LOS ANGELES _ There were fewer TV cameras and less pomp and circumstance, but a hearing outside Los Angeles on Tuesday on the Wells Fargo & Co. fake accounts scandal was an otherwise familiar experience, with lawmakers attacking the bank.
California state Assemblyman Matt Dababneh, a Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Banking Committee, which called for Tuesday's hearing, said in his opening statement that he was dismayed by last month's revelations that thousands of Wells Fargo employees, trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, created as many as 2 million unauthorized accounts over the past several years.
Dababneh noted that he is not only a Wells Fargo customer, but that he has also worked with the bank to host events to promote financial literacy and for people who had never had a bank account.
"It is disappointing to find out some of the students and seniors we may have helped get services and information may now have gotten fraudulent accounts that did more harm than good," he said.
Though the bank has officially admitted no wrongdoing, it agreed last month to pay regulators $185 million to settle investigations into its sales practices. Those investigations and the bank's own internal reports found that Wells Fargo fired 5,300 workers for creating unauthorized accounts over the past five years.
The settlement, announced Sept. 8, has sparked a firestorm of criticism of the bank, which is now the subject of investigations by federal prosecutors and the Department of Labor and remains a popular target for lawmakers across the country.
Chairman and Chief Exectuive John Stumpf has twice appeared on Capitol Hill, where members of the House and Senate excoriated the bank for its sales practices and Stumpf himself for the apparent lack of oversight and accountability by top executives.
Stumpf was invited to Tuesday's hearing but did not appear. In his place, the bank sent David Galasso, president of Well's Fargo's Northern and Central California regions.
Galasso reiterated much of what Stumpf told lawmakers at the congressional hearings, including steps the bank is taking to compensate its customers and repair any damage caused by unwanted accounts.
He noted, for instance, that Wells Fargo has pledged to review accounts created as far back as 2009 _ two years earlier than called for by the bank's settlement with regulators. Still, there's evidence Wells Fargo workers were creating unauthorized accounts well before 2009.
Vice News on Monday reported that a branch manager in Washington state spotted an unauthorized account created in 2005 and reported it to Wells Fargo's head of community banking in early 2006.
Galasso said the creation of unauthorized accounts was not "representative of Wells Fargo's culture" and that workers who created those accounts had "done something very wrong."
He stressed that the unauthorized accounts were not good for the bank's bottom line.
"Contrary to what you may have read, we lose money on these accounts," Galasso said. "We also lose customers and it damages our reputation."
Still, Galasso, like Stumpf, tried to downplay the severity of the accounts scandal, saying that he has met with hundreds of customers in the weeks since the settlement was announced and has heard no complaints about unauthorized accounts.
"I have yet to meet one customer who has come in and said, 'I had an unauthorized account, please close it,'" Galasso said.
On Tuesday, though, he heard from a handful of affected, angry customers.
Earl Brooks, who lives outside Los Angeles, told Galasso that a credit card account had been opened in his name without his authorization. When he went to close the account, he said bank workers encouraged him to keep the card, saying that closing the account could damage his credit score.
Philip Jones of Los Angeles said unauthorized accounts were created for him in 2005 and again in 2007. Jones said Wells Fargo's promise to pay customers back for any fees they paid on unauthorized accounts doesn't acknowledge the time and trouble its customers have gone through as they've dealt with accounts they never wanted.
"You keep talking about making people whole, but making whole is a financial statement for you. It takes hours and hours of work. You can't make me whole," said Jones, who is no longer a Wells Fargo customer.
The bank has said that it has paid some 100,000 customers about $25 on average to compensate them for fees associated with unauthorized accounts.
Tuesday's hearing comes amid growing demands from state and local officials for sanctions against Wells Fargo over the accounts scandal.
Last week, officials in Seattle and Chicago, as well as the state treasurer of Illinois, said they would cut off some business relationships with the bank. The week before, California Treasurer John Chiang announced sanctions of his own, including prohibiting the bank from underwriting certain state bond deals for the next year.
Earlier Tuesday, Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz introduced a motion that would call for the city to cut business ties to banks that use predatory sales practices.
The motion was supported by the union-backed Committee for Better Banks, which wants all banks to eliminate sales goals. It calls for changes to the city's Responsible Banking Ordinance, a 2012 law that requires banks to submit reports on their lending and charitable activities in Los Angeles.
It's not clear if additional state sanctions could be forthcoming, but Debabneh said Tuesday's hearing could be a first step toward legislation aimed at curtailing abusive practices by banks.
He said that could include state rules aimed at preventing Wells Fargo and other institutions from using arbitration clauses to shield themselves from lawsuits over unauthorized accounts.
The use of those clauses by Wells Fargo has emerged as an issue in the scandal.
