Wells Fargo on Tuesday said it has sacked four executives who played a role in the bank’s fake-accounts scandal.
The scandal, where roughly 2 million fake accounts were created by branch-level employees in reaction to pressure from mid-level managers to reach quotas, led to the ouster of the bank’s CEO last year, the company announced on Tuesday.
Earlier, the bank had fired over five years roughly 5,000 low-level staffers connected to the scandal.
The four executives were linked to the community banking unit that had paid fines of $185 million to settle federal, state and local probes into the matter.
The four firings, each effective on Tuesday, are the first made public since John Stumf resigned on Oct. 12. The four will forfeit their 2016 bonuses, all unvested stock awards, and vested options.
The highest-ranking executive to get the ol’ heave-ho, Claudia Russ Anderson, the former chief risk officer for the community bank, had been on leave since September. She has been replaced by Vic Albrecht, a 35-year veteran of the bank.
All out the door is Matthew Raphaelson, the San Francisco-based ex-head of community bank strategy and initiatives, had been with the bank since 2003, according to his LinkedIn profile, plus two regional leaders — Pamela Conboy, the Arizona regional president, and Shelley Freeman, the head of consumer credit solutions and former Los Angeles regional president.
Conboy didn’t return a voicemail seeking comment. Russ Anderson and Raphaelson weren’t immediately available. Freeman declined to comment when reached on her cell phone.
Oscar Suris, a bank spokesman, declined to estimate how much in bonuses, stock awards, and unvested options the four executives are being denied.
An announcement suggested that these firings wouldn’t be the last at the 164-year old bank.
“The Board’s independent investigation is ongoing,” the company said. ”The investigation is expected to be completed before the Company’s April 2017 annual meeting of stockholders and its findings and any additional actions will be made public by that time.”
The firings were in connection with the board of directors’ “independent investigation,” according to the announcement.
The fallout from the scandal, where tellers and bankers were pressured to open millions of fake checking accounts and credit cards in customers’ names, is unlikely to abate any time soon. The bank is under a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
Suris declined to say whether the four executives were under a specific criminal investigation.
The bank is also facing class-action lawsuits of people who say they were terminated wrongly for either whistle-blowing or refusing to open fraudulent accounts.
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