I swear, some people are so dumb. I can’t believe how dumb they are. They are way dumber than I am. The dumbest people I know are those that do their banking at Wells Fargo. The very minute you walk through the doors of a Wells Fargo Bank they are putting their hands into your pockets to steal everything they can from you. If you don’t believe me maybe you will take the word of the Wall Street Journal as listed below. Wells Fargo’s crimes include: (This is just a few)
• November 2009 it had to buy back $1.4 billion for misleading investors.
• May 2011 fined $1 million by FINRA for failing to send disclosure documents to customers. That same month, fined $16 million to settle charges of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• July 2011 fined $125 million for misrepresenting the quality of pools of mortgage-related securities. That same month, fined $85 million for steering customers with good qualifications into costly subprime mortgage loans during the housing boom.
• November 2011 fined $37 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of municipal bond bid rigging.
• December 2011 fined $2 million for improper sales of reverse convertible securities. That same month, fined 2.1 million for failing to properly supervise the sale of exchange-traded funds.
• February 2012 fined $25 billion settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general to resolve allegations of loan servicing and foreclosure abuses. The New York Attorney General later sued Wells Fargo for breaching the terms of that settlement.
• July 2012 fined $175 million to settle charges that it engaged in a pattern of discrimination against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending during the period from 2004 to 2009.
• August 2012 fined $6.5 million to settle SEC charges that it failed to fully research the risks associated with mortgage-backed securities before selling them to customers such as municipalities and non-profit organizations.
• January 2013 fined $8.5 billion to resolve claims of foreclosure abuses. A few months later, fined $42 million to promote Latino home ownership and neighborhood stabilization.
• October 2013 fined $869 million to repurchase home loans the bank had sold to the mortgage agency, Freddie Mac that did not conform to the latter’s guidelines.
• December 2014 fined $4 million as part of a case against ten investment banks for allowing their stock analysts to solicit business and offer favorable research coverage in connection with a planned initial public offering of Toys R Us in 2010.
• March 2016 defrauding investors of $75 million
• April 2016 $1.2 billion
• August 2016 $4 billion.
• September 2016 fined $100 million and later $35 million and $40 million.
• April 2017 paid $5.4 million in back pay, damages and legal fees to a bank manager who had been terminated in 2010 after reporting suspected fraudulent behavior to superiors and a bank ethics hotline.
• July 2017 more than 800,000 customers who had taken out car loans with Wells Fargo were charged for auto insurance they did not need.
• August 2017 it was discovered that Wells Fargo had opened thousands of bogus undisclosed accounts. Several weeks later, the bank disclosed that the number of bogus accounts that had been created was actually 3.5 million, a nearly 70 percent increase over the bank’s initial estimate.
• February 2018 Wells Fargo barred from growing any larger.
• February 2018 fined $1 billion for selling unnecessary products to customers and other improper practices.
• May 2018 fined $480 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by shareholders accusing the company of making false statements about its business practices.
• August 2018 fined $2.09 billion to resolve a Justice Department case involving the misrepresentation of the quality of loans used in residential mortgage-backed securities the bank issued in the period leading up to the financial crisis.
• December 2018 fined $575 million to settle claims brought by all 50 states and the District of Columbia in connection with a variety of questionable practices.
The reason I bring this up again is that finally the government is going after those private individuals associated with the bank’s crimes. This is an unprecedented move by the government and it has been long in coming. These individuals won’t spend a day in jail but they have been hit hard where it hurts them the most, in their pocketbook.
