Twitter lights up about the Wells Fargo sandbagging kerfuffle

Wells Fargo can't seem to get out of its own way. After it was revealed that 5300 employees had been fired for opening up over 2 million fake bank and credit card accounts, the bank tried to deflect blame from itself. The bank's PR has admitted that there was a problem but blamed employees for the problem. Obviously, Twitter didn't like that. It's bad enough a big financial institution was discovered doing something that redistributed income from its customers to its employees. But the icing on the cake was the fact that the head of the division in question left the firm with a sizable bonus. Here's some of the top tweets on the phantom account scandal at Wells Fargo:

I get that #wellsfargo had some bad apples. Every company does, but 5,300?! At what point is top tier management to blame? #FireTheLittleGuy

— Liz Claman (@LizClaman) September 14, 2016

The Fox Business newscaster doesn't believe that this was a grassroots problem. How could 5300 employees independently find a way to sandbag account opening numbers?

"We truly regret and take full responsibility ..."#WellsFargo in @WSJ today: (via @LisaMVillalobos) $WFCpic.twitter.com/nxdlECHTYo — Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) September 9, 2016

Wells Fargo did respond quickly once the news hit of the bank's settlement with the CFPB. But the response was tepid and kind of danced around assuming real responsibility over its employees' actions.

Adding insult to injury,stunning rprt on #WellsFargo Exec getting $124M as her unit "sandbagged" millions of custmrs https://t.co/iB8Y8TGL33 — Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) September 12, 2016

The US senator from New Jersey isn't happy about the severance agreement Carrie Tolstedt received. The unit leader had been praised by upper management as the standard bearer of the firm and lauded for her unit's cross selling performance.

Tough @FT editorial on failings of #WellsFargo and how its bosses must be held to account https://t.co/2PPTeIpkMspic.twitter.com/Ii1CNrn6Ue — Tony Tassell (@TonyTassell) September 14, 2016

The FT ran a pretty scathing editorial trying to shift the focus off the embroiled employees and on to senior management. "The bank’s bosses should accept accountability for the shortcomings identified by the regulator, rather than lump it all on the sacked salespeople," wrote the FT.

JUST IN: $JPM surpasses Wells Fargo as the largest U.S. bank by market capitalization https://t.co/NbqmiZecfipic.twitter.com/M0sNuQ9t0N — CNBC (@CNBC) September 13, 2016

The kerfuffle wiped about $9 billion dollars off Wells' market cap, dropping the bank from the title of largest U.S. bank. J.P.Morgan now sits atop the industry.