Wells Fargo & Co, embroiled in a scandal over the opening of sham accounts, was sued on Friday by customers who accused the bank of fraud and recklessness for its behavior.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Utah, and seeks class-action status on behalf of hundreds of thousands of customers nationwide.
Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week, the San Francisco-based lender agreed to pay $190 million to settle regulatory charges that employees opened some 2 million accounts without customers’ knowledge, in order to meet sales targets.
Wells Fargo, the country’s third-largest bank by assets, has said it has fired 5,300 people over the matter and would eliminate sales goals in its retail banking on Jan. 1, 2017.
Federal prosecutors have begun examining Wells Fargo’s practices, and the bank’s Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf is scheduled to testify before Congress next week.
In the complaint, three plaintiffs said customers were hurt by “abusive and fraudulent tactics” used by employees who felt they had to “do whatever it takes,” including selling products they did not need or want, to meet sales quotas.
It was not immediately clear how the three named plaintiffs were specifically harmed by the bank’s alleged wrongdoing.
The case is Mitchell et al v. Wells Fargo Bank NA et al, U.S. District Court, District of Utah, No. 16-00966.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Robert Scoble has been at the forefront of the technological trendlines in Silicon Valley his entire life. Now he’s dedicating all of his time to virtual and mixed reality. But why?
If you pinch the little Cirque du Soleil artist you can make her bigger and when you click on her she will start performing just for you. Right there in front of you by your desk. At the same time a zombie is coming through the wall while the CNN is on next to your work screen. Sounds like a fantasy come true. Well, it is.
Robert Scoble has seen it. Just like he has seen a lot of other stuff from the frontier of technology for the most part of his life growing up in Silicon Valley. And there has been some crazy things going on around him. Microsoft happened. Apple too. And then Facebook. Silicon Valley has been the center of technological innovation in a lot of industries. It’s been like a science fiction tv-series for the last 20 years with more breakthroughs and disruptions of industries than killings in Game of Thrones.
But you’ve seen nothing yet.
Now it’s time for something even more radical. It’s time for virtual reality and the even more immersive mixed reality as Robert Scoble favors.
“20 years ago one of my friends had a complete set up for VR games. And it worked. Only the computer running it cost a million dollars. Now you can get the same technology the size of a mobile device for just 2000 dollars.”
And that changes everything, says Scoble.
“Now we have low cost, small size and more bandwidth. But most importantly we have social systems. Like Facebook. And that’s why VR, AR and mixed reality will not only stay but change everything,” says Robert Scoble of UploadVR. And that’s when he starts to explain the six technologies that are fundamental to create all these new devices that will mix our reality with artificial experiences.
He’s fast paced. It’s about optics, sensors, high speed, dimension mapping, artificial intelligence as in deep learning. And audio. Audio will be tremendously important in the field of virtual and mixed realities.
It’s not that Robert Scoble is fast paced for the sake of speed. He is after all reclining horizontally in a sofa as we speak at the Trouble offices in Copenhagen. Like a missionary buddha of technology trendlines. But Robert Scoble is a storyteller with a lot of information. Just take a look at his social media appearances on Facebook and Twitter and his Scobleizer blog.
We’ll skip the technological explanation for now and go straight to consequences.
“We’re now in the fourth state of user interface of the personal computer era. The first was character mode as we saw in MS-DOS. The second was the GUI as in Graphical User Interface known from Macintosh and Windows. The third was touch as we know from the iPhone or Android. And here comes the fourth of spatial computing.”
It’s the most intuitive thing there ever was in computer interfaces. There almost is no interface. But to grasp the full potential of it you have to try it for yourself. You can design things in virtual reality and manufacture them in real life with the push of a button.
The article continues under the video.
So it’s three dimensions but this is not like 3D TV where it’s just an effect. This is actually a 3D replication of the world. Think about that. Or let Robert Scoble explain:
“We’re gonna put basketball games on the floor and I’m gonna be able to go on the court with Steven Curry and the Warriors and then I’m gonna stop the game and practice my three point shot right next to him. And I’m gonna hit play and see if he makes the shot the same way I did. He might even turn to me and give me some tips.”
