Banking giant Wells Fargo was recently found to have committed what has been called one of “the biggest banking scandals in modern history,” and last week a single former executive at the bank was given a criminal sentence. The sentence is a slap on the wrist, and this executive is the ONLY person that had to face justice for the corrupt behavior of the bank. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Banking giant Wells Fargo was recently found to have committed what has been called one of the biggest banking scandals in modern history. And last week, a single, just one executive at the bank was given a criminal sentence. The sentence is a slap on the wrist. It’s meaningless. And this executive is the only person that’s gonna go to face justice of this incredibly, almost chronic, corrupt behavior by this organization. There was a time when you and I were doing a story almost every month about Wells Fargo, wasn’t it? Fraud, lying to the government, lying to their customers. This fraud though, here, she just made stuff up out of the clear blue and said, we have all these customers. And they didn’t have ’em. And there was a benefit to doing that because it increased the value of the stock, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. It increased the value of the stock. And of course, in some of these instances, well, what they did, they were pushing the salespeople like, you gotta open more accounts. You’re not opening enough accounts. So the bank said, well, what if we just open accounts for people? You know, you’ve already got a checking account with us. We’re gonna open up another account in your name without your permission. Oh, and by the way, we’re gonna charge you a monthly fee for it too that’s gonna come outta your checking account. But you’re not gonna notice it because the fees and we’ve seen this with so many industries.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Back up. Back up. That came out a little fast. Slow that down a little bit so you can, people can understand the fact that this wasn’t a harmless crime. This was costing consumers money. Right?
Farron Cousins: It absolutely was. And the estimates are that it was a little over a million accounts had been created. So you take a look at that, you got a million accounts, they’re each getting charged a monthly fee, maybe $5, something that people aren’t gonna notice too much. But suddenly, with a million people losing $5 a month, the bank is gaining $5 million a month or more, depending on what the fees are. So they’re racking in millions and millions of dollars per month off this. The people don’t know they’ve got these new accounts in their names. And they directed it.
Mike Papantonio: How many similar events though, have we seen in the last couple of years with Wells Fargo? It’s almost chronic crime. And it all starts up at the top. Starts at the very top. Now, how do you think they talked, Carrie Tolstedt, that’s her name, 63 years old. She was a former head of Wells Fargo community bank division. How do you think they talked her into taking the fall for all this? Because that’s what they did. This is one person, everybody knew what was going on. There wasn’t any question about it. But she takes the fall. How do you think they did that?
Farron Cousins: That is still a mystery to me, because obviously, yeah, she knows where everybody else is on this. She knows that she was not the one who came up with this scheme and not the only one pushing it. So that is an interesting question that I do want an answer to. Unfortunately, I don’t have it. But I will say, yes, she was made to be a scapegoat, but even the judge, this horrible judge overseeing this case says, well, I don’t wanna make her the scapegoat. No. So you give her, you get six months home confinement, three years probation. This judge, US District Judge Josephine Staton, an Obama appointee from a corporate law firm.
Mike Papantonio: Right. And what she could have done is she could have said to the Justice Department. You know, this is absolutely a coverup. But this judge came up in the corporate. She came up corporate. That’s all she’s done is defended corporate. She hadn’t defended consumers. Seen it before with her, haven’t we?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So this is no big mistake here. This is the way it’s supposed to work out. In corporate America, they don’t look like criminals because they’re all dressed up. They got gold chains, they got Rolex watches, they came up in a Jaguar, so they don’t look like criminals. And this is how we treat ’em, because they don’t look like criminals.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And the judge says, okay, so your punishment is you stay in your multimillion dollar mansion for six months and then you’re good to go. That’s a vacation.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. What if she had shown up in a hoodie at court? Buddy, three years immediately.
