Between 2002 and 2016, Wells Fargo employees secretly opened approximately 3.5 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts in customers’ names — charging fees, damaging credit scores, and meeting aggressive sales quotas that management had set and ruthlessly enforced. When CEO John Stumpf was called before Congress, he blamed low-level employees and claimed ignorance, but investigators found that executives had been repeatedly warned about the fraudulent accounts and had fired over 5,000 workers for the conduct without fixing the incentive structure that caused it. Wells Fargo paid over $3 billion in combined settlements, Stumpf resigned and was personally fined $17.5 million, and the bank has operated under a Federal Reserve-imposed cap on its total assets since 2018.
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