WACHOVIA EMPLOYEES KNEW OF FRAUD

Recently released documents strongly suggest employees at Wachovia Bank not only knew that marketers were stealing from accounts at the bank, but that they bank solicited business from those companies. Executives at Wachovia have denied knowledge of the thefts.

From the New York Times:

Papers Show Wachovia Knew of Thefts

By Charles Duhigg

Last spring, Wachovia bank was accused in a lawsuit of allowing fraudulent telemarketers to use the bank’s accounts to steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims. When asked about the suit, bank executives said they had been unaware of the thefts.

But newly released documents from that lawsuit now show that Wachovia had long known about allegations of fraud and that the bank, in fact, solicited business from companies it knew had been accused of telemarketing crimes.

Internal Wachovia e-mail, for example, show that high-ranking employees at the nation’s fourth-largest bank frequently warned colleagues about telemarketing frauds routed through its accounts.

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