Between 2008 and 2015, Wells Fargo illegally repossessed from 413 service members. The Justice Department charged Wells Fargo with illegally repossessing cars without the proper court order, and Wells Fargo has agreed to settle the case for $24 million. Of that, $20 million are in fines for denying military members banking protections such as capping interest rates. This is another piece of evidence to add to the case that Wells Fargo is a bank that is clearly too big to run.
The Justice Department said the illegal repossessions took place from 2008 to 2015. The first complaint came from an Army National Guardsman in North Carolina who said the bank seized his car while he was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
Wells Fargo then auctioned his car and tried to collect a balance of $10,000 from his family, the Justice Department said.
The bank will pay $10,000 to each of the affected service members, plus lost equity in the cars with interest, and repair their credit.
This settlement gets announced on a Friday news dump. As it is, Wells Fargo has been banking on the enormity of their fraud to short circuit the need for executives’ to be punished to the full extent they should be. Important to remember is that it seems very clear to everyone with eyes and ears, a mouth and a nose, that Wells Fargo executives have either created criminal activity, or have been criminally negligent in their lack of control over their business.
“We all have an obligation to ensure that the women and men who serve our country in the armed forces are afforded all of the rights they are due,” said U.S. Atty. Eileen M. Decker of the Central District of California. “Wells Fargo failed in that obligation.”
Wells Fargo has already announced that it will claw back some of the executive compensation packages. CEO John Stumpf is still holding out hope that he will not become even more of a precedent of a CEO being deservedly punished for the crimes he has perpetrated on the public.