![]() Wells Fargo says it serves one in three U.S. In the 2016 scandal, bank employees opened 1.5 million bank accounts and 565,000 credit card accounts that customers did not request. It could not be determined how many unauthorized accounts like Patterson’s have cropped up at Wells Fargo. “They did acknowledge it was fraud in a letter a few weeks later.” “Wells Fargo would not tell me anything about this account - when it was opened, who opened it, what kind of money went through it,” Patterson told NBC News. Patterson, too, remains in the dark about who opened his mystery account. “One of Wells Fargo’s representatives actually told me that if I wanted to get any information from Wells Fargo, I should hire an attorney!” ![]() “Over the past four months, I have placed multiple calls to Wells Fargo asking them to close the account and to provide information to me on the circumstances under which the account was opened,” wrote one Colorado consumer in June 2022 who said Wells Fargo had opened an unauthorized checking account in their name. Some said the bank notified them of the accounts. Patterson is not alone in having Wells Fargo allow a bogus account to be opened in his name, complaints filed with the CFPB show. During the period in which his Wells Fargo account was open, more than 40 unidentified consumers notified the CFPB of similarly mysterious accounts opened by the bank in their names. “When we learn of fraudulent activity, we take action and work to ensure there’s no harm to the consumer.” “Wells Fargo invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually to fight fraud and strengthen our ability to quickly combat against criminal behavior,” she said. It will be up to a jury to decide whether the bank met its legal and regulatory responsibilities in the Patterson case, she added.Īmy Bonitatibus, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said in a statement that allegations of unlawful activity by Wells Fargo are without merit and that identity theft is a broad industry problem that the bank is working to minimize. ![]() “If financial institutions are not vetting customers’ identities thoroughly enough or as required under bank secrecy and anti-money laundering laws, then they shouldn’t be opening the bank account to begin with,” said Carla Sanchez-Adams, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer advocacy nonprofit in Washington, D.C. “Banks that allow accounts to be opened through synthetic identity theft are allowing fraud actors to use the accounts for illicit activity.” This erroneous information should have raised red flags at Wells Fargo before the account was created, experts say. Patterson suffered no direct financial loss. Other information - date of birth, email address and driver’s license details - were wrong. Thousands of dollars flowed through the account before it was shut. But as often happens in synthetic identity fraud, only some of the personal information used to open Patterson’s unauthorized Wells Fargo account was correct - his name, address and Social Security number. Patterson has never been a Wells Fargo customer and says he has never given the bank access to his personal data.īanking regulations require financial institutions to verify customers’ identities before they open accounts to prevent fraud and money laundering. Patterson’s case differs from the previous unauthorized accounts mess at Wells Fargo in one important way: those involved existing customers who had shared their personal information with the bank. Last December, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3.7 billion to settle Consumer Financial Protection Bureau allegations of consumer abuses involving 16 million accounts. Amid the scandals, the Federal Reserve Board, the nation’s top financial regulator, took the extraordinary step of capping Wells Fargo’s asset size. Those woes caused the ouster of John Stumpf, the chief executive of the bank at the time.Īdditional improprieties and systems failures have emerged at Wells Fargo, the nation’s fourth largest bank, requiring it to pay billions in fines and penalties to regulators. The bank settled allegations that it illegally repossessed military members’ cars, and it was found to have charged car owners for insurance they didn’t need and paused borrowers’ home loan payments without their approval during Covid. In 2016, Wells Fargo was found to have opened millions of unauthorized accounts for existing customers to meet sales goals. Other consumers, in public complaints to regulators, have detailed similarly mysterious Wells Fargo bank accounts, raising fresh questions, experts say, about compliance and risk management at a bank that has been rocked by scandals in recent years.
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