Wells Fargo: Too big to fail, too arrogant to admit it

The 2008 financial collapse was eight years ago this month — and the big banks are back to their old shenanigans.

Venerable Wells Fargo has engaged in behavior that would have made a robber baron blush: It pressured low-wage workers with unrealistic sales targets, so these workers created 2 million bogus accounts over five years, causing customers to be hit with fees and damage to their credit ratings. Some 5,300 workers have been fired and $185 million in penalties assessed to the bank, but not a single high-level executive has been sacked or even forced to give back the tens of millions of dollars in pay earned based on the fraud. read more »

Exxon’s Accounting Said to Prompt SEC Review After Crude Slump

Exxon Mobil Corp.’s accounting has prompted a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into whether the energy giant should have written down assets as a result of the oil slump, according to a person with knowledge of the matter

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and other states including Massachusetts have been conducting similar probes since last year. The inquiries stem from larger questions about whether Exxon has for decades failed to alert investors about potential climate-change risks for a company with annual sales that could rival the world’s top 50 national economies. read more »

Wireless Carriers Can’t Dodge Calif. Overcharge Suit

Verizon, AT&T and other major wireless providers must face a suit claiming they overcharged California government customers more than $100 million, according to a Tuesday press release issued by the plaintiffs.

Forty-two California government entities joined a whistleblower suit in December in California state court alleging that Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA overcharged government customers by more than $100 million read more »

SEC Charges Hedge Fund Manager Leon Cooperman With Insider Trading

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged hedge fund manager Leon G. Cooperman and his firm Omega Advisors with insider trading based on material nonpublic information he learned in confidence from a corporate executive.

The SEC alleges that Cooperman generated substantial illicit profits by purchasing securities in Atlas Pipeline Partners (APL) in advance of the sale of its natural gas processing facility in Elk City, Oklahoma.  Cooperman allegedly used his status as one of APL’s largest shareholders to gain access to the executive and obtain confidential details about the sale of this substantial company asset.  Cooperman and Omega Advisors allegedly accumulated APL securities despite explicitly agreeing not to use the material nonpublic information for trading purposes, and when APL publicly announced the asset sale its stock price jumped more than 31 percent read more »

CFTC Charges with Engaging in Illegal, Off-Exchange Precious Metals Transactions

Complaint charges the Defendants with engaging in illegal, off-exchange transactions in precious metals with retail customers on a leveraged, margined, or financed basis. read more »

CFTC Orders a Civil Monetary and Restitution Totaling More than $389,000 for Fraud and Failure to File Required Annual Reports

Engaging in acts or practices which operated as a fraud upon participants in a commodity pool they operated read more »