fargo Employees Sue; Say Bank Drove Them To ‘Cheat Customers’

Wells Fargo claimed that over 5,300 employees had been fired over the fraud issues, seemingly passing the buck as if something that widespread couldn’t be the result of a company culture. Unsurprisingly, some of those former employees are now suing for wrongful termination.

The $2.6 billion class action lawsuit was filed Thursday (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/09/25/ex-wells-fargo-employees-sue-over-scam/91079158/) in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County by Alexander Polonsky and Brian Zaghi, who were among the 5,300+ fired.

According to the complaint, they “did not meet their impossible quotas” and were singled out “so that all other employees would learn that they must engage in these fraudulent actions in order to meet the unrealistic sales quotes or else lose their jobs.”

District managers allegedly monitored all of their employees closely, stressing the steep quota of a whopping eight Wells Fargo accounts per household.
“Managers often tell employees to do whatever it takes to reach their quotas,” the complaint adds, saying that if you didn’t meet your quotas, you had to stay after hours, working overtime without pay.

They classify it as a “fraudulent scam” designed “to squeeze employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers.”

The alleged end game? Stock goes up and the CEO gets “hundreds of millions of millions of dollars in his own pocket.”

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/ex-wells-fargo-employees-sue-for-wrongful-termination-say-bank-drove-them-to-cheat-customers/

[Winehole23]

victims pushed into arbitration:


Ms. Zeleny, a lawyer who lives outside Salt Lake City and opened a Wells Fargo account when she started a new law practice, said it would be impossible for her to agree to arbitrate her dispute over an account that she had never signed up for in the first place.


The bank’s counterargument: The arbitration clauses included in the legitimate contracts customers signed to open bank accounts also cover disputes related to the false ones set up in their names.
Some judges have agreed with this argument, but some lawmakers and others consider it outrageous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-killing-sham-account-suits-by-using-arbitration.html?_r=0

[boutons_deux]

Here’s Another Disgraceful Way Wells Fargo Took Advantage Of Its Customers

Now four former Wells Fargo employees in the Los Angeles region say the bank had another way of chiseling clients: Improperly charging them to extend their promised interest rate when their mortgage paperwork was delayed. The employees say the delays were usually the bank’s fault but that management forced them to blame the customers.

The new allegations could exacerbate the lingering damage to the bank’s reputation (http://www.nationalmemo.com/wells-fargo-stumpf-was-only-the-tip-of-corporate-rot/) from the fictitious accounts scandal. Last week, Wells Fargo reported declining earnings (https://www08.wellsfargomedia.com/assets/pdf/about/press/2016/fourth-quarter-earnings.pdf). In the fourth quarter, new credit card applications tumbled 43 percent from a year earlier, while new checking accounts fell 40 percent.

“I believe the damage done to Wells Fargo mortgage customers in this case is much, much more egregious,” than from the sham accounts, a former Wells Fargo loan officer named Frank Chavez wrote (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3359719-WELLS-FARGO-MORTGAGE-FRAUD-in-LOS-ANGELES-11-23.html) in a November letter to Congress that has not previously been made public.

“We are talking about millions of dollars (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3359719-WELLS-FARGO-MORTGAGE-FRAUD-in-LOS-ANGELES-11-23.html#document/p1/a335155), in just the Los Angeles area alone, which were wrongly paid by borrowers/customers instead of Wells Fargo.”

Chavez, a 10-year Wells Fargo veteran, resigned from his job in the Beverly Hills private mortgage group last April.

Chavez sent his letter to the

(REPUG) Senate banking committee and the

(REPUG) House financial services committee

in November. He never got a reply. :lol

http://www.nationalmemo.com/wells-fargo-took-advantage-customers/

[boutons_deux]

Wells Fargo Scandal Blocks Severance Pay for Laid-Off Workers

For more than 400 employees recently laid off by Wells Fargo (http://www.nytimes.com/topic/company/wells-fargo-company?inline=nyt-org), the aftermath of the bank’s scandal over sham accounts has had an unexpected consequence: The bank is prohibited from paying the severance it owes them.

In mid-November, Wells Fargo’s federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/comptroller_of_the_currency/index.html?inline=nyt-org), imposed additional restrictions on the troubled bank.

