Wells Fargo fired about 5,300 employees over the past several years for opening more than 2 million checking, savings, credit or debit card accounts without customers' knowledge or consent. The big question: Why wasn't Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf one of them? It's hard to believe that thousands of employees could have created over a million fake accounts without anyone in senior management knowing about it," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in an emailed response. "It's one or the other: Either individuals in senior management knew about this fraud and should be held personally accountable, or they didn't know about it and a bank as big as Wells Fargo is simply too big to manage." On Thursday, Wells settled a lawsuit and potential lawsuits by agreeing to clean up the mess, refund fees paid by customers on accounts they did not authorize and pay fines and penalties. Those included $100 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and $50 million to the city and county of Los Angeles. FBR analyst Paul Miller called those fines "a rounding error" for Wells, which earns about $5 billion per quarter. Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer opened an investigation into Wells after the Los Angeles Times reported in 2013 that ... "employees have opened unneeded accounts for customers, ordered credit cards without customers' permission and forged client signatures on paperwork." His office filed a lawsuit against Wells Fargo in 2015.
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