And the thing that will tie all these new ideas together will be the social layer of the internet. If it’s gaming, everything is more fun when you play with someone else. In journalism it feels more real if you bring people virtually to a refugee camp in Syria instead of reading about it. Art will be extreme when you do anything you want. Medicine will change because you can better diagnose concussions. It is already happening.
“Everything about our world is going to change. And this means deep cultural change. The kind of change we saw in the 1960’s when the electric guitar brought us rock’n roll, when the pill brought us the sexual revolution and when the space race brought us to the Moon and gave us the internet.”
It feels promising. But will the feelings be real, virtual or mixed?
Let’s dive in.
...
For daily perspectives, rants, thoughts & ideas you should follow the Trouble people on Facebook. This post originally appeared on Trouble Stories.
Apple is only the latest big global American corporation to use foreign tax shelters to avoiding paying its fair share of U.S. taxes. It’s just another form of corporate desertion.
Corporations are deserting America by hiding their profits abroad or even shifting their corporate headquarters to another nation because they want lower taxes abroad. And some politicians say the only way to stop these desertions is to reduce corporate tax rates in the U.S. so they won’t leave.
Wrong. If we start trying to match lower corporate tax rates around the world, there’s no end to it.
Instead, the President should use his executive power to end the financial incentives that encourage this type of corporate desertion. President Obama has already begun, but there is much left that could be done.
In addition, corporations that desert America by sheltering a large portion of their profits abroad or moving their headquarters to another country should no longer be entitled to the advantages of being American.
1. They shouldn’t be allowed to influence the U.S. government. They shouldn’t be allowed to contribute to U.S. political campaigns, or lobby Congress, or participate in U.S. government agency rule-making proceedings. And they no longer have the right to sue foreign companies in U.S. courts for acts committed outside the United States.
2. They shouldn’t be entitled to generous government contracts. “Buy American” provisions of the law should be applied to them.
3. Their assets around the world shouldn’t any longer be protected by the U.S. government. If their factories and equipment are expropriated somewhere around the world, they shouldn’t expect the United States to negotiate or threaten sanctions, or use our armed forces to protect their investments. And if their intellectual property – patents, trademarks, trade names, copyrights – are disregarded, that’s their problem too. Don’t expect any help from us.
In fact, their interests should be of no concern to the U.S. government – in trade negotiations, climate negotiations, international treaties reconciling American law with the laws of other countries, or international disputes over access to resources.
They don’t get to be represented by the U.S. government because they’re no longer American.
It’s simple logic. If corporations want to desert America in order to pay less in taxes, that’s their business. But they should no longer have the benefits that come with being American.
During the historic Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight there was no knockout, but your finances may not be able to take a punch quite as well. It is always a good idea to be aware of what could knock out your finances and drain savings accounts because boxers who know where the punch is coming from have better chances of keeping their defenses up.
Here are six common problems that can deal a knockout punch to your finances:
1. Credit card dependency
Americans owed a total of $729 billion on their credit cards in the second quarter of 2016, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. This also means billions in annual interest sucked out of the bank accounts of credit card customers, all because they got in the habit of charging more than they could readily pay off. Mounting debt burdens and interest charges have knocked out many a household's finances.
2. Student loan debt
A by-product of the weak job market resulting from the Great Recession was a doubling in student loan debt outstanding over the past seven years. Going back to school simply because it is easier than facing a tough job market can put your finances up against the ropes before your career even starts.
3. Overpriced investments
The past 15 years have seen extreme peaks and valleys in tech stocks, real estate, oil and gold, among other investments. Trying to chase these trends can lead you into overpriced assets just when they are poised to collapse - the investment equivalent of walking into a punch.
4. Big mortgages
People like to think big when they buy a house, leading them to sign on to mortgage payments that are a stretch to afford. This is like getting into a fight and expecting not to be hit. If your finances cannot take a little adversity, they'll never go the distance.
