The Misconduct In Wells Fargo's Employee

In 2016, federal regulators caught Wells Fargo, creating millions of fake bank and credit card accounts; over 1.5 million bank accounts were created. Furthermore, federal regulators also said that 565,443 credit cards were created, and 1400 of those accounts had been charged over 400,000 dollars in fees. Wells Fargo employees broke many ethical and legal boundaries and engaged in counterproductive work behavior.

According to the book, “The term trust refers to the confidence in a relationship that the other party will act honorably and fulfill legitimate expectations” (Friedrichs 9). Individuals put their faith in a corporation or individual because some people want to see the best in people. “We put our faith in the banks that store our money, the corporations that employ us, the retail stores where we purchase our items, a stockbroker in which we invest in and so much more” (Friedrichs 9). The book is trying to tell us that trust is involved in everything that we do every day. In the book it also states that, “trust and it violations are certainly key elements in white collar crimes” (Friedrichs 9) Trust between two individuals can be broken.. According to the FBI, “white collar crimes are not dependent on threat or physical violence” (FBI). The FBI wants us to note that corporations or individuals do not threaten anyone or physically harm the individual. Wells Fargo is a perfect example of trust and white collar crimes. Wells Fargo

On September 8 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) announced that it was taking an enforcement action against Wells Fargo Bank . Wells Fargo is a Fortune 100 company and one of the "Big Four Banks" of the United States. Investigations conducted by the Bureau revealed that employees of the bank created unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts across the country to meet sales goals. Over the years, the bank’s employees opened over 1.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and 0.5 million fake credit card accounts for customers, to meet sales targets and obtain bonuses. The affected consumers, were being harmed by the associated charges and fees for these accounts. The fees include insufficient funds or overdraft fees for the deposit accounts and annual fees for credit card accounts.

(1)Most adults can certainly agree that they hate bank fees. Even worse than paying bank fees, is paying a fee on a ghost account you did not know existed. Wells Fargo is a successful American International Financial Institution, but in recent years have been involved in a scandal that has hurt their reputation.

Wells Fargo Bank filed a lawsuit, in September 2014, against the accounting firm Worley Stroud & Associates PC claiming professional negligence. Wells Fargo accused Worley Stroud and two of its representatives of causing over $25 million worth of damages through their accounting errors. In March 2008, Wells Fargo agreed to make an asset-based loan to an agricultural commodity company, by the name of West Plains Co., where the amount of money lent would be dependent on the amount of assets the company held. However, Wells Fargo says that they lent $20 million more than they otherwise would have lent. Harry Worley and DeWitt Stroud of Worley Stroud & Associates PC were responsible for auditing West Plains’ financial statements from at least

Wells Fargo CEO will need to restructure customer service for the benefit of the customer, employees that in turn results in more profit for the shareholders. The company says they have improved recruiting and retention in the wake of the sales scandal. The bank has made big changes to how it compensates and evaluates employees in its branches. Wells Fargo has stopped paying branch workers based on how many products they sold and increased its minimum wage to a pay rate range of $13.50 and $17 per hour depending on the market they work in.

There was a dismissal of 5,300 employees and $185 million in fines against Wells Fargo (Stewart, 2017). The bank’s pressure-cooker sales environment made a toxic sales culture. Wells Fargo held unrealistic sale quotas to its employees and held policies that drove employees to participate in illegal behaviors to meet unreachable goals. Employees opened millions of unauthorized credit cards and deposit accounts, fees and other charges were racked up, money was transferred from customers’ accounts without their knowledge and their permission, they also created phony email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, all to hit sale targets and receive bonuses. Employees who called attention to the abusive, fraudulent behaviors were ignored and wrongfully terminated and retaliated

As there is a lot of cases, prosecutor has to conduct, there ought to be some misconduct in some progress. “A Tacoma man convicted of child rape and molestation two years ago did not receive a fair trial because a Pierce County deputy prosecutor committed misconduct during closing arguments, the Washington Court of Appeals has ruled.” Freeing a guilty man because of misconducting is pretty guilty itself, on top of that, the person who misconduct during closing arguments was deputy prosecutor. “The latest reversal came Tuesday, when a three-judge panel from Division II decided Alfred James Thierry Jr. was denied a fair trial because of deputy prosecutor Kara Sanchez improperly inflamed the jury during her closing argument.” “Thierry is entitled to a new trial, the panel said.” Child rape cases is one of the most popular in U.S., or even around the world.

I believe the reason why former employees had to result to these kinds of practices was because they didn't know better. Perhaps they were told by their employer or supervisor that it was fine to do this practices. Another option is that they felt the pressure to meet certain goals and thats was the obvious choice for them to do. Sales goals can go either way it just depends on how it's being practiced. Wells Fargo couldn't handle it properly and there you have the final results of them not using the right practices. Unfortunately its becoming more rare to find business that place more importance on people instead of profit. Business main priority is to earn profit and the people comes secondary to

Hiding or divulging information: Goldman bet against their clients several times. They knew material information on certain investment; however, they never communicated that to their clients because they were making money off them.

In California, eight Wells Fargo employees were convicted of committing fraud facing a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison, also each employee is charged with at least one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries another two years in prison (https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/eight-people-charged-bank-fraud-scheme-allegedly-used-information-stolen-wells-fargo). In the wake of the scandal, over 5,300 employees were fired over the course of five years for their involvements in the creation of the fake accounts. Some of the initial whistleblowers of the scandal faced retaliation by being terminated for speaking out against the orders to open fake accounts. CNN Money correspondent Matt Egan spoke with Bill Bado, a former employee of Wells Fargo, who has not been able to security another banking securities job since his termination for calling the Ethics Hotline to report the fraudulent activities.

Bank employees are alleged to have used existing customer names and accounts to open new checking accounts and transfer funds to them, create new credit cards, enroll in online banking, and order and activate debit cards without customer knowledge. Consequently, Wells Fargo employees were victims of contextual pressures. Furthermore, the employees act in unethical conducts causing the company in a loss of

Next they need to determine all of the employees involved in the conflict from lower level employees to executive level employees. They need to have a clear picture as to who was aware of the situation. The CEO that has since resigned was John Stumpf, “Did Stumpf’s (and other company leaders’) enthusiasm encourage employees to look for “creative” ways to install more accounts?” (Bariso, n.d.). Wells Fargo at this point should have looked at the big picture as to who was involved and not just look for a simple answer.

Another way is the bank should have had a way where they can check for accounts that haven’t been active in about twelve months; this would have prevented many cases where customers were not aware that these accounts were being opened. Wells Fargo should have invested on a system where it would check customer complaints of unusual account openings that they didn’t recall opening, and check with the customer for verification. Furthermore, another best way they could have prevented such scandal is if they terminated employees for fraud and ethical violations, for example, the management of the bank whom allowed and pressured their employees to sign up customers for accounts they didn’t authorize to meet their quota, these staff members should have been investigated and terminated. I think Wells Fargo learned to listen to employee and customer complaints and investigate more thoroughly. I also feel they now know to truly be a community based bank that’s really about its community. That scamming people just got them into a hole that they will really have a hard time getting out of, and not just because of money but because of people losing their trust in the company. Now its just about Wells Fargo’s road to

When an officer is being investigated for misconduct there are two questions you need to ask, “Was the behavior done for personal gain? And did the misconduct involve the officer’s legal authority?” (Perez, Volk, 2010) If the officer has committed a crime, it goes against their code of ethics and should suffer consequences.