In a sharply worded defense of its authority and judgment, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) urged the Eighth Circuit this week to uphold a $10 million fine and lifetime industry ban against Claudia Russ Anderson, a former risk executive at Wells Fargo, who the agency says played a pivotal role in allowing the bank’s infamous fake accounts scandal to flourish.
Calling Anderson’s legal arguments a “fundamental misconception” of constitutional law, the OCC’s Monday brief paints a picture of a senior executive who allegedly misled federal examiners, ignored red flags, and failed to rein in the fraudulent sales practices that became one of the most notorious banking scandals in recent history.
Scapegoat or Scandal Architect? A Legal Battle Erupts
Russ Anderson, once the group risk officer for Wells Fargo’s retail banking arm, has fired back in court, accusing the agency of turning her into a political scapegoat. In her May appeal, she argued the OCC distorted her actions and imposed “invented standards” to shift blame and preserve its own reputation under pressure from Washington.
“These allegations and penalties should never have been adjudicated before a biased agency whose employees were seeking a scapegoat,” she claimed, asserting her constitutional right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment had been denied.
But the OCC wasn’t having it. In its response, the agency catalogued a litany of alleged failures: from weak risk management controls to false statements and concealing material information from regulators. Anderson, the brief states, failed to challenge a toxic incentive compensation scheme that pushed employees to open millions of unauthorized accounts.
