The scale of this ... there has to be more to the story. 5,300 people didn't co-ordinate this for years without anyone knowing, surely.
LA Times did an article back in 2013 on the high-pressure sales culture there that lead to these practices:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wells-fargo-sale-press...
This is blatant fraud IMO, this settlement is just a slap on the wrist.
From a memo sent today to WF employees: "At Wells Fargo, when we make mistakes, we are open about it, we take responsibility, and we take action"
the sentiment expressed in that memo is difficult to reconcile with this WF memo to its customers:
We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request"
that sounds like an apology if a clerk accidentally sent to a few customers a leather checkbook cover and charged them for it, even though the customer never ordered it.
The memo, though, yeah, if someone created an account with money taken out of an existing one, and that caused them grief, and I think we're only talking about which degree of grief....
One reason to always keep at least two banking arrangements in place at all times, so you can, if necessary loudly in the bank lobby, close all your accounts and take all your money out on a moment's notice. No doubt without the drama, my father had to do that not many years ago at a bank where the account was set up for him in the '30s, I think, back when he was a pre-teen. Or not much later.
Wouldn't you do that on Instagram or Twitter now?
In the real world, your targets includes the banking staff, who's attachment to their jobs might not be all that sticky, especially bank tellers who have no influence over policy but can relatively easily move to another bank.