SAN FRANCISCO – A California man alleges a financial institution's employees mishandled his and other class members' information in order to meet sales quotas.
Alex Chernavsky filed a complaint on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated on Nov. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Wells Fargo Bank NA and Wells Fargo & Co. alleging violation of the Stored Communication Act, invasion of privacy, negligence and other counts.
According to the complaint, the plaintiff alleges that he and class members were enticed/misled by the defendant into opening additional accounts with the defendant. However, in the process of reaching their purportedly impossible quota, the defendant's agents resort to abusive and fraudulent tactics including "sandbagging," or collecting manual applications; "pinning," or unauthorized enrollment of an account into online banking; and "bundling," or offering false packages to tie in another account, thereby causing their customers to suffer damages.
The plaintiffs hold Wells Fargo Bank NA and Wells Fargo & Co. responsible because the defendants allegedly failed to take precautions to safeguard sensitive private financial information, failed to follow applicable state law designed to protect cardholder information and failed to ensure that its employees did not misuse customers’ personal information.
The plaintiffs request a trial by jury and seek judgment against defendants, damages, attorney's fees, costs, and further relief as the court deems just. He is represented by William M. Audet, S. Clinton Woods and Ling Y. Kuang of Audet & Partners LLP in San Francisco.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Case number 3:16-cv-06326