THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Wells Fargo, notorious of late for its hugely deficient business ethics, apparently set up a call-in hotline for employees who wanted to report ethics violations. The bank used these reports to eliminate those employees who might report the bank to higher authorities.

Wells Fargo admitted to firing 5,300 employees for engaging in these shocking tactics. The bank earlier this month paid $185 million in penalties and has since apologized.

Now CNNMoney is hearing from former Wells Fargo (WFC) workers around the country who tried to put a stop to these illegal tactics. Almost half a dozen workers who spoke with us say they paid dearly for trying to do the right thing: they were fired.

"They ruined my life," Bill Bado, a former Wells Fargo banker in Pennsylvania, told CNNMoney.

Bado not only refused orders to open phony bank and credit accounts. The New Jersey man called an ethics hotline and sent an email to human resources in September 2013, flagging unethical sales activities he was being instructed to do.
Eight days after that email, a copy of which CNNMoney obtained, Bado was terminated. The stated reason? Tardiness.

Retaliating against whistleblowers is a major breach of trust. Ethics hotlines are exactly the kind of safeguards put in place to prevent illegal activity from taking place and provide refuge to employees from dangerous work environments.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf made precisely that point on Tuesday when he testified before angry Senators.
"Each team member, no matter where you are in the organization, is encouraged to raise their hands," Stumpf told lawmakers. He mentioned the anonymous ethics line, adding, "We want to hear from them."

But that's not the experience of some former Wells Fargo workers.

One former Wells Fargo human resources official even said the bank had a method in place to retaliate against tipsters. He said that Wells Fargo would find ways to fire employees "in retaliation for shining light" on sales issues. It could be as simple as monitoring the employee to find a fault, like showing up a few minutes late on several occasions.

The easiest way to get rid of troublemakers, get them to turn themselves in to the hotline. And a corporation the size of Wells Fargo can follow up and make their lives a misery with less effort than it takes to clean up their act.