They started with a small screw-up. (Favoring the widow in order to close an investment account). Then let on with a slightly larger screw-up (Favoring the chil

They started with a small screw-up. (Favoring the widow in order to close an investment account). Then let on with a slightly larger screw-up (Favoring the children in order to get back at the widow for closing that account). Then made the huge screw-up of trying to break the law and force the widow to sell the house. Then they made the gigantic mistake of using up the estate to fight both sides in court. Then they made the mind-blowingly huge mistake of indebting the estate to themselves to keep that fight going. It's just one long series of someone screwing up badly and thinking "wait!? I can fix this, I've got a crazy idea that just might work", then proceeding to fuck up even more. Though with the lengthy timescale it would not at all surprise me if someone got promoted several times for the (prior to the verdict) "great" handling of the afairs. Whoever went to the boss saying "yea, we drained the entire estate into legal fees for our-selves, and now we're even indebting it while keeping both sides fighting" would have at the time been seen by them as a candidate for employee of the year. The 8 billion is outrageous and far too much, but I would love to live in a world where they actually had to pay that amount. Maybe not all to the victims, but most of it to some charities and non-profit organisations fighting for citizens rights against banks. It would seriously send a signal that all this kind of just horrible behavior on the part of the banks isn't profitable in the long run, and could potentially blow your entire organisation out of the water. Making things like moral codes and proper training actually matter to them. As it is, they'll likely just pay a couple of million and scrug it off as an ok attempt at stealing from their clients. The 99 other cases where it actually worked will foot the bill for this time when it failed.