The rules, part of which are intended to curb golden parachute packages, limit what payments Wells Fargo is permitted to make to terminated employees without explicit regulatory approval.

Routine severance pay is sometimes exempted from such restrictions, but the federal rules (https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/2000-7700.html) for golden parachute pay are complex, and Wells Fargo’s severance plan is not eligible for the exemption,


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/business/wells-fargo-blocks-severance.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The lady who ran the W-F division which crammed services and accounts, stealing money from customers retired with $100M+ in severance pay, and of course no fault, no jail.

[boutons_deux]

Wells Fargo charged customers for unneeded auto insurance — then repossessed their cars

Wells Fargo (http://www.latimes.com/topic/business/financial-business-services/wells-fargo-ORCRP016609-topic.html) & Co. charged hundreds of thousands of auto-loan borrowers for insurance they did not ask for or need, in some cases causing those customers’ cars to be repossessed —

the latest in a long list of bad practices for which the bank is trying to atone.An internal bank investigation spurred by customer complaints found that,

between 2012 and 2017, about 570,000 borrowers may have been wrongly pushed into these auto insurance policies

Wells Fargo plans to give them $80 million in refunds and compensation.

The issue centers on so-called collateral-protection insurance policies, which are similar to auto insurance policies

Most of them — about 490,000 — had their own insurance but were stuck with bank-issued policies as well. They will get refunds totaling $25 million.

In 60,000 other cases, Wells Fargo said it did not follow state notification and disclosure laws. Refunds to those customers will total $39 million.

The bank said some 20,000 customers lost their vehicles because the cost of the unnecessary insurance pushed borrowers into default on their loans.
Those customers will get refunds, plus additional payments to compensate them for the loss of their vehicles.

The compensation will total $16 million, or an average of $800 per customer. :lol

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-wells-fargo-insurance-20170728-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter

Your car repossessed illegally, so you get $800! :lol

[Reck]

How is this company still not shut down in backruptcy? :lol

[boutons_deux]

Chinese/British HSBC in USA laundered many $100Ms for drug cartels, and still kept its US banking license. Too Big To Jail.

[rmt]

I heard that 1 in 3 US families have an account with them - including ours. I absolutely hate to support such a sleaze bag company but it's the official bank of UF - has a branch in their student union and ATMs close by - also can be tied to their UF student card so kids can use one card to do everything (vending, meal plan, books, etc). Here's an example of their less than ethical behavior. My son opens a Wells Fargo checking account at Preview (orientation). The next day I deposit $4k into the account. A week later, I check the account - there's a hold on the check for another few days - I question why a local Florida check takes over a week and a half to clear - "it's held because it's a new account" - more likely a way to get insufficient funds when checks are turned back because of the long hold.

[Winehole23]

not just Wells Fargo. the OCC is covering for the whole industry:


Ryan of PwC offered further specifics about what the OCC found, saying that the agency issued a total of 252 Matters Requiring Attention notices to banks whose sales practices under review.
So-called MRAs focus on practices inside a bank that examiners deem to be deficient and lay out corrective actions that banks are expected to take to remedy the situation….
As part of the sales practice review, the OCC also issued five industrywide MRAs, according to Ryan. He declined to disclose what specific issues those missives involve.
https://www.americanbanker.com/news/not-just-wells-fargo-occ-finds-sales-practice-abuses-at-other-banks

[Winehole23]

But absent a report from the OCC, it is hard to assess what is happening in the banking industry as a whole. Though supervisory information about individual banks is confidential, Art Wilmarth, a law professor at George Washington University, argued that the OCC should release its general findings.


“This is a watchdog that’s not barking,” he said.

[boutons_deux]

Wells Fargo accused of misconduct again

Wells Fargo is once again being accused of misconduct, this time because it allegedly used complex financial investments to take advantage of mom-and-pop investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday that between 2009 and 2013,

Wells Fargo (WFC (http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=WFC&source=story_quote_link)) reaped large fees by "improperly encouraging" brokerage clients to actively trade high-fee debt products that were intended to be held to maturity.

Wells Fargo Advisors, the bank's brokerage division, agreed to pay a $4 million penalty over its handling of the products, known as market-linked investments. The bank must also return $930,377 of ill-gotten gains — plus $178,064 of interest.

