Wells Fargo Fraud Case Proves Banks Are Rotten, It’s Time to Choose Bitcoin

The Los Angeles City Attorney and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently fined Wells Fargo $185 million for creating a large number of fake accounts to meet sales targets, creating an opportunity for the use of Bitcoin, which guarantees that users have full control over their funds.

Wells Fargo, the world’s most valuable bank with a market capitalization of $254 billion, recently revealed that more than 5,000 of its employees were involved in creating fake bank accounts to increase the company’s sales. In order to meet their sales targets, these employees created up to 2 million fake accounts without the bank’s customers’ consent, and then transferred customers’ funds to make these accounts appear legitimate.

The movement of customer funds from these fake bank accounts resulted in a series of substantially high overdraft fees, which were incurred because the bank charged a one-time administrative fee to each account if the account balance was insufficient. As a result of this incident, each of the millions of Wells Fargo customers was charged an average of nearly $140 in overdraft fees, in addition to other fees that the bank intends to disclose after the investigation is completed.

Will Wells Fargo executives be punished?

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf took out $19.3 million in compensation in 2015 alone, and other company executives were not held accountable for the incident.

Although more than 5,300 bank employees were fired immediately after the incident was made public, Banker of the Year Stumpf and his former CEO Dick Kovacevich were protected by the company, which was severely criticized by many experts and peers.

Eric Schiffer, TV personality and CEO of Two inc., said:

"Stumpf should be fired for this horror show at Wells Fargo. This is like a bullet through Wells Fargo and a wild west gunslinger suicide. - Eric Schiffer (@ericschiffer) 2016,09,08"

Advantages of Bitcoin

Unlike the popular banking system, Bitcoin provides users with a complete control over their funds. This means that investors and traders who hold Bitcoin on a wallet platform can fully control their funds, eliminating the possibility of a central authority or network administrator transferring user funds without the user's permission.

This incident involving Wells Fargo and its customers could have been avoided if customers had not given the bank complete control and movement of their funds.

As today’s banking systems and mechanisms become more and more porous, Bitcoin will become more convincing and its decentralized nature is being demonstrated to mainstream users.