Wachovia to Pay as Much as $144 Million in Marketing Case

[flashl]

The Wachovia Corporation, the banking giant, has agreed to pay as much as $144 million to end an investigation accusing the bank of allowing telemarketers to use its accounts to steal millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims.

The settlement is the second-largest penalty ever demanded by the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and concludes an 18-month investigation into Wachovia’s relationships with marketing firms that stole millions of dollars from thousands of victims, many of them elderly.

Though Wachovia did not admit or deny wrongdoing, federal regulators found that the bank engaged in unsafe and unsound practices — failing to conduct suitable due diligence, failing to monitor the accounts used by the telemarketers and failing to follow normal procedures that would have probably revealed the frauds.

The bank’s actions were “part of a pattern of misconduct that resulted in financial gain to the bank,” regulators wrote. Wachovia collected millions of dollars in fees as a result of the telemarketing schemes.

NY Times

[skoalyman]

1. they should change there name to

walk ova ya