I have to say I'm not terribly surprised, having dealt with a number of cases of fraudulent over charging by financial institutions. I would think the most common over charging in the 80s and 90s was by hiking interest rates and then adding penalty interest when payments were missed. I have checked my bank statements fairly thoroughly since the first such case I encountered. As a private individual, I rarely found anything amiss. Since I opened my own practice I am regularly being overcharged, point it out, get a refund, happens again next month. In my case there is nothing sinister going on, just a bank levering charges automatically even when there is an agreement not to do so. A computer/human error. But for many people in the 80s and early 90s, especially people in trouble financially, they were being systematically defrauded by their banks. It was interesting to hear one of the witnesses indicating that say for eg where an interest rate of 10% was agreed, the bank would actually charge 11 or 12% and get away with it. I do sympathise with the officials involved who felt under pressure to do this, I have heard of more than one bank employee having a nervous breakdown due to the pressures involved. Obviously it doesnt excuse it, but ultimately I hope that they do not carry the entire responsibility as the orders came from the top, not the branch levels.