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SF-based Wells Fargo fires employees for allegedly using keyboards to fake work
San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com ^ | June 13, 2024 | By Stephen Council, Tech Reporter

Posted on 06/13/2024 10:22:33 PM PDT by thecodont

Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based banking giant, has fired a small group of employees who allegedly tampered with their computers to fake the appearance of working.

The company’s St. Louis-based subsidiary, Wells Fargo Clearing Services, filed five disclosures with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority saying that it had fired workers in early May. Each disclosure said the worker was “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work.”

Bloomberg, which first reported the firings on Thursday, wrote that “more than a dozen” employees were fired from Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management arm. SFGATE only found the five disclosures, along with another saying that a worker had voluntarily resigned in April, after the allegations.

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Laurie Kight, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo, told SFGATE, “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.” She did not answer questions about what prompted the review or the number of workers involved.

It’s unclear from the disclosures exactly how the workers may have simulated “keyboard activity,” but it would likely be an effort to dupe their bosses while working remotely. During the early pandemic, mouse “jigglers” and automatic button-pressers became newly valuable to work-from-home employees who wanted to keep their accounts “online” even when away from their desks, according to Bloomberg.

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: remotework; wellsfargo
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1 posted on 06/13/2024 10:22:33 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: dfwgator; Red Badger; null and void

2 posted on 06/13/2024 10:27:53 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: thecodont

I have a mouse jiggler that allows me
to keep my screen saver from coming on
when I am just watching something.
It simulates mouse movement on the screen
just one pixel at a time to “fool” the computer
that it is receiving human input.
They can be quite handy.
Made by wiede tech.


3 posted on 06/13/2024 10:32:45 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (Get out of the matrix and get a real life.)
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To: thecodont

“And, they would have got away with it too,
if not for those pesky, tattletale Interns!!”


4 posted on 06/13/2024 10:33:26 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: thecodont
Wells Fargo...has fired a small group of employees who allegedly tampered with their computers to fake the appearance of working

Still, I admire them. Creating the fake work was probably more work than doing the actual work.

5 posted on 06/13/2024 10:34:55 PM PDT by Right_Wing_Madman
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To: thecodont

This guy has the right idea..

https://youtu.be/GIeoeRB2xq8?si=Ap01UCPrDaJ_m6oD


6 posted on 06/13/2024 10:37:29 PM PDT by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: thecodont
Should have used the it was my cat excuse……


7 posted on 06/13/2024 10:37:47 PM PDT by hole_n_one
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To: thecodont

“””””The company’s St. Louis-based subsidiary, Wells Fargo Clearing Services, filed five disclosures with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority saying that it had fired workers in early May.”””””


What caught my eye is that the banks have to tell ‘Big Brother’ when they fire someone.

No we know why the Federal Government is $35 trillion in debt when there are Fed employees reviewing who got fired at a bank.


8 posted on 06/13/2024 10:38:22 PM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
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To: thecodont

“””””The company’s St. Louis-based subsidiary, Wells Fargo Clearing Services, filed five disclosures with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority saying that it had fired workers in early May.”””””


What caught my eye is that the banks have to tell ‘Big Brother’ when they fire someone.

No we know why the Federal Government is $35 trillion in debt when there are Fed employees reviewing who got fired at a bank.


9 posted on 06/13/2024 10:38:23 PM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
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To: Repeal The 17th
"Mouse jigglers."

Sounds like some kind of battery-operated devices the lead characters from "Sex and the City" would keep in their top drawers, to combat loneliness.

Regards,

10 posted on 06/13/2024 10:40:16 PM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

Homer works from home

https://youtu.be/R_rF4kcqLkI?si=jWih—vUozlUvyLr


11 posted on 06/13/2024 10:42:03 PM PDT by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: Presbyterian Reporter

There were definitely Federal regulations when I was in I/T in banking in the 1980s.

We had to conform to standards for our programs and procedures (IBM mainframes).

It was also required that each employee be absent from their job for 2 consecutive weeks in a row. Ostensibly, this allowed any fraud that they might be doing to be caught by Internal Audit methods.

I laid down a 366 cell array and decided whether to go 365 or 366 days depending upon a calculation determining if it was a leap year. The array was prepopulated with 0 across the board.

We only worried about calendar years because it had to be fulfilled in a calendar year. I then laid down every bank holiday into the array by converting Gregorian Date to Julian and using that as an index array position to lay down a 1.

Did the same with each employee’s personal days, sick days, vacation days, etc. But it HAD to be 14 consecutive days in a row.

This was done in RPG II on an IBM Sys/36. I used the XFOOT command in RPG II to immediately tally the whole array. A score less than 14 sent the employee’s name and job location to the report immediately. If that was the case, no further processing on that employee was done and I moved on to the next employee.

If they scored 14 or above, I had to cycle through the array to find 14 “1’s” in a row or they had not fulfilled the Federal regulation.

It worked very well and eliminated any chance of not meeting the Federal requirement on employees in regards to that.

My predecessor and immediate mentor upon hiring (I took his job and he went to Systems) gave me the idea but suggested using an “X” - the 1/0 thing hit me right off and worked beautifully.

Ah, the good old days........


12 posted on 06/13/2024 11:02:46 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: thecodont

Wells Fargo? Wow. No honor among thieves…


13 posted on 06/13/2024 11:25:28 PM PDT by umbagi (Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it. [Twain])
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

For employees like this every minute they are just faking work is another minute they haven’t screwed something up.


14 posted on 06/13/2024 11:28:16 PM PDT by Iron Munro (Sun Tzu: An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes)
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To: Presbyterian Reporter

“… the banks have to tell ‘Big Brother’ when they fire someone.”

This sounds sort of like bank fraud. I know bank robbery is s federal crime, so I assume bank fraud is, too. I don’t know if non-performance ranks up there with buying a retirement home in Cape Verde with the bank’s money, but they can prosecute a ham sandwich.


15 posted on 06/13/2024 11:33:21 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.)
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To: SaveFerris

“But it HAD to be 14 consecutive days in a row.” :)


16 posted on 06/13/2024 11:58:38 PM PDT by A strike (no tyranny that cannot be justified by 'climate change')
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To: A strike

Yep!


17 posted on 06/14/2024 12:07:54 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: thecodont

I can’t hear “Wells Fargo” without remembering this little scandal from just a few years ago:

“From 2002 to 2016, employees used fraud to meet impossible sales goals. They opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge, signed unwitting account holders up for credit cards and bill payment programs, created fake personal identification numbers, forged signatures and even secretly transferred customers’ money.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/business/wells-fargo-settlement.html


18 posted on 06/14/2024 12:10:00 AM PDT by GizmosAndGadgets ( Government big enough to take away your light bulbs is big enough to do any damn thing it wants to.)
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To: A strike
So employees generally got 2 weeks vacation per year - 80 hours - so they should be gone 2 2-day weekends and 2 5-day work weeks - now they could mix that with holidays, sick days, etc. - just as long as they weren't doing their job for 14 consecutive days in a row
19 posted on 06/14/2024 12:13:37 AM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ......)
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To: Repeal The 17th

Yep, I had one of those, too.

If the boss was gonna surreptitiously monitor my computer activity, I was gonna give him a show.


20 posted on 06/14/2024 1:19:57 AM PDT by martin_fierro (< |:)~)
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