REPORT ON FAKE BANK ACCOUNTS SCAM IN WELLS FARGO BANK USA
1. Describe what happened.
The case in discussion here is opening of unauthorized and fake bank accounts by employees of Wells Fargo Bank all over US. Various employees in Wells Fargo Retail stores all over the country signed up customers for various products like a new checking accounts, debit accounts, credit card accounts without their approval or consent. The employees then used to transfer money from the customers original account to these new fraudulent accounts leading to overdraft fees when the customer used his original accounts. Similarly, the customers signed up for credit cards had to pay unnecessary sign up fees, annual fees, interest rates and also affected …show more content…
As discussed earlier the bank employees faced relentless pressure to increase their sales numbers and achieve targets set by the bank. Owing to these unrealistic expectations and pressure the employees started convincing their relatives and friends to buy products, even at social dinners and family outings. The employee’s personal life as well as time at the office was filled with stress and eventually led to use of unfair means of them. These employees lost their job too when the bank found the effect of its own flawed marketing and sales policy. Other than the employees the customers were harmed both emotionally by a bank whom they trusted for years and also financially. The bank itself has suffered a major loss not only in terms of monetary fines to the customers, loss of share value in stocks but also lost the trust of millions of customers. This will be the most lasting loss of this incident and would be difficult for Wells Fargo to regain in the near future …show more content…
The employees are the ones who indulged in unethical practices but their environment was a major factor driving them to this state. However, the importance of personal judgement and ethics cannot be undermined in any case. The sales model only offered incentives to employees for good sales. The employees could have easily refused this extra incentive in return for their ethics and be content with their basic salaries. The third point is customer awareness, if people would have checked and observed their transactions closely this fraud would have surfaced in the very