Fraud at US Bank

The original fraud allegation story appeared in the Oregonian (Portland, OR) on December 23, 2001 (Brent
Walth). If you want to read the original article, it is available in archives for about $ 2. Go to the Oregonian's
Web site (www.oregonlive.com/oregonian), and click on "search long-term 15 year archives" (located below
"Today's News"). You will be connected to a third party archive service. In the search box, type in " U.S. Bank,
fraud, Glenn ", and a search period of 12/1/2001 - 1/1/2002. That will bring up listings for a couple different
versions of the article. They are all basically the same; just different newspaper additions.

SUMMARY OF THE STORY:

Tammy Glenn was an internal investigator for US Bank in Oregon. She had many contacts in local law
enforcement and both the FBI and Secret Service, and was highly regarded in her field. She received numerous
high level commendations and was credited with cracking some relatively large fraud cases.

In 1999, she became aware of possible fraud involving U.S. Bank's Advantage Line program that offerred small
businesses a $ 75,000 credit line and $ 25,000 credit card. Some "personal bankers" at U.S. Bank were
apparently manipulating and abusing the no income verification feature of this program. What Glenn found was
that some personal bankers were using independent loan brokers to find customers, and charging the customers
$ 7,500 to $ 10,000 in application fees, for a service that U.S. Bank normally did for free. What these personal
bankers and brokers were doing was withdrawing the application fees from customers Advantage Line accounts,
without authorization, and splitting the proceeds. In addition, a number of the applications were found to be for
companies that didn't even exist; The team of personal bankers and brokers was opening fraudulent accounts,
and then using the accounts to acquire funds that would never be paid back.

Glenn claims that as the scope of the fraudulent activities appeared to widen, U.S. Bank took steps to impede
her investigation, including telling her to not report the findings to law enforcement authorities. Finally she says,
U.S. Bank told her and her partner to end the investigation and to lie to the FBI (she had reported the findings
anyways, as required by law).

Glenn quit her job in September 1999, just as U.S. Bank was preparing to fire her. Oddly enough, U.S. Bank
used her investigative materials to defend itself in a lawsuit brought by one of the fired personal bankers involved
in the fraud.

So, is this a rare glimpse at how things really operate inside US Bank? Maybe; we'll never know. Nothing else
has been made public about this case. You can bet that US Bank worked hard and fast to quickly settle with
Tammy Glenn, so that none of the potentially damaging inside information (like how widespread the fraud was;
who was involved; what management knew about it) was ever made public.