SAN FRANCISCO–More former Wells Fargo employees are stepping forward with stories of the overwhelming pressure put on them to make cross-sales goals, with one person saying he was fired after calling a company hotline for whistleblowers.
Wells Fargo has fired 5,300 employees for engaging in tactics that included opening unauthorized accounts for customers and family members in order to meet sales goals and to earn bonuses. The bank has been fined $185 million for the practices, which its CEO has insisted was the fault of front-line staff and not management.
CNNMoney.com reported it spoke with a half-dozen employees and former employees who said they were fired for what they alleged was trying to do the right thing, including one man, Bill Bado, a former Wells Fargo banker in Pennsylvania, who said “They ruined my life.”
Bado told CNNMoney.com that he not only refused orders to open phony bank and credit accounts, he called an ethics hotline and sent an email to human resources in September 2013 regarding what he saw as unethical activities.
Bado told CNNMoney.com that eight days later he was fired, with the company stating the reason was “tardiness.”
Bado told CNNMoney.com the firing put a permanent stain on his securities license, making it difficult to find work. He said his home is on the verge of being foreclosed on and he's working part-time at Shop-Rite. "You wonder where the justice is," Bado was quoted as saying.
According to CNNMoney.com, one Wells Fargo human resources official said the bank had a method in place to retaliate against tipsters who raised concerns about the sales tactics. It could be as simple as monitoring the employee to find a fault, like showing up a few minutes late on several occasions.
"If this person was supposed to be at the branch at 8:30 a.m. and they showed up at 8:32 a.m., they would fire them," the former human resources official told CNNMoney, on the condition he remain anonymous out of fear for his career.
CNNMoney said it spoke to four ex-Wells Fargo workers, including Bado, who believe they were fired because they tipped off the bank about unethical sales practices.
Heather Brock, a former senior banker at a Wells Fargo branch in Round Rock, Texas, told CNNMoney.com, "I endured harsh bullying ... defamation of character, and eventually being pinned for something I didn't do.”
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing last week at which Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was grilled by senators, Sen. Bob Mendez of New Jersey read a 2011 email sent by a Wells Fargo employee in New Jersey to Stumpf in which she told him of improper sales tactics she felt were "wrong."
"Did you read that email?" Menendez asked Stumpf.
"I don't remember that one," Stumpf replied.
"Okay, well she was fired. ... So much for the safe haven," Menendez said during the hearing.
Bado told CNNMoney he was “asked on several occasions to do things that I know are not ethical and would be grounds for discharge,” saying a branch manager on "many occasions" asked him to send out a debit card, "PIN it," and enroll customers in online banking – "all without the customers (sic) request or knowledge."
Another employee also shared a story of allegedly being fired after contacting the company’s ethics hotline.
Sabrina Bertrand, who worked in a Houston branch of Wells Fargo, said she had “managers in my face yelling at me. They wanted you to open up dual checking accounts for people that couldn't even manage their original checking account."
CNNMoney noted a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles against Wells Fargo in May 2015 alleged that Wells Fargo's district managers discussed daily sales for each branch and employee "four times a day, at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m."
According to numerous reports, the sales pressures were all the result of the “Gr-eight” initiative within Wells Fargo that sought to have an average of eight financial relationships per customer.
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