You should obviously be fired from a bank for fraud. But for a dime’s worth fifty years ago?
The Des-Moines Register reports Wells Fargo just fired 68-year-old Vietnam vet Richard Eggers from a customer service job he held for seven years, because as a teenager he used a dime-sized piece of cardboard in a washing machine and was convicted of “operating a coin changing machine by false means.”
Eggers is quoted as saying, “It was a stupid stunt and I’m not real proud of it, but to fire somebody for something like this after seven good years of employment is a dirty trick when you come right down to it. And they’re doing this kind of thing all across the country.”
The banks claim that’s because of new federal banking guidelines issued last year. “The tougher standards are meant to weed out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes, like identity fraud or mortgage fraud,” the article says. “But they are being applied across-the-board thanks to $1-million-a day fines for noncompliance.”
Meanwhile, the same day Wells Fargo fired Eggers, the bank “paid $175 million to the U.S. Justice Department to settle allegations it had targeted black and Hispanic homeowners for sub-prime loans.” Such settlements don’t require banks to admit any kind of wrongdoing.
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