Looks like one of the BIG banks is at it again. And by “it” I mean horrendous behavior. Yesterday, news broke that Wells Fargo Bank was hit with $185 million in civil penalties for secretly opening millions of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts that harmed its customers.

So, who gets the money? The government? We’ll be updating this shortly. Read on…

Employees of Wells Fargo boosted their sales figures by secretly and ILLEGALLY opening fake accounts and funding them by transferring money from customers’ authorized accounts without permission.

From the article:

“An analysis by the San Francisco-headquartered bank found that its employees opened more than two million deposit and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the officials said. Many of the transfers ran up fees or other charges for the customers, even as they helped employees make incentive goals.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, Richard Cordray, said, “Wells Fargo built an incentive-compensation program that made it possible for its employees to pursue underhanded sales practices, and it appears that the bank did not monitor the program carefully.”

More from the article:

“The bank agreed to pay full restitution to all victims and a $100 million fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s civil penalty fund — the largest in the regulator’s five-year operating history. Wells Fargo will pay a separate $35 million penalty to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and an additional $50 million to the city and county of Los Angeles.”

The corrupt, sorry excuse of a bank, agreed to the filing of the CFPB consent order without admitting or denying legal conclusions reached by federal investigators. In other words, they got away with it and with no criminal charges, to boot! But no worries, they fired 5,300 employees for their involvement in the practice- you know- the one that was likely sanctioned by higher ups who aren’t losing their jobs and probably got a huge bonus at some point in the last 5 years.

The bank said in a statement, “Wells Fargo reached these agreements consistent with our commitment to customers (ya right) and in the interest of putting this matter behind us. Wells Fargo is committed to putting our customers’ interests first 100% of the time, and we regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request.” (They should add “and putting their money first as we like to steal it and rip them off”)

Whew. Thanks guys.

Source: USA Today