For years similar or identical complaints from Wells Fargo workers flowed into the bank’s internal ethics hotline, its human resources department, and individual managers and supervisors about the practices of opening sham accounts, the New York Times reported today. In at least two cases in 2011, employees wrote letters directly to CEO John G. Stumpf — who became the company’s chief executive in 2007, and its board chairman in 2010 — to describe the illegal activities they had witnessed. Since the ethics scandal erupted in public last month, Stumpf has testified twice in front of Congress that he and other senior managers only realized in 2013 that they had a big problem on their hands — two years after the bank had started firing people over the issue. Now, regulators, lawmakers, current and former employees, and others are asking: How was it that this drumbeat of complaints did not set off loud alarm bells earlier? Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in congressional hearings last month pointed to court filings from 2008 from employees who tried to blow whistles, and to a Wells Fargo sales quality manual that was updated in 2007 — just months after Stumpf became chief executive, and with his executive guidance — to remind employees that they needed to obtain a customer’s consent before opening an account.