5. Career complacency
It happens time and time again in boxing - a fighter gets to the top and loses the edge it took to get there. For more mainstream careers, the equivalent is taking your job and your career for granted. People get to a comfortable income level, and they ease back a bit. The problem begins if you don't keep your skills up to date or put forward a consistently competitive effort. Keep your eye on how well your company is holding up in its markets. Or you might find that your comfortable job gets taken by a hungrier and more aggressive competitor, either from inside or outside your own organization.
6. No financial cushion
It isn't just laziness that dooms some fighters. Others are done in by too much fast living once they become rich and famous. Financially, you don't need to have a drug or alcohol problem to be living on the edge. Any lifestyle that is debt-dependent, makes no room for savings or is just one setback away from defaulting on payments is too close to the edge to be safe.
Notably, Floyd Mayweather has made a huge fortune by being a primarily defensive boxer. You will probably never make Mayweather money, but your finances can be successful if you learn to keep your defenses up.
More from Richard Barrington and MoneyRates.com:
Credit Card Monthly Payment Calculator
How to establish good credit starting with your first credit card
For 80 years, the Ford Foundation has sought to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation and advance human achievement. Now stewards of a $12 billion endowment, when this remarkable organization's leader speaks, people listen. So it may well reverberate throughout the nonprofit world - and far beyond - now that Ford Foundation President Darren Walker has used the occasion of his annual letter to his constituents admitting that a new effort by the Ford Foundation to disrupt inequality had neglected people with disabilities.
Walker, who is African-American and gay said, "In the same way that I have asked my white friends to step outside their own privileged experience to consider the inequalities endured by people of color, I was being held accountable to do the same thing for a group of people I had not fully considered," Walker wrote. "Moreover, by recognizing my individual privilege and ignorance, I began to more clearly perceive the Ford Foundation's institutional privilege and ignorance, as well. It is clear to me now that this was a manifestation of the very inequality we were seeking to dismantle, and I am deeply embarrassed by it."
I have known Darren Walker for years and consider myself honored that he sought counsel from my organization and others in the disability community on this issue. He is an extraordinary man who has been a leader in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors for two decades. When TIME magazine names someone to its annual list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World" one could be expected to let that get to his head. Not Darren. His remarkable admission about the Ford Foundation's past ignorance and indifference to people with disabilities only underscores his humility and grace. He also knows when he's made a mistake and owns it.
The sad reality is people with disabilities have been marginalized for centuries. Even in this age of prosperity, people with disabilities remain underemployed and their skills underappreciated. Twenty-six years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, its full promise has yet to be fulfilled, as millions of Americans with disabilities still struggle to attain a quality of life equal to our non-disabled neighbors.
Personally, I have felt a special connection to the Ford Foundation since my longtime mentor, Mike Sviridoff, went to work for the Foundation in the 1970's under its legendary leader McGeorge "Mac" Bundy. Together, Mike and Mac worked tirelessly to nurture a variety of programs to address the problems of our cities, most notably poverty. Two years before President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the war on poverty, Mike led an antipoverty program in New Haven that was set up with a Ford Foundation grant. In its first 30 months, the program found employment for 1,500 people and became a national model.
Fast-forward half a century, the Ford Foundation continues to deliver proven results for poor and excluded communities around the world. But even more importantly, Darren Walker takes the unusual next step of putting Ford's own practices under a microscope, and leading by example. In his letter, Darren notes that "those who courageously--and correctly--raised this complicated set of issues pointed out that the Ford Foundation does not have a person with visible disabilities on our leadership team, takes no affirmative effort to hire people with disabilities, does not consider them in our strategy, or even provide those with physical disabilities with adequate access to our website, events, social media, or building. It should go without saying: All of this is at odds with our mission."
In a country where most foundations don't consider disability among their focus areas, for the leader of the nation's second-largest philanthropy to acknowledge this gross oversight and to appreciate the need to be inclusive of people with disabilities, is a game-changing move for the people my organization represents and for our nation as a whole. I hope his actions will spur other foundations, large and small alike, to examine if they, too, have ignored people with disabilities in their programs and employment. He concludes his letter with a hopeful tone:
"For my part, I am hopeful," he writes. "By demanding and expecting more of ourselves and our institutions, we can deliver more for others. In listening to each other, we will continue to learn. By listening more to each other, we can continue to forge a more just way forward, together."
