Where was the huge scandal in the Wells Fargo scandal?
"The Wells Fargo scandal was and still is a big deal because Wells Fargo opened over 1.5 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts. The credit card accounts were opened without authorization, which means people's credit scores and reports were pulled without permission. That is considered fraud and identity theft. Other than the legal side of it, by opening more bank accounts without authorization, it was showing ""synthetic growth"", which resulted in an inflated number when quarterly and annual performance numbers were reported. This caused people to invest more in Wells Fargo stock, not knowing that the growth in stock was not organic. After the scandal was uncovered, stocks decreased. However, the root cause of this can be traced to the culture at Wells Fargo, where customer service reps (i.e. bank tellers, and store operations employees) were faced with the challenges of meeting quotas that could be considered a stretch. As a result, faced with pressure from upper management, they opened unauthorized accounts.  In addition, these unauthorized accounts cost consumers money either because credit cards had balances, or bank accounts did not meet a minimum balance. It is not about ending ""up with 8 rows in their database instead of just 1 row"" as OP wrote. It is about stealing consumer money and committing fraud and stealing the consumer's identity.  *Suggestions and constructive criticism are welcomed in improving my answer."
Yet the underlying truth is the same. Bid fixing. We know it was done on a wide scale and we know it illegal. It doesn't matter what you think of the author you can verify that yourself and the court agreed.  You can make all the excuse you want but if all you want to do is quibble about why he shot out one number for the total bond market instead of muni bonds from 2007-2008 (actually one of the least relevant points to the story no matter which number you use) then you're missing the forest for the trees or your going out of your way to excuse widespread illegal business activity. Bid fixing is bid fixing. That it only impacted the smaller mini bond market isn't something that negates the larger story here. "I can't find a citation, but from memory (EDIT: and reading the newspapers at the time it happened): up until around 1980, banks couldn't cross state borders.  In my state, at least, they were also very local, only staying within one county. This was to enforce ""localness"", the thought being that local bankers would know local people and the local situation better than far away people who only see numbers and paperwork." Thanks for the reply!  Sadly, I have considered NYC, Chicago and even London, but my heart is set on Toronto. Also, I'm not quite sure I know what you mean by siphoning funds. I wasn't aware that financial engineers in Toronto do things differently than financial engineers in the US. This was at least in part payback for VW. But to be fair, the US has imposed huge fines on European banks for doing unethical stuff that's a lot more tolerated in Europe than the US. The EU fined Google for doing anti-competitive stuff that's a lot more tolerated in the US. "Not true! The government is much more outraged about the independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its head, Richard Cordray, ""interfering with freedom of trade"".  The CFPB fined various companies 12 Billion last year, for all kinds of shenanigans against consumers." They'll never punish the people actually responsible. Because that would include people like current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew who was the Chief Operating Officer at Citigroup through the financial crisis. As much as I don't like the big banks, the current management, employees, and shareholders have very little to do with the fraud committed 7-10 years ago. If you put the previous generation of management in jail or if you bankrupt them with fines, then the current generation of management and employees will wise up and not do stupid/illegal shit. The settlement just shows the current generation that the next guy will pay for your crimes. It is a simple case of breaking the wrong law. You can commit normal fraud all day long and the SEC won't life a finger. But even get within a hundred miles of a insider trading deal and they'll hit you like a ton of bricks.   It is easy an easy case to prove, there is no question as to it being illegal (even the janitor is expected to take a class on it), and the SEC was specifically set up to stop it after the Great Depression.  Really, it boggles my mind that anyone of that rank would think he can get away with it. Good! The article says it was some kind of collateral protection insurance that customers were signed up for despite it being unrequired for the loan. The accusations is that WF racketeered about 800,000 loans by bundling in this bunk insurance cost as part of the loan structure. I'm glad you're not caught up in it. "Whoops, responded to the wrong person. Reposting for you in case you didn't see it.       Here's a source for the $3.7 trillion number.      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-08/u-s-municipal-bond-market-28-larger-than-estimated-federal-reserve-says.html    It's not 'incorrect data'.        EDIT:  Furthermore, in order to know the ""extent"" of the crime (your own admission) we NEED to know the size of the entire market otherwise you can't have any perspective or determine extent.  So there's no reason it shouldn't be mentioned in the article." I litigated several of these cases to settlement back in 2011-2013 (the cases that followed on the Wells Fargo settlement out in NDCA).  Many many banks were using the same few consultants who were pitching the same few computer programs to re-order transactions in order to maximize fee revenue.  It was becoming standard industry practice until Judge Alsup entered the $200mm+ judgment against Wells Fargo for their California customers.  After that, lawyers did what we do and descended on any other bank doing the same thing.  As part of the settlements, the banks agreed to stop reordering transactions to maximize fee revenue (typically agreeing to order deposits first, then debits as they were presented to the bank).   Class action attorneys get a bad rap (sometimes justifiably so), but there are many more instances like this where we catch bad actors actually hurting people. 16/17 billion. Big deal in all they made around 85 billion dollars off subprime loans.  So they gave up a fraction of what they made. Rob a bank get 10 year in jail.  When the bank robs the people, they keep their money and get a slap on the wrist. "I know of at least one case where a person was convicted of ""structuring"".  The person was depositing his own money into his own bank account and was found guilty of ""structuring"" since he made several deposits under $10K.  The man did nothing illegal.  He just felt it was safer to make several small deposits instead of one large deposit. From the article: Prosecutors did not offer evidence of any other motive for Gaskins' behavior. They said at trial that Gaskins should have known better. ""The point of the law is to make sure we don't have people who try to fool the bank,"" federal prosecutor Randall Galyon told jurors last week. ""The fact that he was trying is against the law."" The law states the bank has to report any transactions over $10K so the government can investigate any suspicous monetary activity.  Of course, if you make several deposits under $10K you'll also be investigated and you could actually be breaking ""intent"" of the law for depositing your own money into your own bank account." Horrible comparison. The banks had a government plan save them. Plus, just because you may understand the top-down financial fuckery that went on, don't think that the average lay-person did.  To the average person now however, he dun took drugs an' cheated That's fair, but given the calls in this thread for the share price to drop 15% off this, for wells Fargo to be treated as a criminal Enterprise, etc., these are pretty small numbers considering. About a third of a percent of annual profits is not exactly something to call for the share price to tank, and a lack of effective controls is not a reason to define a long-standing business as a criminal enterprise. I remember when a  private jet carrying a handful of Revel top executives crashed in Minnesota a few years killing them all.  They were on a trip from AC to discuss the glass facade of the casino with a glass company.  This wasnt too long before the opening if I recall.