To me the line of argument that this was employee fraud, with an unaware management doesn't fly.
All banks have large internal audit departments precisely for the purpose of catching internal fraud. This is a long standing thing in banking and well established.
The idea that Wells Fargo's internal audit department missed several thousand employees carrying out the same kind of fraud over a period of years is entirely unbelievable.
So either the Internal audit team were in on it (extremely unlikely), internal audit were directed by management not to investigate this, or management ignored the reports for internal audit.
To me, its extremely likely that the later options there are more likely to be what happened.
The fact that it was discovered by an external source, not an internal audit, says it all. How can an external auditor have more information than management? Inconceivable.
And the internal audits of the other major banks have yet to uncover wrongdoing. And yet, up to a year ago I couldn't walk into any bank without getting the desperate, hard sell for services. Where's the BofA and Chase inquiries?
I do miss the pretty lady tellers asking if there was anything else they could do to satisfy me. Not so much the guys.
All banks have large internal audit departments precisely for the purpose of catching internal fraud. This is a long standing thing in banking and well established.
The idea that Wells Fargo's internal audit department missed several thousand employees carrying out the same kind of fraud over a period of years is entirely unbelievable.
So either the Internal audit team were in on it (extremely unlikely), internal audit were directed by management not to investigate this, or management ignored the reports for internal audit.
To me, its extremely likely that the later options there are more likely to be what happened.