Whistleblower suit filed by exWells Fargo VP
Fired exec claims he was let go for questioning sales practices
SANTA FE — A former Wells Fargo vice president at a Santa Fe branch maintains he was fired after raising concerns about sales practices that have rocked the banking giant with scandal over the past two years.
Marc A. Tupler, who was fired in December 2014 after nearly fours years at Wells Fargo, says in a state court lawsuit that local and regional bank officials were aware of the schemes, including opening bank and credit-card accounts without customer authorization to meet lofty sales goals.
Tupler says that his authority to reverse improper transactions was revoked after he had reversed many based on “angry” complaints from customers in the commercial loan division. He continued to refer complaints to his supervisors but “Tupler’s requests were either minimized, dismissed or rejected,” his complaint states.
The suit says that Tupler once told Pat Sanchez, his supervisor at the Wells Fargo bank on Washington Avenue, that if no one was going to respond to the complaints by customers, “perhaps they should contact ‘Larry Barker at Channel 13,’” an investigative reporter.
Tupler says he was fired without any notice or explanation and maintains that it was his referral of customer complaints to his supervisors and the Barker comment that caused them to “perceive Tupler as a threat to their illegitimate practices.”
Asked about the suit, a Wells Fargo spokesman Monday provided a statement saying, “Wells Fargo is taking a series of steps to address improper sales practices. Our board is conducting an independent investigation and we are undertaking a top-to-bottom review of all sales practices throughout Wells Fargo.” Changes include “eliminating all product sales goals for retail bank team,” the statement said.
Wells Fargo acknowledged in September that its employees opened up to 2 million bank and creditcard accounts without customer authorization in
order to meet lofty sales goals. Federal and California regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million for the practices.
Tupler’s suit names as defendants Sanchez and Bruce Beebe, identified as another supervisor of Tupler; Wells Fargo; and Lisa Riley, the bank’s regional president for New Mexico and El Paso.
Riley, asked about the Wells Fargo scandal in a December interview with the Journal, said, “We haven’t seen a lot of fallout here. That’s because I hope that we’ve always done it right.”
“One of the things I’ve always said about New Mexico is I talk about 90 locations (within the state), we’re in really small towns,” she said. “We need the customers that we deal with; they’re family members, they’re neighbors,” she added.