Why was Wells Fargo fined 185 million dollars?

Answer 1

Because Wells Fargo created a corporate culture that encouraged employees to break the law.

Wells Fargo executives never actually TOLD employees to break the law ... instead, they just made it clear that any employee who wasn't generating new accounts and selling existing customers additional "products" would not be an employee for long. The emphasis they placed on getting new accounts and signing customers up for additional services, and the fact that they never questioned how their employees were meeting these "quotas", made it pretty clear that if the management didn't realize employees were breaking the law it's because they a) didn't WANT to realize it and/or b) were grossly incompetent.

Specifically, the lawbreaking that occurred was that employees would enroll existing customers for new services without asking them, would enroll new customers in more services than they requested, and in some cases would fraudulently create new accounts for people who either had no idea that they even had an account with Wells Fargo or didn't even exist at all.

$185 million is chump change to Wells Fargo, which had earnings of about $23 billion last year; cancelling bonus payments to a couple of their top executives will cover a significant fraction of the fine.

Answer 2

illegal banking practices cost Wells Fargo $185 million in fines, including a $100 million penalty from the Consumer ...