By David Lazarus
Los Angeles Times
Wells Fargo may have gone out of its way to take senior citizens to the cleaners when it fraudulently opened as many as 2 million accounts without the customers’ permission.
That’s the suspicion of Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
They’ve called upon the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to determine if seniors in particular were preyed upon because older Wells Fargo customers may have been more susceptible to manipulation or visited branches more often than younger people, who prefer online banking.
McCaskill and Collins said in a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray that they’re concerned about “the impact this activity has had on our nation’s senior population, especially those who do not conduct their financial business on the Internet.”
Los Angeles resident Wanita Holmes, 87, says what happened to her validates the senators’ interest.
Her old Crocker National Bank account was transferred when Wells acquired Crocker in 1986. Holmes told me she was perfectly happy with the service she received after the merger. A couple of years ago, though, she was worried that a scammer may have gotten access to her checking account, so she stopped by a branch to close her account and open a new one with a new account number.
As Holmes tells it, a Wells Fargo employee was happy to help her close her old checking account and open a new one. Then things took some unexpected turns.
“She said that I’d also need to open a savings account. So I did,” Holmes recalled. “Then she said I’d have to apply for a credit card. So I did that too.”
The worker also asked if Holmes would like to arrange for a direct deposit of her monthly Social Security check.
“I told her absolutely not,” Holmes said. “I had that deposited at a different bank and I liked keeping it separate from my other money. I was very clear on this point.”
Finally, the bank employee printed up a stack of documents for Holmes to sign.
“I remember laughing and telling her I didn’t even know what I was signing,” Holmes said. “She laughed too and said that was OK.”
When the first of the month rolled around, guess what? Holmes’ Social Security check ended up at Wells Fargo.
The Social Security Administration told her it had received a request from Wells Fargo to deposit the checks there, she said.
Holmes suspects that the Wells Fargo worker slipped a permission form in with all the other documents being signed.
Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, who sued Wells Fargo over the bogus accounts last year, said it’s hard to determine how many of the bank’s victims were seniors.
“While we found examples where seniors who were Wells Fargo customers were victims, we do not have information on how widespread the practice was or whether they were targeted for this practice,” he said.
Linda Sherry, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Consumer Action, said many people don’t include their age when filing complaints with officials, so it’s difficult to break out seniors from other fraud victims.
“We know that, generally, speaking, seniors are targeted more for scams,” she said. “I don’t want to believe Wells Fargo workers were going out of their way to abuse seniors — it seems so Machiavellian. But it wouldn’t be at all surprising.”
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman declined to comment on what happened to Holmes.
Wells Fargo has said its workers started trying to boost sales by opening unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts for customers as early as 2011.
Chief Executive John Stumpf told the Senate Banking Committee last week that Wells is looking into whether the illegal activity could have begun as early as 2009.
In his congressional testimony, though, Stumpf stuck to his story that senior management had no idea thousands of bank employees were opening unauthorized accounts. And he defended the concept of “cross selling” additional products and services.
“The more products a customer uses,” Stumpf said, “the deeper the relationship of trust and value.”
Trust and value, that is, if the customer actually wants those products.
Holmes closed her savings account and canceled that extra credit card last year. As far as she knows, the extra accounts didn’t result in any extra fees.
Even so, Holmes said she confronted a bank supervisor about what happened.
“I told her it seemed like they were getting bonuses for signing me up for all that,” Holmes said. “She replied that they’d never do something like that. My hand on the Bible, that’s what she said.”
About 5,300 Wells Fargo workers were fired as a result of the racket.
— Los Angeles Times
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
