Sept. 20, 2016 (Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co.’s John Stumpf should resign, give back his compensation and face criminal prosecution for a scandal in which the bank opened unauthorized accounts for thousands of customers, Senator Elizabeth Warren said.
“So you haven’t resigned, you haven’t returned a single nickel of your personal earnings, you haven’t fired a single senior executive,” the Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday as the bank’s chief executive officer testified before the Senate Banking Committee.
“Instead, evidently your definition of accountable is to push the blame to your low-level employees who don’t have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves,” Warren said. “It’s gutless leadership.”
Wells Fargo agreed to pay a record $185 million to authorities including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after a review found employees may have opened more than 2 million accounts and credit cards without consumers’ permission. Stumpf, 63, told lawmakers he was “deeply sorry” and detailed a five-year timeline of attempts the bank made to deter misconduct.
Warren told Stumpf he should “give back the money you took while this scam was going on and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.”
