Wells Fargo apologizes after hundreds of customers lose their homes due to ‘computer glitch’

Wells Fargo is making things right for its customers, building a better banking experience, identifying and fixing its problems, and becoming better and stronger each day. This is what the company’s website says, anyway.

However, Wells Fargo’s actual banking practices continue to be at odds with the increasingly cheerful and apologetic tone of their advertising copy. This week, a new regulatory filing revealed that hundreds of customers — 625 in total — were denied loans and, in many cases, foreclosed upon because a company computer glitch marked “certain accounts” between April 2010 and October 2015 as undergoing the foreclosure process. The company said in the filing that it set aside $8 million to pay off those affected. It later issued a statement saying it was “very sorry,” according to CNN. 

Report: Wells Fargo Bankers Overcharged Hundreds In Latest Scandal

Wells Fargo bankers chasing bonuses charged hundreds of clients inflated foreign transaction fees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The report comes just over a year since Wells Fargo paid a $185 million fine for “widespread illegal” sales practices involving fees on 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts opened without customers’ knowledge.

Wells Fargo executives may have had to pay back $75 million, but its retail employees were fired for the bank’s unethical policies

Wells Fargo used to have one of the best reputations of any major financial institution. The bank emerged largely unscathed from the 2008 financial crisis because it hadn’t engaged in the sort of fraudulent and irresponsible practices that crippled other major institutions and resulted in the near collapse of the global economy. It was also seen as a top-notch retail banker that excelled at customer service.

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.”

New York AG: Wells Fargo, BofA Violated National Foreclosure Settlement

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday he may sue Wells Fargo and Bank of America for allegedly violating the terms of last year’s multi-state mortgage settlement, despite questions over his authority to do so.

The agreement, reached by the Department of Justice, Department of Housing and Urban Development and 49 state attorneys general, called for the five largest mortgage companies to significantly revamp their procedures for dealing with distressed borrowers. It called on them to provide billions of dollars in aid to those borrowers and change the way they pursue home repossessions, in exchange for prosecutors dropping legal claims that the companies systematically violated borrowers’ rights when using faulty, so-called “robosigned” documents in foreclosure proceedings.

JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo Report Record Profits As Lending Remains Constrained

BOSTON -- JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, two of the biggest US banks by assets, kicked off Wall Street’s earnings season on Friday by reporting record profits thanks to cost-cutting and lower provisions for potentially bad loans.

But revenue fell at the two banking giants. And a popular measure to gauge lending activity also showed that JPMorgan isn't making enough loans to spur significant economic growth, sowing doubts about its ability to continue posting record earnings.

Wells Fargo Lawsuit: U.S. Sues Bank Alleging Civil Mortgage Fraud

Wells Fargo lied about the quality of thousands of loans it certified for a federal insurance program, a decision that ultimately cost the government $190 million in claims when those loans failed, according to a civil lawsuit filed by federal prosecutors on Tuesday.

From Jan. 1, 2002 through Dec. 31, 2010, Wells Fargo intentionally concealed the problems with 6,320 loans it had determined were "seriously deficient" from the Federal Housing Administration, which insured the loans, according to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal district court. The bank didn't report the problems with the loans even after its own risk department conducted reviews that according to one bank employee, unearthed "a dirty underbelly of bad loan officers," the lawsuit claims.

Wells Fargo Slapped With $3.1 Million Fine For 'Reprehensible' Handling Of One Mortgage

A federal judge who has fiercely criticized how big banks service home loans is fed up with Wells Fargo.

In a scathing opinion issued last week, Elizabeth Magner, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, characterized as "highly reprehensible" Wells Fargo's behavior over more than five years of litigation with a single homeowner and ordered the bank to pay the New Orleans man a whopping $3.1 million in punitive damages, one of the biggest fines ever for mortgage servicing misconduct.

"Wells Fargo has taken advantage of borrowers who rely on it to accurately apply payments and calculate the amounts owed," Magner writes. "But perhaps more disturbing is Wells Fargo's refusal to voluntarily correct its errors. It prefers to rely on the ignorance of borrowers or their inability to fund a challenge to its demands, rather than voluntarily relinquish gains obtained through improper accounting methods."

The opinion reflects Magner's disgust with tactics that Wells Fargo used to fight the case -- and perhaps frustration with an appeals court ruling in a separate, but similar case, that overturned her order that would have forced Wells Fargo to audit and provide a full accounting for more than 400 home loans in her jurisdiction.

Eric Schneiderman Sues BofA, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase Over Electronic Mortgage Fraud

Three big banks were hit on Friday with yet another lawsuit related to wrongful foreclosures. Democratic New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo for deceptive and fraudulent use of a private database used to register mortgages, according to a Friday press release from his office.

Schneiderman has been outspoken in urging the Obama administration to hold the nation's largest financial institutions accountable for their role in the foreclosure crisis, notably hesitating to join a larger nationwide case against the country's five largest banks for mortgage fraud. States now have until Monday, according to the Iowa attorney general's office, to decide to join that deal.

The New York attorney general has yet to announce whether New York will participate in the deal because of concerns that joining the settlement would make it impossible for him to file his own, state-based lawsuits against the banks, said sources close to the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The decision to bring this lawsuit on Friday indicates that the larger nationwide settlement is now more to Schneiderman's pleasing, said a source familiar with the discussions.

"If the deal terms had been decided six months ago, a state couldn't have pursued this kind of lawsuit," said the source. "The fact that Schneiderman has filed this case suggests that the terms of the deal have changed since then."

Abbot Downing, Wells Fargo's Bank For Super Rich, Opening In Chicago

Wells Fargo & Co.'s new bank for the super rich is set to open in Chicago, targeting households with $50 million or more to invest.

Abbot Downing is named after a 19th century custom carriage builder who catered to the wealthy, according to UPI. The firm has $27.5 billion in client assets and about 300 people on staff -- including psychologists and staff dedicated to building family genealogies, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

"Abbot Downing goes beyond traditional wealth planning analysis by focusing on clients' values, goals and vision," James Steiner, who will run Abbot Downing, said in a statement. "Our advisors and Family Dynamics consultants focus not only on traditional wealth planning, such as cash flow, investments and wealth transfer, but also on human dimensions, such as family legacy, governance, leadership transition, family education and risk management."

The brand will reportedly be launched in April 2012. Aside from an office in Chicago, they will also be opening in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Scottsdale, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Naples, Jacksonville and Palm Beach.

The announcement comes as banks are increasingly desperate to increase revenues after new regulations put a stop to some fees they were charging average customers and small businesses.

“Clearly it’s a profitable area, and good businesses are always looking to leverage profitable segments,” Steven Crosby, a senior managing director for PricewaterhouseCoopers, told Scripps Howard News Service. The bank will focus particularly on baby boomers looking to sell family businesses.

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Source: Huff 

JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo Accused Of Overcharging Military Veterans

In what is only the latest instance of questionable mortgage practices coming to light, a new lawsuit claims that 13 banks and mortgage companies -- including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan and PNC Bank -- charged hidden, illegal fees to military veterans trying to refinance their homes.

The lenders, unable to charge certain fees under U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rules, simply increased another set of fees without making it clear to veterans that they were doing so, the suit alleges.

The result was hundreds of thousands of cases where veterans trying to refinance their homes ended up paying between $300 and $1,000 more than they were supposed to, according to the suit.

The veterans' loans are some of many of misleading or fraudulent loans that banks made during the housing bubble that are only recently coming to light.