Wells Fargo executive raped by co-worker and punished by bank, lawsuit says

A Wells Fargo senior vice president was raped by a colleague who broke into her hotel room and assaulted her while she was intoxicated on a business trip to Southern California.

An unidentified married woman filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday, alleging the bank retaliated against her after she reported the alleged rape to management, excluding her from important meetings and rescheduling some of her clients.

She is suing the bank and four Wells Fargo employees for unspecified damages.

The lawsuit names Eric R. Pagel, senior investment strategist and managing director of the Wells Fargo branch in the El Segundo area of ​​Los Angeles, as a bank executive who allegedly raped her in a Bakersfield, California hotel room in late January 2020. .

Pagel and Jane Doe were among six Wells Fargo employees who traveled to Bakersfield for a series of upscale client meetings at the Padre Hotel on January 28, 2020.

The Post reached out to the hotel for comment.

The lawsuit alleges that in the early evening hours, six employees met for drinks in the lobby of the hotel before heading out for dinner.

When Jane Doe and another Wells Fargo employee, Mina Kotak, went to the bathroom, she “inadvertently left her purse, phone and drink unattended at the table.”

Jane Doe claims that she returned only to find that Pagel, David Weitzel, Mark Peterson, and Brian Ray, who were left at the table, had gone through her purse and stolen her credit card and hotel room key.

According to his LinkedIn page, Weitzel, who is featured in the lawsuit along with Pagel, Peterson and Ray, left Wells Fargo in December 2020. A month after leaving, he took a senior position at First Republic Bank in Manhattan Beach, California.

The Post has asked Weitzel and First Republic Bank for comment. Calls to Page’s phone went unanswered. The Post also left messages on Page’s social media.

Around 9:30 pm that same day, six Wells Fargo executives headed to a bar for more alcoholic drinks. As the night wore on, Jane Doe “became more and more intoxicated” and “her memory became more and more blurred,” the lawsuit says.

Jane Doe claims that she “remembered going back to her hotel room” with her manager Weitzel, who at the time was also senior vice president and regional private banking manager at Wells Fargo.

Weitzel “discovered [her] hotel room door and left it inside,” court documents say. Jane Doe “subsequently received a knock on the door.”

It is alleged that when she opened the door, Pagel “rushed in and started kissing” her. He then “proceeded to sexually assault and rape Jane Doe while she was intoxicated,” according to court documents.

The next morning, Jane Doe “remembered Pagel was in her hotel room,” though her recollection of what had happened hours earlier was “vague,” court documents say.

During the day, “the memory of the rape came back to her in fragments,” the lawsuit says. She then recalled seeing Pagel “take the buckle off his belt” before “feeling Pagel kiss her on the lips and thigh and then grab her.” [her] breasts and her entire body,” it was alleged.

Two days later, Jane Doe “appeared before Pagel for an explanation of what happened,” according to court documents.

Peigel “confessed [Jane Doe] that they had sex several times without contraceptives,” it was alleged. Pagel also “knew” that she was intoxicated, according to court documents.

According to court documents, on Feb. 3 – six days after the alleged rape – Jane Doe consulted with her gynecologist about getting a rape kit and taking a test to see if she was drugged on the night of Jan. 28.

But the gynecologist told Jane Doe that any medication she had taken nearly a week earlier had already worn off her system by then, according to court documents.

The doctor also told her that the rape kit would be “invalid” because she had already showered and had sex with her husband after the alleged rape, the lawsuit says.

The woman also alleges in the lawsuit that she was repeatedly subjected to sexual harassment, including vulgar remarks and rude remarks about her appearance.

Pagel is said to have repeatedly offered to “trade sex for money” to Jane Doe by divorcing her husband and “going to bed with the son of a wealthy client,” according to the lawsuit.

Just weeks after the alleged rape, Pagel allegedly told Jane Doe that she would be a “great match” for their “rich client” because the client is “attracted to beautiful women and has a sexual relationship with his secretary”.

When Jane Doe complained to Weitzel about Pagel’s “inappropriate comments,” Weitzel “simply suggested to the plaintiff not to give Pagel a ‘window of opportunity’ to be inappropriate,” according to the court record.

According to the lawsuit, in November 2020, Jane Doe “plucked up the courage” to file a formal complaint against the Wells Fargo Ethics Helpline. She also filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office in Lomitas.

Her lawyer, Ronaldo Zambrano, said the police did not file a case because it was a “he said/she said” situation.

The Post has reached out to the Sheriff’s Department for comment.

After filing a complaint with Wells Fargo, Jane Doe alleges she was “subjected to adverse actions in relation to her employment,” including transferring her clients to another employee without her involvement and exclusion from important customer communications, the lawsuit says.

Wells Fargo did “almost nothing to actually investigate” the rape allegation, the lawsuit says. The bank also allegedly failed to investigate her complaints of sexual harassment.

After Jane Doe filed a report with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2021, the bank has finally launched an internal investigation, the lawsuit says.

Around the same time that she filed a complaint with the EEOC, Jane Doe “began a sick leave due to stress, anxiety, and depression stemming from both the trauma of the sexual assault and the total lack of care from Wells Fargo” to investigate the incident. according to the claim.

Jane Doe’s lawyers accused Wells Fargo of “incompetence” for dragging out the investigation for about eight months.

In July 2021, Jane Doe resigned from Wells Fargo because her continued job at the bank was “unbearable for her mental health,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges that Pagel touched Jane Doe several times.

He allegedly frequently commented on her appearance, saying that she was “aging”.[d] like fine wine” and praised her for the way she looks in “tight jeans” that “make her butt look beautiful”.

Calls to Page’s cell phone asking him to answer went unanswered.

A Wells Fargo spokesperson told The Post: “We take all allegations of misconduct very seriously and are looking into the suit.”

A source close to the situation told The Post that Pagel was a “colleague” and “coeval” of Jane Doe, and that she did not report directly to him at the time of the alleged incident.

The bank also conducted its own investigation into this matter, however, according to the source, its results are unknown.

Ronald Zambrano, Jane Doe’s Los Angeles attorney, admitted to The Post that Pagel was not Jane Doe’s boss.

But under California law, Pagel fits the legal definition of an “executive” who had authority over others in the company’s hierarchy – even if, according to Zambrano, she may not have directly reported to him.

“The idea that Mr. Pagel, as managing director and senior investment strategist, did not have certain powers [by law] is quixotic if not a farce on the part of Wells Fargo,” Zambrano told The Post, citing the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

“Wells Fargo may not like the FEHA definition, but eventually they will have to come to terms with it,” the lawyer said.

At the time of the incident, Ray was a private banker and vice president of Wells Fargo. Peterson was a senior wealth strategist and senior vice president at a bank.

Attempts to contact Ray and Peterson were unsuccessful.