Wells Fargo Employees Need To Go To Jail

That was quite a widespread problem - not just 1-2 rogue brokers at 1-2 offices, or even a handful of offices. Looks like the problem originated pretty high up, and that internal regulators must have been looking the other way for a period of time.

As someone who has worked at big firms in the past, it is very hard for anyone to get away with any funny business for any length of time - low level regulators are generally all over any irregularities right away. Makes me think this was known about and ok'd pretty high up the ladder.

 

Yeah, they were all in the region in Ca under one exec who was terminated (taking a nice comp package of stock options with her).

I worked in retail banking for less than a year for another of the world's big banks many years ago, and they taught us to do some things that I would definitely consider shady, often not necessary for the customer, and sometimes not in a customer's best interest - but that of course were in the bank's best interest.

Things such as opening up too many checking accounts per customer, opening up savings accounts for customers who could not afford to fund them enough to avoid relatively high monthly fees, and instructing us to NOT tell customers about these fees - fees that were only "disclosed" via burying them within many pages of paperwork that most people don't read, etc...

They also pushed us to push things on customers such as "online banking" to customers who were not PC savvy and who did not even have computers and internet - telling customers to use such insecure public computers such as the library.

They also pushed direct deposit, automatic funds transfers, etc in situations where doing so could cause unsophisticated customers to run into problems such as insufficient funds / overdraft fees, etc.

Shady!

 

As someone who has had a small long stock position in WFC for years, and who has some $ in a brokerage account with them, I am a little concerned by this: http://www.businessinsider.com/warr...-fargo-scandal-until-november-election-2016-9

My guess is that the actual short term direct impact of this scandal on Wells Fargo will be minimal, but this will certainly be a blemish on their reputation, and puts an added govt bullseye on their back.

If Buffett should decide to sell out, this could perhaps knock the stock into a slightly to moderately lower range more or less permanently.