Fired over a piece of cardboard

Richard Eggers stands in the Laundromat in Carlisle, Iowa that has come back to haunt him. Wells Fargo fired Eggers on July 13, in compliance with a new federal law. The tougher standards are meant to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes such as identity theft and money laundering. (AP Photo/The Des Moines Register, Andrea Melendez)

Banks are under strict rules to make sure there’s never again a 2008 debacle, and those rules apply to every bank employee including Richard Eggers, who worked in a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Office in Des Moines Iowa, answering the phones: a customer service telephone jockey.

He did his job well until one day the email went out that the FDIC would be enforcing a new rule.

“It states that anyone with a criminal record cannot work in a position of financial responsibility,” said Eggers.

Bad news for Richard Eggers who, on a February night in 1963, was hanging out at the Laundromat with a friend, watching the clothes go ’round, when he got bored.

“And for no good reason I started cutting out dime sized pieces of cardboard to see if they work in the coin machines,” said Eggers, “which they don’t.”

The sheriff caught him – cardboard-handed – and arrested him for fraud. And now, 49 years later, his bank has no choice but to fire him unless he applies for a waiver.

“Lower personnel, like myself, were simply shown the door and told that we could call the FDIC. The management personnel who were caught in this had waivers filed for them by Wells Fargo,” said Eggers.

So Richard waits to see if his waiver is granted. And that is how a bank regulation, intended to prevent another meltdown due to guys who made fraudulent securities out of thin air, ended up protecting us from a guy who made fraudulent dimes out of cardboard.