[Photo:  Prudential HQ's in Newark, NJ - Wikimedia Commons]

Prudential Financial was hit with a wrongful termination lawsuit by 3 employees who had worked in the insurer’s corporate investigations division. According to the complaint filed in New Jersey state court, Prudential allegedly covered up fraudulent sales of life insurance policies through Wells Fargo to low-income customers - Julie Han Broderick, Darron Smith, Thomas Schreck.  This marks the latest flare-up in the accounts scandal plaguing Wells Fargo, which isn’t a defendant in the lawsuit against Prudential.

The trio said executives ignored their reports of the abuses for fear of alienating Wells Fargo as a business partner. Instead, they were placed on administrative leave and escorted from the building in a “perp walk” and now have a “threat of imminent termination hanging over their heads.”

REPORTS OF ALLEGED ABUSES.  Many of the customers, who often had Hispanic last names, didn’t know what they had purchased and there were “a large number of similarities” between the way Wells Fargo employees opened bogus bank accounts without customers’ knowledge and the way Prudential’s “MyTerm” policies were sold by the bank.

The complaint filed in New Jersey state court further notes:

• Prudential MyTerm Policies were aimed at people who couldn’t otherwise obtain life insurance and could be purchased only at kiosks located at Wells Fargo branches or online using Wells Fargo credit cards or bank accounts.
• Policies were sold predominantly to people with Hispanic names in Southern California, South Florida and southern regions of Texas and Arizona the plaintiffs.
• 70% of the policies sold in 2014, the year the program started, lapsed, and that sales of the policies spiked near the end of each quarter.

A spokesperson for the Prudential Financial said in an emailed statement:  “These former employees were terminated for appropriate and legitimate reasons that were entirely unrelated to Prudential’s business with Wells Fargo and Prudential’s decision to examine sales of the MyTerm product.”

Invoking New Jersey’s Conscientious Employee Protection Act, the 3 former employees seek lost wages and other compensation, plus punitive damages.