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Wells Fargo previously admitted that employees opened around 2.1 million unauthorized bank accounts in customers' names. Now that number could rise to 3.5 million:
Nearly a year after Wells Fargo's fraudulent account scandal burst into public view, the bank said it had turned up more than a million additional accounts that customers may not have authorized.
The news set off a fresh wave of criticism from those frustrated by the bank's slow pace in coming clean about its misdeeds. "Every time we get one of these announcements, the pressure rises," said Nancy Bush, a banking industry analyst who runs NAB Research. "How many customers, and how many employees within Wells Fargo, are coming to the conclusion, 'I don't need to be associated with this'?"
The findings brought the number of potentially unauthorized accounts to 3.5 million — a nearly 70 percent increase over the bank's initial estimate.
Wells Fargo agreed last September to pay $185 million to settle three government lawsuits over the bank's creation of sham accounts. Thousands of employees, trying to meet aggressive sales goals, had created accounts in customers' names without their knowledge. Workers who met the bank's sales targets received bonuses — and those who did not risked losing their jobs. At the time, Wells Fargo said that 2.1 million suspect accounts had been opened from 2011 to mid-2015. But it also acknowledged at the time that the problems may have begun earlier, and said it would expand its review to include accounts opened from 2009 to 2016.
Also at NPR, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
Statement from Wells Fargo.
Previously: Wells Fargo Fined Over Unauthorized Accounts
Wells Fargo Likely Hurt Customers' Credit Scores; Labor Department Launches Review
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 01 2017, @08:46AM (4 children)
Could you even open an account with a zero balance?
Yes.
This is my understanding of the scam: They open a (zero-balance) checking account in the victim's name. Then, they open a credit card account based on the checking account. They get a bonus for opening credit card accounts...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:52AM (2 children)
Any particular reason that the name on the new account and credit card have to be an existing customer? Probably makes it easier because the bank already has the necessary personal details. But what's stopping the use of any name (real or fictional)?
I've never been a W-F customer, but maybe I should look to see if they set up an account in my name??
(Score: 3, Funny) by leftover on Friday September 01 2017, @12:35PM (1 child)
Interesting "Payback is a MF" scheme: Everybody start calling them or showing up at branches to see whether there is an account in your name. Duplicate names are common enough in the general population that a goodly percentage of inquiries would produce false positives that need more work to chase down, need management's attention, etc.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Friday September 01 2017, @11:39PM
That may not be as much work as it could be if the (real) accounts are tied to a SSN. Though that does raise the question about the fake accounts, if they needed to be tied to a SSN, then what was used?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Friday September 01 2017, @02:00PM
What they kept doing to me, whenever I'd make any changes to my account for years, and I had to keep dealing with:
- Create new savings account, transfer funds from old one, update my scheduled transfers to point at the new one, schedule to close old one then cancel the close order later so I had a zero-balance savings account sitting around. I assume closing accounts counted against them, so they'd always avoid my requests to do so. They did this at least twice.
- Try to open new lines of credit or loans with zero balances? I never let them get away with this so I don't know how it works exactly, but they'd try to get me to sign things to enable it and I just would refuse. Eventually I did get a decent credit account out of it with very low interest by paying close attention to the offers and taking a good one that finally appeared.
- Re-enable "overdraft protection" silently, without informing me or having it appear in any logs, every time I made ANY change. It took me awhile to notice this had been happening since it doesn't come up much. Overdraft protection is a total scam, I consider it far more blatant than all the rest.
I assumed it was just the local bank manager was really pushy but it seems these sorts of behaviors are systemic. Unfortunately they've put most of the other banks in the region out of business. Those that remain are too far away or have hours I can't work with. I think this situation is contributing strongly to a major credit union on the upswing that is starting to install ATMs here and there. I have some loans with them; I might start using them regularly if they get some ATMs closer to me.