Over the last couple of days it has come out that Wells Fargo has fired more than 5,300 employees over the past few years in connection to the massive fraud perpetrated by Wells Fargo. The fraud was so obvious that Wells Fargo had to pay out $185 million because they defrauded customers by creating fake accounts and credit cards without those customers’ knowledge. The sales force, which perpetrated the majority of the fraud in order to reap commission style benefits, and meet sales goals, was headed by Carrie Tolstedt. Well, Carrie Tolstedt is out! But don’t worry, nothing was learned!
Tolstedt, however, is walking away from Wells Fargo with a very full bank account--and praise. In the July announcement of her exit, which made no mention of the soon-to-be-settled case, Well Fargo’s CEO John Stumpf said Tolstedt had been one of the bank’s most important leaders and “a standard-bearer of our culture” and “a champion for our customers.”
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A spokesperson for Wells Fargo said that the timing of Tolstedt’s exit was the result of a “personal decision to retire after 27 years” with the bank. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the bank was considering clawing back Tolstedt’s back pay.
Maybe it’s just hush money, right?
Earlier this year when Wells Fargo released its annual proxy statement, it once again said that in order to justify her multimillion dollar bonus, Tolstedt’s division had “achieved a number of strategic objectives.” But this time, for the first time in years, cross-selling wasn’t listed as one of them.
Those “objectives” seemed to have been completely fabricated. That’s another word for fraud.