In 2016, the Los Angeles Times exposed a colossal scandal at Wells Fargo that shook the Wild West institution’s reputation to its core and landed the bank with a $3.7 billion fine.
Through top-down, high-pressure sales goals, Wells Fargo had pushed sales agents across the bank’s multiple business lines to fraudulently open accounts for millions of customers without their consent, pocketing a couple of million dollars for itself in related fees but also substantially inflating the size of its business.
