WELLS FARGO FINED 1 BILLION

By Syndicated Investigative reporter: Michael Webster

Federal regulators slapped Wells Fargo with a $1 billion fine over customer abuses in its auto-lending and mortgage businesses, the latest in a series of blows to the troubled San Francisco-based bank. The bank, which has labored under a money laundering, fake accounts scandal and other black eyes for years,The fine, levied by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the CFPB, marks the biggest enforcement action taken during the Trump administration against a bank . Wells Fargo is the smallest of the four giants that now dominate the U.S. commercial banking business, but it has surpassed its larger counterparts in the extent to which it has been embroiled in a series of scandals involving laundering billions from Mexican murderous drug cartels. reckless lending practices and customer deception.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the US government’s top consumer watchdog, and a government bank regulator recently hit Wells Fargo with a 1billion fine for improperly charging thousands of customers for auto insurance they didn’t need— it’s the agency’s second-largest fine in its history.

While Wells Fargo would certainly rather avoid the penalty, it’s not going under because of it, either: The bank is expected to make $3.7 billion from the Republican tax bill this year, which is nearly four times what the CFPB fined them.

Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1 billion to the CFPB and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a bank regulator, for both the initial offense and to lock in low mortgage rates. The bank has faced numerous penalties in recent years for its bad behavior; some of its practices and business areas, such as a foreign-exchange trade dispute and recommendations made by its wealth division, are still under scrutiny.

It was fined $185 million in September 2016, including $100 million by the CFPB, for issuing millions of fake credit card accounts over a span of years. The Federal Reserve in February said the bank wouldn’t be allowed to get any bigger until it cleans up its act and pressured it to remove some members of its board of directors.

Wells Fargo’s wealth management business is reportedly under investigation for sales practices similar to what happened with the fake credit card accounts, and the Justice Department  is probing its currency trading business.

Wells Fargo created 3.5M fake accounts the bank said that it had uncovered 67% more potentially fake accounts than it initially estimated, capping an investigation into a scandal that has engulfed the bank since last year. Wells Fargo said that an independent review had identified 3.5 million potentially unauthorized accounts that were opened between 2009 and 2016. The new figure is a marked increase from its initial 2.1 million account estimate. In July, Wells Fargo received preliminary approval for a $142 million class action settlement related to the scandal.

The 3.5 million fake account scandal is just the last of a long trail of major illegal activities.

Wachovia Bank acquired by Wells Fargo during the 2008 crash, traded in drug cash involving billions of American dollars as a result Wells Fargo became a beneficiary of $25 bn in taxpayer’s money.

Criminal charges were brought against Wachovia, though not against any individual or officer, but was settled out of court and further investigations ceased. In March 2010, according to US district court records in Miami Florida Wachovia settled to date the biggest bank fraud ever perpetrated on the American people that action brought under the US bank secrecy act, through the US district court. Wachovia paid federal authorities $110m in forfeiture, for allowing transactions proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50m fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship tons of cocaine. More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering laws which transferred all most 400 Billion in American dollars. A sum equivalent to most countries GMP. Much of this cash was put into U.S. dollar accounts from so-called casas de cambio (CDCs) in Mexico, currency exchange houses with which the bank did business.

Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor in the case said "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations."

Wells Fargo immediately started picking up the slack and made billions more in illicit cash.

As the vicious violence from the Mexican Drug Cartels (MDC’s) spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to find its way into the worldwide drug business and financial system through Wells Fargo Bank.

According to the UN, proceeds pouring in from the global drug trade ultimately helped keep Wells Fargo afloat as “the only liquid investment capital” available to them . But Wells Fargo didn't just profit from laundering money for major drug cartels -- it also profited, and continues to profit, at the other end of the drug war as a major investor in the prison-industrial complex, specifically with heavy investments in the GEO Group, the second largest private prison company in the United States.

As one the largest bank in the world, Wells Fargo is deeply connected with some of the most powerful U.S. and international institutions to ensure that no matter how many crimes it commits -- fraud, illegal foreclosures, money laundering, you name it -- it will continue to consolidate markets, grow larger and presumably get away with its criminal activities for comparatively small fines compared to the billions and billions of capital it generates both legally and illegally.

For a mega-money laundering, drug war profiteering, prison-industry enlarging global bank reach like Wells Fargo. The evidence is obvious: it helps to have connections with high level politicians, affiliations with individuals and institutions that make up the U.S. and increasingly the international power elite. Wells Fargo is too big to fail, too big to jail, too criminal to control -- and too timorous to tolerate. Wells Fargo is profiting billions of dollars at the expense of all Americans.