Fired Wells Fargo employees have a filed a class-action lawsuit against upper management over the bogus accounts scandal.
Wells Fargo has been under fire for opening accounts without the knowledge or permission of customers and then charging fees for those accounts. The bank fired 5,300 employees after the story became public, but the lawsuit contends it was unjust blame-shifting.
“Wells Fargo knew that their unreasonable quotas were driving these unethical behaviors that were used to fraudulently increase their stock price and benefit the CEO at the expense of the low-level employees,” the fired employees alleged in a California court, per Bloomberg. “Although this policy was known to top executives of defendants, plaintiffs, as bankers, were blamed for harm to clients and retaliated against.”
The lawsuit, if certified as a class-action suit, would cover not only the fired 5,300 but every employee fired in the past 10 years. The plaintiffs want a $2.6 billion payout.
Their complaints follows the line of attack opened by Senate investigators who hauled Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf before the Banking Committee last week. “Have you fired any senior management, the people who actually oversaw this fraud?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked last week. Hearing the answer was no, she continued: “Your definition of accountability is to push this on your low-level employees. This is gutless leadership.”
