Senators Investigate Reports Wells Fargo Punished Whistleblowing Workers - InvestingChannel

Senators Investigate Reports Wells Fargo Punished Whistleblowing Workers



In an interview with NPR Friday, Warren said regulators and the general public want to “protect whistleblowers. When somebody says there’s a problem here, their employer doesn’t get to attack them.”

But former workers from four states tell NPR that’s basically what the bank did to them. Wells Fargo wrote negative comments about the workers on their U5 documents — a U5 is basically a report card used by the industry. They say this amounted to a scarlet letter that has badly damaged their careers.

Fear of retaliatory action from the bank could have prevented potential whistleblowers from coming forward and exposing the fraud. To address this concern, the senators are asking Wells Fargo for extensive information about workers it labeled this way going back more than a decade.