Been caught using a mouse mover? Companies are starting to crack down on brokers’ U5s.
Just four years ago, Wells Fargo & Company and its subsidiary, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., agreed to pay $3 billion to resolve their potential criminal and civil liability stemming from a practice between 2002 and 2016 of pressuring employees to meet unrealistic sales goals that led thousands of employees to provide millions of accounts or products to customers under false pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or misusing customers’ identities.
There have been many instances of Wells Fargo externalizing the negative customer feedback over these practices to brokers’ U5s. Now, Wells Fargo has one-upped itself with an even more obnoxious practice: burning brokers’ U5s for “stealing company time” by putting “Discharged after review of allegations involving simulations of keyboard activity creating impression of active work.” Wells Fargo Clearing Services LLC has done this to about 14 brokers so far, apparently, and plans to do this to more people.
If you work at that company, and you’ve been harmed in this way, you may have a case for U5 defamation. Call the Law Offices of Christopher H. Tovar at (832) 370-3908. or email [email protected]. Send a copy of your U5 and tell us all about it.