Over the past two years, Wells Fargo has been caught up in

a series of scandals (http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/24/news/companies/wells-fargo-timeline-shareholders/index.html?iid=EL)over how the bank treats its account holders, borrowers and employees (http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/19/news/companies/wells-fargo-ethics-hotline/index.html?iid=EL).
Even though the bond-like investments were designed to be held, the SEC said Wells Fargo pushed its clients to sell them before maturity. The bank then directed its clients to invest the proceeds into new ones.

The SEC criticized Wells Fargo for "misconduct" and said its financial advisers "did not reasonably investigate or understand the significant costs of the recommendations."

Further, the agency said that supervisors at Wells Fargo "routinely approved" these transactions despite internal policies that banned the "flipping" of such complex products.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/25/investing/wells-fargo-advisors-sec-settlement/index.html

[boutons_deux]

Judge OKs $480-million settlement with Wells Fargo shareholders over unauthorized-accounts scandal

The deal, granted preliminary approval late Tuesday, would compensate Wells Fargo & Co. shareholders for losses they suffered after the bank in 2016 acknowledged it had created perhaps millions of accounts without customers’ authorization (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo-settlement-20160907-snap-story.html).

Executives continued to tout the practice, the defendants argued, even after it became clear that aggressive sales goals and quotas were “corrupting, rather than reinforcing, Wells Fargo’s

purported corporate values :lol

and cross-selling business model.”

Since October 2016, Wells Fargo shares have climbed 43%, while an index of bank stocks has risen 57%.


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo-settlement-20180905-story.html#nws=mcnewsletter

[Winehole23]

65 million dollar fine for cross-selling scheme.

at what point is it legally determinable that fraud is Wells Fargo's business model?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-probe/wells-fargo-pays-65-million-to-settle-cross-sell-fraud-claims-with-new-york-idUSKCN1MW2HM

[Spurtacular]

Sounds like one of Hillary's good buddies.

[Winehole23]

yawn

[Winehole23]

65 million dollar fine for cross-selling scheme.

at what point is it legally determinable that fraud is Wells Fargo's business model?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-probe/wells-fargo-pays-65-million-to-settle-cross-sell-fraud-claims-with-new-york-idUSKCN1MW2HMfudging FX fees


Today federal prosecutors announced a $72.6 million settlement (https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-726-million-settlement-fraud-lawsuit-against-wells) with Wells Fargo Bank N.A. for overcharging business FX customers. Wells Fargo definitely did the standard, highest-price-of-the-day thing:


Furthermore, rather than charging the agreed-upon fixed spread to the FX market rate at the time the outgoing wire was converted, FX sales specialists would select the best rate for the Bank and worst rate for the customer from the FX price fluctuations from the beginning of the trading day until the time of the transaction. This practice was referred to internally as “Range of Day” Pricing.



And here is how the complaint (https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1436841/download) describes Wells Fargo’s pricing when it converted incoming wire transfers for customers:


Because Wells Fargo generally did not provide immediate notice to customers when they received incoming wires, known as BSwifts, Wells Fargo's FX sales specialists took advantage of this time delay to charge higher spreads than the Bank had represented it would.


One method used by FX sales specialists to extract large sales margins on BSwift transactions was to price them based on the range of the day. This practice allowed FX sales specialists to generate even larger spreads on incoming wire transactions than on outgoing wires. With outgoing wires, FX sales specialists could select the best price for the Bank and the worst price for the customer only from the beginning of the trading day up until the time of the transaction. However, with BSwift wires, because the customers generally did not know when the funds arrived in their accounts or when they were converted, the FX sales specialist could wait until the end of the day and cherry-pick the best rate for the Bank and the worst rate for the customer from the entire trading day.


In a written instant message to a colleague, an FX sales specialist analogized this fraudulent scheme to getting candy from a pinata, referring to the Bank's pricing of BSwift wire transfers as the "BSWIFT pinata."



Fine sure right. But that is just a jumping-off point; once you’re making up prices, why not, you know, really make up prices?


For some customers, FX sales specialists also used what they internally called the "big figure trick" or the "transposition error game" to increase the FX sales margin and their profits. To carry out this scheme, the FX specialist would intentionally transpose the digits in the price of the transactions in a way that would result in the customers paying Wells Fargo a higher spread or sales margin.


