The Sad Saga of Wells Fargo Continues

Bank pays $32 million to settle lawsuit – and other unfortunate mistakes

New York City has announced they are not going to open any new bank accounts with Wells Fargo. This is as a result of the Bloomberg report that said that Wells Fargo has been denying refinance mortgages to black homeowners far more than to whites. Wells Fargo, according to Bloomberg, approved just 47% of the applications for refinancing submitted by black homeowners, just 47% versus 72% of white applicants. In addition to that, Wells Fargo is paying $32 million to settle a lawsuit that it put its own mutual funds into its own 401k plan, forcing workers to buy Wells Fargo mutual funds when other better performing and cheaper mutual funds were available. 

Senator Elizabeth Warrens says it’s time to break up Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo is the bad boy of banking and has been for years. They have paid billions of dollars in fines over the past 20 years. And most recently, Wells Fargo sent out a letter to clients announcing the death of one of their financial advisors. Only thing is, the advisor hadn't died. He quit and went to another firm. The letter said, "We are saddened by the death of your financial advisor. Your new advisor is fully committed to serving your investment needs." Wells called it an unfortunate mistake. While these unfortunate mistakes have gotten to the point that Senator Elizabeth Warren has written a letter to the Federal Reserve asking it to break up Wells Fargo, she said, "Cheating consumers is simply in Wells Fargo's DNA." I don't get it. I don't know why anybody, anywhere does business with Wells Fargo.

I have a bad bank. You know, I'm with Wells Fargo. I don't know. Yeah, I know. Anybody else sticking it out? Yeah, right. We got one guy. Thank you, sir. We're in this together. And then I've even asked you, you know, why don't you leave Wells Fargo and we know we know why we don't leave. Right. It's because you never know when we're about to cash in on the next class action lawsuit. All right. That's an exciting way to live. I could go home tonight and have $70 waiting for me.