Just when JP Morgan Chase and Citi are being hounded for their credit card policies, it is good to see that Wells Fargo is keeping them honest.
The City of Baltimore and the NAACP have now filed suit against Wells Fargo for marketing sub-prime home loans to prime black borrowers. Because this is a law suit there are now sworn affidavits from people like Mr. Paschal who says:
They referred to sub-prime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as "mud people..." The company put "bounties" on minority borrowers. By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market sub-prime loans in minority communities.
The New York Times conducted their own study and found that in the city of New York, 16.1% of black borrowers making at least $68k per year had a sub-prime home loans while only 2% of white owners in the same income bracket had sub-prime loans. The New York Times quoted Beth Jacobson, Wells Fargo's top producing sub-prime loan officer, as saying:
We just went right after them. Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out sub-prime loans.
That's right, Wells Fargo aggresively marked sub-prime loans to black people
at their churches. You can read more
here.