Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) recently said that "somebody should go to jail" over the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal nine days after accepting $1,000 from the company's political action committee.
Heitkamp slammed Wells Fargo and its employees for opening about 3.5 million fake accounts without customers' permission in an interview with CNBC earlier this month. The international banking giant has admitted that its employees enrolled customers in programs without their consent in order to meet aggressive sales goals.
"If we can start developing a level of personal responsibility of corporate leadership with the ultimate penalty being a criminal prosecution, we'll see changes in terms of the duty to know," Heitkamp said.
She then said the person "most culpable for making the decisions" should "go to jail."
While Heitkamp publicly grilled Wells Fargo over the scandal, she took money from the company's PAC just days earlier, according to Heitkamp's most recent Federal Election Commission filing.
The North Dakota Democrat accepted a $1,000 donation from the Wells Fargo and Co. Employee PAC just nine days before calling for somebody from the company to go to jail, reported the Say Anything Blog, a site focused on politics in North Dakota.
Heitkamp has now received $15,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC, including $3,500 since the Wells Fargo scandal made headlines.