Fifth Third employees opened fake accounts to meet sales goals, US government says

Fifth Third Bank employees allegedly opened fake accounts without customers’ consent, because they hoped to meet aggressive sales goals, according to a lawsuit filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday.

The CFPB alleges Fifth Third employees created fake deposit and credit card accounts, and transferred money back and forth between consumers’ existing accounts and the fake ones in order to be credited for sales.

The Ohio-based Fifth Third’s incentive-based pay structure encourages its employees to “cross-sell” products and convince customers to sign up for more services, the CFPB said.

Wells Fargo was accused of similar practices and was slapped with a $3 billion fine in February.

Fifth Third Bank rejected CFPB’s allegations in a statement: “Fifth Third’s compensation and employee incentive structure does not reward retail employees for opening unauthorized accounts, nor does it give them sales quotas or product-specific targets,” said Susan Zaunbrecher, Chief Legal Officer.

Zaunbrecher also said the bank had already discovered the 1,100 fraudulent accounts through its own internal investigation, and that the CFPB did not identify any additional fake accounts. The bank has 10 million accounts, and the fake ones involved “less than $30,000 in improper customer charges that were ultimately waived or reimbursed to customers years ago,” Zaunbrecher added.