The Wells Fargo executive in charge of the unit that created 1.5 million fake bank accounts will walk away with $125 million when she retires.
Carrie Tolstedt, 54, was head of Wells Fargo’s Community Banking division for 8 years.
5,300 employees in her unit lost their jobs after federal regulators discovered they created 1.5 million fake accounts to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus fees.
The unit also allegedly created 565,000 credit cards for customers and charged them annual fees without their knowledge or permission.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Wells Fargo $185 million for the gross misconduct.
But Tolstedt’s $7 million bonus will not be seized by the feds.
Instead, she gets to take home $125 million in stock, shares and options, in addition to her $7 million bonus when she retires at the end of the year.
A 2016 report prepared by the CFPB accused Tolstedt of pressuring her minions to hit sales targets by creating the fake accounts.
The report called the unit’s practices “unfair and abusive practices under federal law”.
According to Forbes, Tolstedt stood to lose $45 million if she was fired from Wells Fargo.
Tolstedt and her husband, Brad Tolstedt, who also worked for Wells Fago until his retirement in 2005, recently sold their upscale 6,000 sq. ft. Alamo, Ca. mansion for $3.45 million.
In a statement announcing Tolstedt’s impending retirement, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf called her “a standard-bearer of our culture, a champion for our customers, and a role model for responsible, principled and inclusive leadership”.
