Get a credit card you never wanted?
Did you have a bank account opened and didn't know it?
Did you get an overdraft fee because of a money transfer you never made?
Seemed to be widespread practice at Wells Fargo.
And the feds fined the bank $185 million dollars for those alleged practices involving customers accounts.
Wells Fargo employees met sales goals and got more pay by opening 1.5 million bank accounts and a half a million credit cards in customers names, according to the feds.
Employees are also accused of created fake emails to sign them up for online banking.
And all of it without the customer's knowledge.
And get this. Feds say Wells Fargo employees would transfer money from real accounts to fund these new ones, creating overdraft fees for customers who didn't know what hit them.
Read more about the fines.
Now, don't get me started on the penalty.
$185 million is apparently a huge fine.
And its great that the government took some action.
But what does that really mean to a bank?
It's a drop in the bucket.
And hurt consumers are going to get a really small part of that.
Wells Fargo is refunding $2.6 million to customers and they're taking disciplinary action and terminating employees.
Read Wells Fargo statement.
This is a wake-up call to all of us who don't check our statements regularly or don't find out how that overdraft fee happened.
We need to protect ourselves—no matter where we bank.
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Need my help? Call the Assistance League of Phoenix volunteers at 1-855-323-1515. You can also send me an email or a video email where you attach a video explaining the problem.
AND WE NEED YOUR HELP! If you want to be a volunteer and help other consumers, let me know.
