> IMHO, this is criminal.

Is criminality opinion nowadays? To my understanding if a bank acts like this, there is very little to do. Maybe a class action lawsuit would work in US?

IIUC, one intended role of a judge is to reach an opinion about the criminality of some act. So I'd say yes.

Edit: I assume we're talking about opinion as judgment of objective matters, not opinion as statement of personal preference.

So let me tell you how the class action would go down. A law firm would find a few impacted folks. They would then file for a class action covering, let's say, 100K people.

WF would then agree to pay like $50M. The lawyers would take at least half of that or $25M. The 'few impacted folks' the lawyers originally found would get between 50K and 100K each. The remainder would be disbursed to nonprofits because it would be too onerous to find all defendants.

WF would get this monkey off its back. And the actual impacted folks would get zip, zilch, nada.

You forgot to mention that the wrongful behavior would cease. That's the point of a class action: It provides an effective state attorney without tapping the public treasury.

Not if they made more money ripping people off than it cost them in the courts. Even if they didn't make a full $50 million in this scam, time value of money means they get to capture earnings on the scammed money for a decade before they have to finally pay a penalty.

THEN they get to offset $50 million of current income to reduce their tax bill. I'm surprised more banks don't do this.

> Not if they made more money ripping people off than it cost them in the courts.

This is why class actions can assess punitive damages.

Reputation.

They don’t give a shit about their reputation.

It is my opinion this action could be criminal under existing law.

Basic misrepresentation.

Closed has a clear and expected meaning.

FWIW, last time I closed a bank account I asked for a signature indicating I had no further financial obligation.

This crap has happened before.

WF got caught opening mass numbers of accounts for customers who didn't ask for them resulting in fees as well. They didn't get in trouble for that either. It was systematic corruption. You don't get that many employees doing it unless it is approved.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-creat...