Wells Fargo Hit With A $2.6B Class Action Lawsuit

The employees of Wells Fargo & Company are not taking this sitting down. On September 22nd, two former employees of the bank filed a class action in California Superior Court in Los Angeles County seeking at least $2.6 billion in damages.

The lawsuit accuses Wells Fargo of wrongful termination, failure to pay wages and unlawful business practices.

Wells Fargo had terminated around 5,300 employees for sales misconduct as a result of investigations that commenced from Jan 1, 2011 through Mar 7, 2016. The bank has been under scrutiny in recent weeks since it was revealed that it had illegally opened millions of unauthorized accounts.

The class action lawsuit was filed, by Alexander Polonsky and Brian Zaghi on behalf of other employees of Wells Fargo in California, who were dismissed or demoted over the past 10 years.

According to the suit, they are claiming that the bank levied strict quotas on employees and put pressure on them to impose up to 10 banking products on customers irrespective of the customers’ requirement.

The 26-page complaint reads that the bank’s rigorous and illegal sales practices pushed employees to the verge of “breaking point.”
Per the complaint, “The biggest victims of this scheme are a class of people that nobody else has talked about. The biggest victims of Wells Fargo’s scam are the class of victims that were fired because they did not meet these cross-sell quotas by engaging in the fraudulent scam that would line the CEO’s pockets.”

“The good employees with a conscience who tried to meet the sales quotas without engaging in fraudulent scams are the biggest victims of this scam. They are the employees that this lawsuit seeks to redress.”

Disclaimer: We have no position in Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE: WFC) and have not been compensated for this article.