{"id":181171,"date":"2016-09-13T19:19:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/13\/no-accountability-ever\/"},"modified":"2016-09-13T19:19:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T00:19:00","slug":"no-accountability-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/09\/13\/no-accountability-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"No Accountability, Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carrie Tolstedt, the former Wells Fargo executive who ran the division that routinely defrauded consumers, retired to copious praise from her superiors and a huge retirement package<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Wells Fargo & Co\u2019s \u201csandbagger\u201d-in-chief is leaving the giant bank with an enormous pay day\u2014$124.6 million.<\/span>

<\/span>In fact, despite beefed-up \u201cclawback\u201d provisions instituted by the bank shortly after the financial crisis, and the recent revelations of massive misconduct, it does not appear that Wells Fargo is requiring Carrie Tolstedt, the Wells Fargo executive who was in charge of the unit where employees opened more than 2 million largely unauthorized customer accounts\u2014a seemingly routine practice that employees internally referred to as \u201csandbagging\u201d\u2014to give back any of her nine-figure pay.<\/span>

<\/span>On Thursday, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million, including the largest penalty ever imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to settle claims that that it defrauded its customers. The bank\u2019s shareholders will ultimately have to swallow the cost of that settlement. The bank also said it had fired 5,300 employees over five years related to the bad behavior.<\/span>

<\/span>Tolstedt, however, is walking away from Wells Fargo with a very full bank account\u2014and praise. In the July announcement of her exit, which made no mention of the soon-to-be-settled case, Wells Fargo\u2019s CEO John Stumpf said Tolstedt had been one of the bank\u2019s most important leaders and \u201ca standard-bearer of our culture\u201d and \u201ca champion for our customers.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>On Thursday, Richard Cordray, the head of the CFPB, had a different take, \u201cIt is quite clear that [the actions of Tolstedt\u2019s unit] are unfair and abusive practices under federal law,\u201d said Cordray. \u201cThey are a violation of trust and an abuse of trust.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>A spokesperson for Wells Fargo said that the timing of Tolstedt\u2019s exit was the result of a \u201cpersonal decision to retire after 27 years\u201d with the bank. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the bank was considering clawing back Tolstedt\u2019s back pay<\/span><\/b>.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>What\u2019s more, Tolstedt ran the community banking division of the bank, which included its retail banking and credit card divisions, during the entire period in which the customer abuse was alleged, which goes back to 2011. The CFPB said about three quarters of the unauthorized accounts opened by employees of Wells Fargo were bank deposit accounts. Another 565,000 were unauthorized credit card applications. Tolstedt took over the division in 2008, after Wells Fargo merged with Wachovia during the financial crisis.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cThis appears to be exactly the situation that clawback provisions were created for,\u201d says Dennis Kelleher, president of Better Markets, a group that lobbies for more regulation of the big banks. \u201cIf they don\u2019t apply here, when will they apply.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/i>)<\/p>\n

So, she presided over a department where fraud was not only rampant, but appeared to be a required employee activity (they fired over 5000 ordinary employees over this) in the division while she presided over it, but no harm, no foul, because she’s a senior executive who gets to “Retire” at 56 with a payout of $124,600,000.00.<\/p>\n

We really need to start throwing banksters in jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carrie Tolstedt, the former Wells Fargo executive who ran the division that routinely defrauded consumers, retired to copious praise from her superiors and a huge retirement package: Wells Fargo & Co\u2019s \u201csandbagger\u201d-in-chief is leaving the giant bank with an enormous pay day\u2014$124.6 million.In fact, despite beefed-up \u201cclawback\u201d provisions instituted by the bank shortly after the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[761,774,766,777],"class_list":["post-181171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-employment","tag-evil","tag-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}