“Wells Fargo is not a family thing,” the West Coast Trial Lawyers attorney representing the case told The Street.
Over the past decade, Wells Fargo (wfc) – Get a free reporthas navigated a series of scandals and concurrent lawsuits.
In 2013, the fourth largest bank in the country disbursed $175 million to liquidate accusations that it had been charging higher mortgage rates and fees to black and Hispanic applicants for years. In 2016, he shelled out another $185 million in fines for opening 500,000 credit cards without customer consent and, in 2019, several board members and eventually then-CEO Timothy Sloan resigned after a official reproach of the bankof the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Most recently, longtime critic Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called for a “breakup” of the bank after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Wells Fargo to pay more than $3.7 billion for “pervasive mismanagement” over several years. years.
The company’s public relations took a turn for the worse when, in early January, former Wells Fargo India vice president Shankar Mishra was accused of drunkenly urinating on a 72-year-old woman aboard an Air India flight from New JFK. York to New Delhi.
Wells Fargo’s latest lawsuit alleges mass sexual harassment and rape
The latest lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that a senior vice president was subjected to a “hostile work environment that included rape by a superior, ongoing sexual harassment, vulgar behavior, and retaliation.” after he tried to report it to his superiors.
According to the demand, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe, whose identity was confirmed by TheStreet, joined Wells Fargo as a senior vice president and wealth advisor in Southern California in April 2018. Between that time and her resignation in July 2021, she claims to have been subject to “Sexually Explicit Comments and Inappropriate Touching” by Superior Eric R. Pagel. The indictment includes multiple instances of groping, telling plaintiff that her “butt looks good in skinny jeans,” suggesting that she “trades sex for money,” and referring to other women as “dogs” in her presence.
On one occasion, the plaintiff reports having drinks at a hotel bar with Pagel, Regional Manager of Private Banking and Senior Vice President David Weitzel, and four other colleagues during a business trip to Bakersfield, CA in late January 2020. The The lawsuit claims that Weitzel walked down the plaintiff back to her hotel room and left her there, but Pagel called shortly thereafter and, after entering, “proceeded to sexually assault and rape plaintiff while she was intoxicated.”
“I had thought that, being in a professional environment, something like this would never happen to me,” said Doe, who has not been named by TheStreet. “I had this mix of emotions, from fear to disbelief. A lot of trauma and a lot of shock and being completely disappointed in Wells Fargo and how they handled and didn’t handle my case.”
Wells Fargo ‘not a mom and pop store’
The plaintiff mentioned Pagel’s earlier comments to Weitzel on February 27, 2020, and was reportedly told that she “shouldn’t give Pagel a ‘window of opportunity’ to be inappropriate.”
He waited until November 2020 to file a formal complaint about the assault through the Wells Fargo Ethics Hotline and reported the incident to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department around the same time.
The lawsuit claims that Wells Fargo launched a formal investigation only when it filed another complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2021. After seeing an investigation that lasted eight months with no progress, the plaintiff resigned in 2021 and began another. asset advisor role.
Wells Fargo initially declined TheStreet’s requests for comment, but later released a statement saying it “takes all allegations of misconduct very seriously.”
“We just found out about the lawsuit today and we are reviewing it,” a spokesperson told TheStreet.
The Los Angeles law firm representing the Jane Doe, West Coast Trial Lawyers, said it is happy to see the plaintiff’s case filed and heard in court; request a jury trial in the lawsuit.
“It took them 11 months to complete an investigation into an incident that anyone who does any kind of human resources management will tell you is completely substandard,” Ron Zambrano, the attorney representing the case, told The Street. “Wells Fargo is not a family business, so I think the two mistakes should be highlighted.”
UPDATE: This article has been updated to include a statement from Wells Fargo.