Dirt Diggers Digest - The truth is that large companies are rarely first time offenders. If you look into their background, you are likely to see evidence of past behavior that presaged the recent misconduct.
It is now easier than ever to research that track record thanks to a major expansion of Violation Tracker my colleagues and I just rolled out. We posted an additional ten years of data, extending coverage back to 2000 and in the process nearly doubling the size of the database to 300,000 entries. Together, these account for $394 billion in fines and settlements — 95 percent of which was assessed against 2,800 large parent companies and their subsidiaries.
Take the example of Equifax, which is at the center of a growing scandal over its apparent negligence in protecting personal information and its delay in reporting a major hack. Violation Tracker shows that early this year the company was fined $2.5 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for using deceptive means to lure people into purchasing costly credit-protection services. The company was also ordered to provide $3.8 million in restitution to affected customers. Over the previous two decades, Equifax was fined three times by the Federal Trade Commission.
The announcement by the CFPB last year that it was fining Wells Fargo $100 million for creating bogus customer accounts — a scandal that has subsequently mushroomed — was far from the first time the bank had gotten into trouble for questionable practices. Violation Tracker documents prior penalties totaling some $11 billion going back to 2000 for offense such as mortgage abuses, toxic securities abuses, and discriminatory practices.
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