富國銀行盜開賬戶 被罰鉅款並解僱數千員工

Wells Fargo is paying up and laying off thousands of workers after it reached an agreement to settle allegations that, for years, its employees extracted millions in fees by regularly opening new accounts for customers without their knowledge, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

據美國消費者金融保護局表示，富國銀行員工多年來未經客戶同意祕密開設賬戶，從中提取數百萬元。在指控達成和解後，富國銀行支付罰單，並解僱數千名員工。

Under the agreement, announced by the C.F.P.B., Wells Fargo will pay a total of $185 million: a $100 million fine to the C.F.P.B.'s Civil Penalty Fund, $35 million the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and an additional $50 million to the City and County of Los Angeles.

美國消費者金融保護局宣佈，根據該協議，富國銀行將支付1.85億美元，其中1億支付美國消費者金融保護局民事處罰基金，3500萬美元支付給美國貨幣監理署，另外5000萬美元支付給洛杉磯政府。

Richard Cordray, the bureau's director, called it the "largest penalty the C.F.P.B. has ever imposed" because of "the severity of these violations."

消費者金融保護局官員理查德·考德瑞表示，由於"違規的嚴重性"，這是"該機構開出的最大一筆罰單"。

Federal regulators say that scheme, which allegedly began in 2011, involved Wells Fargo employees secretly creating millions of potentially unauthorized credit-card and bank accounts.

聯邦管理機構表示，這種行爲據說從2011年就已有之，富國銀行的員工可能已經祕密開設數百萬未經授權的信用卡和銀行賬戶。

Incentivized by rigorous sales quotas and compensation, employees transferred money from existing customer accounts to surreptitiously opened new accounts, the C.F.P.B. explained in its statement.

美國消費者金融保護局在聲明中解釋道，受到嚴格的銷售配額和補償的刺激，員工將客戶現有賬戶的資金轉入未經他們授權的新賬戶中。

Unaware that their balances had changed, customers were then charged overdraft fees or penalties for insufficient funds.

這樣一來，並不知情他們收支變化的客戶，將因存款不足或透支而被收取費用。

Over the course of five years, the C.F.P.B. said that employees opened about 1.5 million deposit accounts that customers may not have authorized, and applied for roughly 565,000 credit-card accounts under the same conditions.

美國消費者金融保護局表示，在過去的五年中，富國銀行員工開設了150萬個未經客戶授權的儲蓄賬戶，還在用戶未授權的情況下申請了大約56.5萬張信用卡。

Regulators said employees went as far as creating fake e-mail addresses and PINs in order to pull it off.

聯邦管理機構還表示，銀行員工爲了達到目的甚至會僞造電子郵件地址和PIN號。