In early September, Wells Fargo reached a $185m settlement with regulators following allegations that employees opened up to 2m bank and credit card accounts without customers' authorization, in order to meet sales goals.
Those aggressive sales goals, which pushed Wells Fargo employees to open as many accounts as possible for customers or risk losing their jobs, have been blamed for the scandal now engulfing the bank, where myriad banking and credit card accounts may have been opened without the customers' authorization.
The announcement by Chief Executive John Stumpf came as the Senate Banking Committee said Monday that it would hold a hearing next week on Wells Fargo's sales practices, which pushed thousands of employees to open as many as 2 million accounts without customers' authorization. .
The announcement, made at a morning news conference in Chicago, makes Illinois the second state to cut some ties to the giant San Francisco bank as officials look to sanction it over revelations that thousands of bank employees opened as many as 2 million accounts without customers' authorization.
Describes her relationship with Jeffrey Streich... Tells about his work at a Bucket Shop... Through high-pressure selling and reporting gimmicks and such devices as parking blocks of stock in the accounts of customers without authorization, the bucket shop keeps the house stock at an artificially inflated price.
Connecticut officials said yesterday that they had reached a settlement in which Qwest Communications agreed to cease telephone-service abuses -- including taking over the long-distance service of other companies' customers without authorization -- and pay restitution to thousands of people believed to have been financially harmed by the practice, known as slamming.
Wells Fargo has fired some 5,300 employees for opening as many as 2m accounts in customers' names without authorization from those customers.
More Internet retailers, including Buy.com (www.buy.com), are now providing customers with specific authorization numbers by e-mail for returning a product.
Mr. Dodd, announcing his hold on the proposed legislation, described the immunity proposal as "amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the president's assault on the Constitution by providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization".
On Friday, Seattle officials sent a letter to the bank saying the city won't work with Wells Fargo on a $100-million 100-millioneal because ofinancingions that thousandealf becauseplofees, drevelationse bank's hard-charging sales culthat, opened as many as 2 million accounthousandsstofers without their authorization.
