“I don’t want anyone ever offering a product to someone when they don’t know what the benefit is, or the customer doesn’t understand it, or doesn’t want it, or doesn’t need it.”

That was John Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest banks, in an interview about a year ago with The San Francisco Chronicle.

We found out Friday that at least 5,300 of his employees — let me repeat that number because it is so mind-bogglingly large: 5,300 — were engaged in rampant sham deals, secretly signing up myriad customers for two million accounts that they did not authorize, did not know they had, did not need, and clearly did not understand.

Wells Fargo then charged customers at least $1.5 million in fees for those unwanted sham accounts, which were created simply to goose the income of bank employees whose incentive programs rewarded them for opening as many new accounts as possible. Some of the accounts were closed right away, as soon as the employee got credit for them.