In 2013 the Corporate Equality Index named Wells Fargo the “Best Place to Work for LGBT Equality.” The CEI gave Wells Fargo a “perfect score” on its index “for the 11th consecutive year.” This leads me to wonder if corporate corruption is included in the Corporate Equality Index. One must wonder how many LGBT crooks Wells Fargo has trained to rob customers, straight and LGBT, in the nine year corporate run of disgraced CEO John Stumpf.
As a longtime LGBT stockholder in Wells Fargo, resignation of the corrupt scoundrel Stumpf comes too late for me. I have been calling for his resignation for years.
Though I do not often agree with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I applauded the verbal intensity she directed at Stumpf during the Senate Banking Committee hearings into Stumpf’s role in cheating and robbing Wells Fargo customers with bogus accounts. Warren suggested Stumpf resign as CEO.
Stumpf did resign and forfeited a $41 million bonus as a crooked CEO and I truly hope he finds his crooked self in a prison cell. These are criminal acts. Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees for the scam, the press reports. The correct number is 5,301 including CEO scammer Stumpf.
I am one of those Wells Fargo customers scammed, as well as a stockholder. I raised the scam to Stumpf in correspondence and suggested he either resign as CEO or appoint a psychiatrist to the corporate board to provide him with dignity therapy as CEO.
Now with Stumpf gone, I suggest the Wells Fargo Board appoint Rev. Jesse Jackson or Rev. Al Sharpton to run the corporation. I believe they could restore customer and market confidence in the corporation.
The Wall Street Journal blamed Stumpf’s resignation on the bureaucratic work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They were involved. The recent Stumpf scam is not the one he has masterminded as CEO. Consider the following:
In August 2010, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup issued a 90-page opinion in the case of Guitierrez v. Wells Fargo Bank finding the corporation manipulated processing of customer debit card purchases by California customers to maximize overdraft fees in violation of California state law. Wells Fargo must pay over $200 million to customers, LGBT and straight.
In July 2012 Wells Fargo agreed to pay $175 million to settle charges that it discriminated against thousands of blacks, Latinos and other minority borrowers between 2004 and 2009. The Justice Department found Wells Fargo charged minority borrowers higher interest rates and fees on home loans than it charged white borrowers with similar credit ratings.
In November 2015 Wells Fargo agreed to return $81.6 million to homeowners after reaching a settlement with the Department of Justice over the bank’s “repeated failures” to provide bankrupt homeowners with legally required notices of mortgage payment increases.
In April 2016 the U.S. Supreme Court declined Wells Fargo’s request to review its 2010 loss at trial, where U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup entered a $203 million judgment against the bank for manipulating debit card purchases to maximize its overdraft fee revenue in violation of California state law. The April 4, 2016 decision ends the bank’s efforts to escape judgment. This was a class action suit so if you’re a Wells Fargo customer, look to receive your notice of status in the case.
In August 2016 Wells Fargo agreed to pay a $4.1 million settlement on allegations that it charged illegal fees and misled student-loan borrowers. In the current September 2016 scandal Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees for scamming customers. It also agreed to pay $185 million in fines and refund $5 million to customers.
In June 2015 Rev. Franklin Graham, of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in North Carolina, called for Christians to boycott Wells Fargo for a TV advertisement of a lesbian couple adopting a child. My view is Christians, LGBT and straight, should boycott Wells Fargo for consistent corporate business practices that rob all of us, perhaps involving the LGBT community based on chump gay groups like the Corporate Equality Index and others.
These irrelevant gay ranking groups must consider more than a corporate LGBT friendly workplace. They must consider the corporate damage done to hardworking LGBT families who deserve to be treated honestly by the firms they trust with their business.
Former U.S. diplomat Jim Patterson is a Washington DC-based speaker and writer. His late father served with the Alabama National Guard in the 1960s and the author plays a reporter in the award-winning 2015 film “Selma.” JEPCapitolHill@gmail.com
