I should have known you'd show up with some bullshit misdirection.
The scale of the fraud is enormous because it involved millions of accounts. That means millions of individual decisions to misuse customers' accounts for personal profit. The fact that it generated very little income for WF just means that it wasn't a very successful fraud. You don't get to evade criminal liability by saying that your criminal enterprise worked poorly and failed to run an impressive profit.
management actually took action (albeit stupid ineffective action)
Having instituted the policy to begin with, and with the knowledge of how such policies incentivize people, the management bears responsibility for not only the original problem but the ineffectiveness of the subsequent response. The CEO and his peers aren't some clueless kids that got into the C-suite and pushed random buttons on some big control panel, they're experienced managers with a deep knowledge of economics and institutional dynamics...in fact I'm probably selling them short, I'm sure their resumes tell a much more impressive story about their capabilities. So since they were good enough to hire into senior positions, they are surely good enough to take on the responsibility for the highly predictable outcome of their decisions.
The fraud was successful; it caused WF to continue paying underperforming salespeople. The fraud didn't make money for WF because WF was one of the victims - in fact, as far as money lost goes, probably the primary victim.
But the thing is, there is no evidence of any criminal organization or conspiracy. The criminals in this case - the 5,300 sales people - don't appear to have coordinated at all.
The scale of the fraud is enormous because it involved millions of accounts. That means millions of individual decisions to misuse customers' accounts for personal profit. The fact that it generated very little income for WF just means that it wasn't a very successful fraud. You don't get to evade criminal liability by saying that your criminal enterprise worked poorly and failed to run an impressive profit.
management actually took action (albeit stupid ineffective action)
Having instituted the policy to begin with, and with the knowledge of how such policies incentivize people, the management bears responsibility for not only the original problem but the ineffectiveness of the subsequent response. The CEO and his peers aren't some clueless kids that got into the C-suite and pushed random buttons on some big control panel, they're experienced managers with a deep knowledge of economics and institutional dynamics...in fact I'm probably selling them short, I'm sure their resumes tell a much more impressive story about their capabilities. So since they were good enough to hire into senior positions, they are surely good enough to take on the responsibility for the highly predictable outcome of their decisions.