For example, hypothetically, if the actual correct price to purchase a Euro was 1.0123 dollars, an FX sales specialist would use the big figure trick to switch the price to 1.0213 dollars, thus taking more spread (in this example, an additional 89 basis points) from the customer.


If the customer actually caught the error, the FX sales specialist would falsely claim that it was simply a mistake.


One FX sales specialist explained in an internal communication with colleagues: "You can play the transposition error game if you get called out." Another FX sales specialist noted to a colleague regarding a previous transaction that a customer "didn't flinch at the big fig the other day. Want to take a bit more?"



Man. I love writing about the complex stratagems that the world’s biggest and most sophisticated financial institutions use to give themselves an edge. My favorite remains “if someone sends you money by accident, keep it (https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-17/citi-can-t-have-its-900-million-back),” but this one is pretty good too. “Switch the digits in a price to make it higher, and hope the customer doesn’t notice,” that’s high finance right there.


https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-28/wells-fargo-swapped-some-digits

[Winehole23]

crime is a social construct; bankers never go to jail for shit like this

[Winehole23]

plus ça change

1605203232862908416

[Winehole23]

If ever there were a candidate for the corporate death penalty, what does it take to lose your banking license?

1605220499679756299

[boutons_deux]

If ever there were a candidate for the corporate death penalty, what does it take to lose your banking license?

1605220499679756299


HSBC was guilty of laundering $400 million for drug cartels but still kept its US banking license

[Winehole23]

The former head of Wells Fargo Bank’s retail banking division has agreed to plead guilty to obstructing a government examination into the bank’s widespread sales practices misconduct, which included opening millions of unauthorized accounts and other products, federal authorities announced today.


In a plea agreement filed today in United States District Court, Carrie L. Tolstedt, 63, of Scottsdale, Arizona, agreed to plead guilty to one count of obstruction of a bank examination. Tolstedt is expected to make her initial court appearance in Los Angeles in the coming weeks, with the parties requesting the court to set a hearing for April 7.


The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which investigated misconduct at Wells Fargo, also has reached a resolution with Tolstedt (https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-24.html) in a regulatory proceeding. As part of the consent order resolving that matter, Tolstedt agreed to a ban from working in the banking industry and to pay a $17 million civil penalty.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-wells-fargo-executive-agrees-plead-guilty-obstructing-bank-examination

[Winehole23]

pending approval of the deal by both sides, one banker will go to jail, 20 years after she first became aware of the shenanigans at Wells Fargo


The statutory maximum sentence for obstruction of a bank examination is five years in federal prison. Tolstedt has entered into a plea agreement which calls for a prison sentence of up to 16 months in prison, which prosecutors believe is the high end of the sentencing guideline range for the obstruction offense. The plea agreement is “binding,” which means the court must accept or reject all aspects of it. Should the court reject the plea agreement, including the agreed-upon sentencing range, any party may withdraw from it.

[Winehole23]

crime is a social construct; bankers never go to jail for shit like this$250m fine for opening up fake credit card accounts and loading up customers with overrdraft fees.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FctK0hDXwAAFtFq?format=jpg&name=large

[Winehole23]

another fine, this time for hiding official communications.

it's almost as if criminality and ripoffs are part of Wells Fargo's business model.


Several US financial firms, including multiple Wells Fargo companies, will pay a combined (https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-149) $549 million in fines after admitting they couldn’t produce discussions about company business from smartphone messaging apps (https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8762-23) used by their employees, “including those at senior levels.”

Both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined banks for being unable to produce discussions going back to at least 2019. The regulators say employees used their personal devices to discuss official company business via apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal and that those “off-channel communications” weren’t “maintained or preserved.”

Not keeping records of those conversations violates the 1934 Securities Exchange Act’s recordkeeping rules, as well as similar rules from the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, according to the SEC. The CFTC maintains its own recordkeeping requirements, which it says were violated.

The biggest chunk of the fines go to the Wells Fargo companies, which together will pay almost half of the SEC’s penalties at $125 million, along with another $75 million settlement with the CFTC.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824521/wells-fargo-bnp-imessage-signal-whatsapp-messages-sec-fine