Darren knows we'll all be watching. And we know he'll deliver. He always has.
WASHINGTON, Sept 8 - Wells Fargo has long been the envy of the banking industry for its ability to sell multiple products to the same customer, but regulators on Thursday said those practices went too far in some instances.
The largest U.S. bank by market capitalization will pay $185 million in penalties and $5 million to customers that regulators say were pushed into fee-generating accounts they never requested.
“We regret and take responsibility for any instances where customers may have received a product that they did not request,” the bank said of a settlement reached Thursday with California prosecutors and federal regulators.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will receive $100 million of the total penalties - the largest fine ever levied by the federal agency.
“Today’s action should serve notice to the entire industry that financial incentive programs, if not monitored carefully, carry serious risks that can have serious legal consequences,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.
Los Angeles officials and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were also party to the settlement.
In a complaint filed in May 2015, California prosecutors alleged that Wells Fargo pushed customers into costly financial products that they did not need or even request.
Bank employees were told that the average customer tapped six financial tools but that they should push households to use eight products, according to the complaint.
The bank opened more than 2 million deposit and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized, the CFPB said Thursday.
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Mary Eshet said the bank fired 5,300 employees over “inappropriate sales conduct.” The firings took place over a five-year period, Eshet said, adding that the bank has 100,000 employees in its branches.
Wells Fargo regularly releases numbers about how many products it sells to customers, a practice it calls “cross-sell.” Its wealth and investment management unit, for example, sold 10.55 products per retail banking household in November 2015, up from 10.49 a year earlier, according to the bank’s annual 10-K financial filing.
In the second quarter, however, the bank changed how it tallies up some of those numbers and said it was considering more changes.
Piper Jaffray analyst Kevin Barker said he does not think the crackdown on Wells Fargo will have much of an impact on others in the industry.
“I think this is unique to Wells Fargo and their particular situation and how hard they push on cross-sell,” he said.
(Reporting By Patrick Rucker in Washington and Dan Freed in New York; Editing by Alan Crosby and Jonathan Oatis)
A Volkswagen engineer pleaded guilty to conspiring to cheat on U.S. emissions tests and agreed to work with federal prosecutors to investigate the German automaker, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.
James Liang ― a 25-year veteran of the company’s plant in Wolfsburg, Germany ― helped develop the device that allowed the diesel-fueled Jetta sedan to beat emissions tests in 2006. Volkswagen became embroiled in scandal last September when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that nearly 482,000 cars in the United States violated emissions standards set by the Clean Air Act.
Liang’s plea marks the first criminal conviction from series of probes that began last year after Volkswagen admitted to programming roughly 11 million cars worldwide to circumvent emissions tests. Liang, 62, could face up to five years in prison, according to the Financial Times.
The conviction is sure to rock an auto industry that has repeatedly hoodwinked customers into buying faulty or dangerous vehicles ― infractions that haven’t led to anyone spending time in jail.
The day before the Volkswagen scandal erupted last year, General Motors admitted to criminal wrongdoing and agreed to pay a $900 million penalty for mishandling a defective ignition switch. The faulty hardware, which caused the engine to shut off during driving, has been linked to at least 124 deaths.
“People were hurt and people died in our cars,” Mary T. Barra, GM’s chief executive, said at the time.
The company entered a deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to drop the case in three years if GM abides the terms of the deal. But no individual executives faced criminal charges.
In 2014, Toyota agreed to pay a $1.2 billion fine to avoid prosecution for covering up safety risks from parts that caused “unintended acceleration” in cars for about a decade leading up to 2009. The defect led to at least 89 deaths. No individual executives faced criminal charges then either.
Volkswagen’s deception may have caused some deaths, too. The automaker’s cars spewed up to 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxides, which comes from burning diesel. The resultant emissions may have led to at least 60 premature deaths in the U.S. alone, according to a peer-reviewed study published last October in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
