title:  Bernie Sanders And Elizabeth Warren Drop BOMBSHELL On Wall Street Execs
text: The Department of Justice has begun their criminal probe into Wells Fargo over the firing of 5,300 employees after said employees were coerced into opening over 2 million unauthorized accounts in an effort to boost their stock prices.As the criminal probe begins, 14 Senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (whose video grilling CEO John Stumpf went viral) wrote a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking that the investigation primarily focus on executives with the company, not lower level employees:Every time the Department of Justice settles a case of corporate fraud without holding individuals accountable, it reinforces the notion that the wealthy and powerful have purchased a higher class of justice for themselves. That s why the Wells Fargo investigation is so important.  Last week s Senate Banking Committee hearing with Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John Stumpf raised serious questions that demand additional answers and point to potential individual wrongdoing  We are not in a position to determine if any of the senior executives at Wells Fargo committed criminal conduct.  That is ultimately the job of the Justice Department and courts.  But these facts raise questions about whether senior executives, including Mr. Stumpf, knowingly allowed illegal conduct to continue.Senators who signed the letter are Tammy Baldwin, Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, Al Franken, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mazie Hirono, Angus King, Amy Klobuchar, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ron Wyden.Twelve Democrats and two Independents. Not a single Republican signed the letter.The letter states that Stumpf knew as early as 2013 that employees were opening up the illegal accounts but failed to disclose the information to investors and instead used the illegal accounts as a way to inflate stock prices. In other words, Stumpf was committing fraud.The end of the letter praises the actions taken by Warren s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but it still holds out hope that the DOJ will investigate executives personally:While the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency settlements in this case are a good first step toward providing restitution to Wells Fargo s customers, they are no substitute for a thorough Justice Department investigation into potential wrongdoing by senior executives at the bank.  We hope the Department follows through on its promise in the Yates memo and brings all the resources it has to bear on investigating the conduct of Wells Fargo s senior leadership.Sanders wrote a letter to regulators earlier, asking if any investigations against the executives personally were being conducted, saying,  Wall Street won t change until we make it clear that no bank is too big to fail and no CEO is too big to jail. So far, his questions remain unanswered. Hopefully, the letter sent by these progressive senators doesn t go unanswered.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images