Wells Fargo Crooks Stole From Customers, Reaped Obscene Rewards—and Stuck Us With the Bill

“The business model of Wall Street is fraud,” Bernie Sanders proclaimed repeatedly on the stump. Wall Street’s big banks seem intent on proving his case. Most recently, Wells Fargo—whose CEO, John Stumpf, was celebrated as “banker of the year” by American Banker in 2013—has been fined $185 million for abusing its own customers. From 2011 to 2015, the company opened nearly 2 million bank accounts and more than 500,000 credit cards for customers who didn’t ask for them, engaging in fraud, identify theft, and forgery along the way. Its customers, as former Wells Fargo sales manager Beth Jacobson put it, were “all riding the stagecoach to hell.”

5 Big Banks Expected to Plead Guilty to Felony Charges, but Punishments May Be Tempered

For most people, pleading guilty to a felony means they will very likely land in prison, lose their job and forfeit their right to vote.

But when five of the world’s biggest banks plead guilty to an array of antitrust and fraud charges as soon as next week, life will go on, probably without much of a hiccup.

The Justice Department is preparing to announce that Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland will collectively pay several billion dollars and plead guilty to criminal antitrust violations for rigging the price of foreign currencies, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Most if not all of the pleas are expected to come from the banks’ holding companies, the people said — a first for Wall Street giants that until now have had only subsidiaries or their biggest banking units plead guilty.

Insurers Fined $15 Million For Massive Fraud Kickback Scheme

For more than a decade, four mortgage insurance companies paid illegal kickbacks to banks as part of a scheme that greatly inflated insurance costs for distressed homeowners, the nation's top consumer financial regulator said Thursday.

The companies -- Genworth Mortgage Insurance Corporation, United Guaranty Corporation, Radian Guaranty Inc., and Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation -- colluded with the banks, which forced borrowers to purchase policies from specific insurers, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The companies agreed to pay $15 million to resolve the charges.

Banks in bad odour but still filthy rich

Back during that terrifying span of 2008 to 2009 when the U.S. financial system came to edge of collapse and a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s seemed entirely likely, an expressive phrase entered the popular vocabulary.

Said most times in a combination of outrage and of resigned acceptance, that saying was that some banks were “too big to fail.”

Crime and No Punishment

PBS's Frontline had a terrific show last night called the "Untouchables" and was another report on the fact that not one single Wall Street bank or executive has been criminally prosecuted for any conduct related to the largest financial collapse since the Great Crash of 1929. Watch the show here.

While that's bad enough, what's worse is watching the most senior so-called law enforcement officials in our country offer one pathetic excuse after another for why they have so grossly failed to do their job. To non-lawyers or non-professionals, these excuses may seem reasonable or plausible, but frankly none of them withstand the simplest scrutiny. That is why none of those senior officials will subject themselves to a public debate or "unfriendly" audience where real questions -- and follow-up questions -- are asked and they aren't allowed to spin or squirm their way out of answering.

Aaron Swartz, Financial Fraud and the Justice Department

Many people have been asking about the Justice Department's priorities in the wake of the suicide of computer whiz and political activist Aaron Swartz. As has been widely reported, the Justice Department was pressing charges that carried several decades of prison time against Swartz. He was caught hacking M.I.T.'s computer system in an apparent effort to make large amounts of academic research freely available to the public.