I don’t understand how the WF employees who did this won’t or shouldn’t be criminally prosecuted. It sounds to me that they committed bank fraud by opening unauthorized accounts and making unauthorized transfers of funds to those accounts.
Not only could opening credit card accounts and lines of credit have a negative effect on some if not many customer’s credit ratings, but in creating fake email accounts and PIN numbers, misusing their customer’s confidential personal information and even forging customers’ signatures to do so, sounds like they were setting the customers up for possible identity fraud if not for outright theft.
Pressure to meet sales quotas, earn bonuses and or even keeping their jobs, they must have known this was illegal, as did the managers and executives who knew this was going on and turned a blind eye to it. They should all be criminally prosecuted IMO. I would not work for nor continue to work for a company that encouraged or rewarded me for committing crimes.
FWIW I did once quit a job as a bookkeeper in charge of billing for a commercial HVAC company after a month and I became a whistle blower when I learned they were padding and submitting fraudulent bills on a local government contract, after the owner freely admitted it to me and ordered me to inflate work hours and OT and submit fake invoices for materials that were never used on the job and submit fraudulent bills, and he threated to fire me (and worse, yes, he threated to physically harm me) if I didn’t comply. After I quit, he also refused to pay the wages I had already earned, including OT until I contacted the MD Department of Labor.
While I was never called to testify (and I wasn’t the only one who blew the whistle and was prepared to testify against him including several service technicians who also had been told to inflate hours and had also not been paid for their full wages and OT), he still ended up going to jail on a plea deal to a slightly reduced charge.
Fortunately, I quickly found a much better job with a reputable company and for more money and better benefits, but even if I hadn’t, I would have still been glad to have done what I did. I was not going to be bullied and threatened into being complicit in committing a crime.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/09/08/wells-fargo-fined-185-million-for-opening-accounts-without-customers-knowledge/#3c08512e5d7aThe shady consumer practices didn’t end at unauthorized debit and credit card accounts: consumers also found that unauthorized lines of credit were opened in their names. FORBES contributor Micheline Maynard reports that this happened to her:
https://twitter.com/MickiMaynard/status/773929102235537408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttp://www.heraldnet.com/business/wells-fargo-to-pay-185-million-in-fake-account-allegations/
The Times’ 2013 story, based on court records and interviews with dozens of former and current Wells Fargo employees, reported that workers opened duplicate accounts, ordered credit cards for customers who did not ask for them and even forged customers’ signatures.
In many cases, customers say they’ve had to pay fees related to accounts they never opened.
In a more extreme case, Mexican pop star Ana Barbara this summer sued Wells Fargo, saying an employee opened up accounts without her knowledge then spent more than $400,000 in her name.
I understand that WF is paying refunds to those customers who incurred fees including overdraft fees because of these unauthorized accounts, but IMO that is not enough. WF should also pay for independent credit monitoring services and any costs incurred to clean up their credit reports.
And those employees who received bonuses as a result of opening these bogus accounts should be forced to repay those bonuses into a fund that should then be distributed to all customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names.
As to credit monitoring, it is not a bad idea although some may be better than others. FWIW I have a Capital One credit card and while it is not full credit monitoring service, I get a free monthly report and can log in anytime to see any changes to my credit score (TransUnion) and it alerts me every time a credit inquiry is made or when a new account is opened in my name. It doesn’t give me full details or full access to my full TransUnion credit report, but is enough to see if any fraudulent activity, at least as reported by TransUnion, has taken place. And you don’t have to be a Capital One customer to sign up for it.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/credit-cards/capital-one-creditwise-free-credit-scores-everyone-non-cardholders/And everyone should order their free annual credit reports, but use this one and be aware of the scam sites:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-reportsI also have alerts set up on both of my credit cards that notify me by email and txt every time a purchase is made no matter how small the amount. I can then sign into my account to see the details of the purchase. (Although this would not help me if a CC account was fraudulently opened in my name using a fake email address which is why credit monitoring is important).
I sometimes use my CC to purchase gas or pay for groceries and other purchases because I earn points that I can redeem for airfare miles or get cash back or can apply as a credit against my balance which I pay off in full each month.
I am amazed how quickly I get these notices. I’ve been at the gas pump and by the time I get back into my car, see that I already have received a txt message on my phone as to the purchase I just made. Same with purchases at the grocery store – I’ve often heard the txt alert on my cell phone go off even before all my groceries have been bagged.
I once, stupidly, signed up for a magazine subscription for several magazines sold through my nephew’s school as a fund raiser that had an automatic subscription renewal. But even after I contacted them to end the subscriptions after the second year, the next year they charged my credit card again, and even for some magazines I was no longer receiving and for one that I had never ordered nor had ever received.
I called my credit card company (Barclay’s) and the rep was great in helping me resolve; he got the magazine subscription service on the phone with us, I provided the date, the name of the person I spoke to and the confirmation number from the subscription service for the cancellation and I got a full credit back on my CC in less than a week. The rep at the CC company was really great and was US based (in North Carolina as I recall) and didn’t have a foreign accent, and he told me, after the magazine subscription rep got off the call, that he had had many and customers who he helped who had problems with this very same subscription service and told me to call back immediately if they ever charged my CC again.