Banketeer Wells Fargo Slammed for Larcenous Scamming of Customers
Larcenous scumball financial services racketeer Wells Fargo Bank has been ordered to pay $203 million back to its customers who were victims of an overdraft scheme in which the banketeer engineered its debit clearance protocol specifically to inflict the maximal number of fees possible, turning the bank’s clearance system into a monstrous software mugger programmed to stalk and rob its retail customers.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California wrote that he is ordering restitution because Wells Fargo devised “a trap that would escalate a single overdraft into as many as 10 through the gimmick of processing in descending order. It then exploited that trap with a vengeance, racking up hundreds of millions off the backs of the working poor, students and others without the luxury of ample account balances.”
Judge orders Wells Fargo to pay back $203M in fees [Associated Press]
Alsup is right but almost every large bank in the United State of Criminal Conspiracy has jiggered its clearance protocols to exactly the same effect. Yes, exactly, most Americans are banking with de facto criminal enterprises whose retail platforms are automated larceny systems, completely ignored by the Comptroller of the Currency which looks the other way while American banketeers virtually stomp and mug their customers.
The alleged bank reform laws, kicking in on July 1 and August 15 for new and existing customers respectively give consumers the option of opting out of overdraft services but leave a lot of opportunities for abuse open that will, of course, be exploited for maximal profit by the big national and super regional banks. You can collar a mugger and get the money back for the victim, but you can’t change his culture of wanton, felonious avarice.
Wells Fargo was following a practice that is commonplace and known to all bank operations personnel – clearing check, debit and bill pay transaction from the highest to the lowest in order to trigger the maximal number of feeable events. The industry whores, trolls and apologists typically trot out the canard that the practice is designed to protect the customer by assuring big, important bills like mortgage payments are paid first. Discovery in the case put the lie to that cynical public relations confection.
“Internal bank memos and e-mails leave no doubt that, overdraft revenue being a big profit center, the bank’s dominant, indeed sole, motive was to maximize the number of overdrafts,” Alsup wrote. That policy would “squeeze as much as possible” from customers with overdrafts, in particular from the 4 percent of customers who paid what he called “a whopping 40 percent of its total overdraft and returned-item revenue.”
Fucking maggots. Don’t think that this will stop or even slow these psychopaths in their criminal rampage. Right the fuck now, rooms full of assholes who would otherwise be occupied kicking old ladies to death and taking their handbags are assembled in big banks all over America, figuring out new feeing schemes that will end run the alleged banking regulation reform, eclipsing in evil and reptilian determination anything witnessed thus far by America’s banking customers. Their mission is to make sure that they can increase fee and penalty revenues under the new regulations.
The banketeers are cold-blooded, criminally insane larcenists who cannot be reasoned with, reformed or, if there were justice, thrown from helicopters over the North Atlantic. You must get the fuck away from them and never return. Join the Stinque.com financial services hejira. First, find a credit union or thrift that can replace all the services that you now endure at the big banks.
Go to this website and run searches for credit unions and thrifts in your neighborhood – and don’t bother with any institution with anything lower than 4 or 5 stars: http://www.bankrate.com/rates/safe-sound/bank-ratings-search.aspx?t=cb
You deserve the safest bank possible and, hey, big bad banks need to fucking die and their executives need to be left to rot in the stocks on the commons where former victims can enjoy taking nice, long Ballantine Ale pisses on their faces. If the bank you are considering is a state-chartered thrift or credit union, make sure they have FDIC insurance. Some states insure institutions they charter and may or may not fully fund their insurance pools, exposing depositors who think they’re covered like the credit union meltdown in Rhode Island in 1991. FDIC has its problems, but they know how to put a bank out of its misery with minimal trouble for insured depositors.
If your new credit union or thrift has everything you need, ask what it would take to replace the credit card you have now. If the terms are OK, apply for one and, once it comes through and you know you have the credit line you need in hand, tear up the old one. (It’s key that you hold onto the old one and see the new one and know your credit line is sufficient for your home needs and/or any small business requirements you may have. Even banks with long business relationships with existing consumer and small business customers are scrimping on credit lines. Don’t be surprised if you qualify for a card – but at a lower credit line than you are used to having.)
Once you’re satisfied with your new credit card, go back and get the remaining deposits and checking accounts from your old bank and enjoy knowing that you’re reducing capital on hand that the bank can use in financial pornography inflicted on consumers. Then write a nice long letter to the bank’s president advising him on your decision and your wishes that he die starving to death, frozen to a fucking sidewalk while a homeless dog eats his face. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Die, you fucking, monster! Fucking die! Someday, with your help, some of us may just have the pleasure of encountering a Wells Fargo executive, frozen to a sidewalk and still conscious enough to appreciate the nice long Ballantine Ale piss on his face. Ha. Hahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
If you really want to hurt them, the execubots who approved should pay this fine out of pocket… Yeah I know, pipe dream.
I don’t think that would even generate a blip – $203 million is probably what they paid out in C-level *bonuses* last year…
What, I don’t get it; you mean, they did something wrong? This is the strategy of all banks, and all businesses, and even the government, to set up traps which will produce a predictable percentage of defaults of various sorts by the public.
Here now, let us examine a typical piece of dog-shit Clintonist legislation, the ironically, Orwellian-ly named “Privacy Rule.” (Everything that Bill Clinton ever did was a monstrous, hyper-wonked, cut the baby in half compromised sell-out of the public for the benefit of business, this is just one example out of many). The Privacy Rule says that financial institutions cannot sell your private information to parties, unless they give you “notice and an opportunity to opt out.”
Notice and Opt Out, this is the formula for fail. By requiring the consumer to make an affirmative act to preserve his or her “privacy,” the Dogshit Clinton Privacy Rule was designed to ensure that 50% of people lose their privacy by “default.”
But then it goes even further. The financial institution must give you an initial privacy notice when you establish the relationship, and you have the opportunity to “opt out” of the default condition of not having any privacy rights. But your opt out is only good for one year! Every year, the financial institution sends you another “notice and opt out.” I used to wonder why, but then I realized, the whole system is designed to make you fail! If you disregard that stupid annual notice and opt out, and throw it in the trash, like everyone does, whoa, there you go, no privacy for you! And I am willing to bet that eventually, the percentage of those who wind up reverting to the “default” setting of “no privacy” is up around 90%.
Because the motherfucking law was written by banking industry lobbyists and this kind of structure, which is designed to “trap” the consumer in various defaults, is the banking and finance industry bread and butter.
And evil, evil, evil dogshit pigfucker Bill Motherfucking Clinton and his beard, Kankles McSwampsow, were and are the masters of this kind of Orwellian policy, a “Privacy” bill which is designed to ensure that you have no right to privacy. Designed to make the public fail, designed to sell out the public to industry, but with some faux-liberal window-dressing so that fucking monster, Clinton, could claim to be a democrat while slavishly fellating his corporate masters.
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