Looking closer at the Wells Fargo fraud scandal, it has been uncovered that the executive who directed the over-5,000 employees fired this week escaped the company unscathed, with no repercussions for her role, and a massive $124 million in exit pay.
In America today, when you rip off the American people as an employee, you are ruined, but if you do it as an executive? You get a big payday.
Carrie Tolstedt was an executive at Wells Fargo who ran the division which oversaw the creation of over 2 million fraudulent accounts. No doubt, Tolstedt will claim that she had no knowledge of the fraud occurring right under her nose, but if she failed to notice the illegal activity performed by her employees then she simply wasn’t doing her job.
When the news first broke about Wells Fargo employees’ blatant fraud, there was widespread reporting about the employee’s behavior, but not a word was said about the culture which could have created such dishonesty, nor the higher-ups who were no doubt to blame.
Instead, Wells Fargo said “oops” and fired over 5,000 employees while the CFPB ordered the bank to pay a whopping $100 million in fines.
In an attempt to combat the huge amount of bad PR, Wells Fargo announced this week that they would be ending the competitive sales goals which plagued employees, ending the requirements which ultimately led to the illegal behavior. While this will no doubt help prevent this same type of fraud in the future, as is so often the case, the executives which contributed to this culture are free to go.
Wells Fargo has so far offered no comment on Tolstedt’s guilt or innocence, but it’s clear as day to see that while 5,000 former Wells Fargo employees sit at home jobless today, the executive who created the permissive and high-pressure environment in which they committed their crimes is free to roam and steal from even more unsuspecting Americans.
