Wells Fargo Scandal

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.

Wells Fargo is one of the well-recognized banks in the United States with over 8,000 banks. Last year Wells Fargo paid millions of dollars in fines for opening around 1.5 million bank accounts and applied for around 560,000 credit cards without customers’ consent. Due to this unethical and illegal event, numerous stakeholders were affected. In the article, The Wal-Mart Effect and Business, Ethics, and Society by R. Edward Friedman, Friedman states that stakeholder is anyone who can be affected by the business or can affect the business (Friedman 38). A great deal stakeholders were affected by the Wells Fargo crisis including Board of Directors, stockholders, employees, and the customers. Each stakeholder has different interests,

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.

Recently, Wells Fargo was fined $185 million for opening up nearly 2 million accounts without permission of the account owners. The pressure to raise the average number of accounts began as early as 2009, employees who did not meet the sales targets were fired. Wells Fargo overlooked the fraud committed in order to meet those numbers. Since the exposure, Wells Fargo has fired roughly 5,300 employees. Though the effects on Wells Fargo go beyond the fine, this example shows how large banks and businesses are able to commit crimes without any real punishment. The Wells Fargo scheme was explicitly illegal, yet there are many business practices that, though unethical, are legal.

(2)Since 2011, Wells Fargo’s employees have been secretly creating millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts, and some Wells Fargo employees even created fake Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) as well as fake email addresses to give the illusion of a growing customer base. The fake accounts earned the bank unwarranted excess fees, which led to increased sales figures. Everyone who had a legit account with Wells Fargo and the people who owned stocks in Wells Fargo were affected. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses" (Cordray, 2016). The unethical behavior led to the termination of about 5,300 employees, and eventually Wells Fargo had to pay over $185 million dollars in fines, plus an additional $5 million to each affected customer.

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.

Until the intent or motive is recognized, a problem cannot be described or solved. This should be a major question to ask in the Wells Fargo case. Most workers, especially in sales and marketing jobs are known to be compensated and promoted based on their performances (number of products and services sold, number of set targets met). So it is possible that Wells Fargo compensation and promotion structure motivated these employees to engage in such fraudulent acts in order to boost their incentives and bonuses which was measured based on their performance. Because it is surprising that such huge number of employees would engage in such acts to cheat customers for a period of five years. Both former and current Wells Fargo employees told regulators that their motivation to open unauthorized accounts was because of the compensation policies and felt extreme pressure to do that to benefit from such policies (Corkery

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

In the same time, Wells Fargo recruited talented people into the company without any specific job, because the CEO believed that these smart people could help company to face and deal with the future changes and difficulties (Collins, 2001, p.42). Well Fargo is easy to adapt to a changing world when banking deregulation arrived. Moreover, Wells Fargo went three times higher than general stock market which the banking fell 59 percent behind. CEO of Wells Fargo, Dick Cooley a level 5 leader, understand three simple truths. First, if you begin with "who," rather than "what," you can more easily adapt to a changing world. Second, if you have the right people on the bus, there are no problem to motivate and manage people goes. Right people are self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results, and right people don't need to be tightly managed, they know what they should or should not do. Third, if you have the wrong people on the bus, you won't get to the place where you want to go, whatever how hard to motivate and manage them. Right people are the most important asset in the company. Right people can turn a nearly bankruptcy company to Fortune 500 company.

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.

The company had to pay $185 million in penalties and pay back nearly five million dollars to customers for cheating. After the incident had occurred, the CEO of Wells Fargo John G. Stumpf had stepped down. The owner also takes blame for the people who created the fake accounts and also takes the responsibility for the actions of those people. Timothy J. Sloan took Stumpf’s place as the CEO. The scandal for the Wells Fargo fake accounts is still ongoing today. The company plans to close 400 branches of Wells Fargo by the end of 2018. As of now, Wells Fargo has 263,800 employees in the organization. Over 3 million accounts were affected when the fake accounts were made. That means that over 3 million identities were stolen from the scandal. Nearly 2 million credit card and checking were opened from the scandal and nearly all money was gone, when they had found out about the scandal. This scandal is one of the most tragic things to happen and we need people to put a stop to

Well Fargo is currently being sued over 185 Million Dollars and 5,300 were fired for making fake account.

Wells Fargo fired 5300 employees. The employees took millions in fees by regularly opening new

The questionable issue really close by kind of is Wells Fargo essentially has discovered generally phony records that definitely were made without buyers having any information that the records for the most part were being made in a kind of big way. The underlying examination led uncovered that out of nighty-three point five million records audited around two point one million basically were resolved to definitely be sort of phony (McCoy, 2017), which definitely is fairly noteworthy. The initial examination uncovered that out of one hundred sixty-five million records inspected near three point five million of them were found to be unapproved accounts, or so they particularly thought. The organization really has chosen to literally organize its picture fiscally to the world as opposed to literally remain consistent with what it particularly was established for, sort of contrary to popular

Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.