Today's crookedest bank? Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees for unethical sales practices that they had been pressed into using by management.

Before the truth became public, many whistleblowers were bullied, threatened, or quickly fired, an illegal action by the corporation, of course.

Corporate practice was to press sales personnel to add billable services to customer accounts either by pressuring the customer to agree or by adding the services without the customer's request or consent.

About two million such fraudulent accounts were created without the customer's consent.  Wells Fargo has paid $185 million in fines and penalties for their actions.  The CEO testified before Congress on the integrity of their corporation and the validity of the whistleblower program.  He didn't have any memory of the several whistleblower reports that were sent to him by personnel who were quickly fired for spurious reasons.  Many in senior management were informed, but perhaps having directed the unethical practices themselves, they took no action other than to squelch the complaints.  No senior management were removed.

As has been said, Wells Fargo has a history
of illegal activities.  

So where is the problem?  Is it unrestrained capitalism?  Is it lack of regulatory oversight?  Is it greed and immoral pursuit of wealth?  Wells Fargo and similarly corrupt corporations should perhaps be broken down and de-globalized.  They should have their executives removed, penalized, and decertified.  Is anything less severe likely to clean up the crooked practices in the financial industry of which this is just one?

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Senator Bernie Sanders, “Let’s be clear, the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” 

“There is no better example than the recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.”

During his testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee, CEO John Stumpf admitted that he and other senior executives were made aware of the account-opening scheme in 2013.

Sanders says the Wells Fargo scandal is "not an aberration," laying out the bank's history of abusing its customers and getting slapped with multiple fines.

Bernie Sanders 

@SenSanders

How many people at Wells Fargo are going to jail? Zero. But if you smoke marijuana in this country, you get a criminal record.

9:56 AM - 20 Sep 2016

Update March 1, 2017 -- Wells had estimated that up to 2 million customers may have had accounts opened in their names without authorization. As part of an expanded review of affected customers, Wells said in its annual 10-K filing that there could be "an increase in the identified number of potentially impacted customers."
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Update April 3, 2017 -- Wells Fargo Whistle-Blower Wins $5.4 Million Lawsuit and Gets His Job Back17,825 likes