Renowned management guru Peter Drucker famously warned that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If the 2016 Wells Fargo fraud scandal teaches us anything about organizational management, perhaps it is that culture also eats compliance controls for lunch. In this three-part guest article series, Matthew Bedan, from Forensic Risk Alliance, illustrates some of the profound ways that common biases can impact corporate culture and amplify organizational risk by applying the principles of behavioral science to the facts of the Wells Fargo case. This first article describes the scandal and discusses why Wells Fargo’s extensive control infrastructure was insufficient to prevent such pervasive misconduct. See “Ian Hawkins of NBCUniversal on How Nudge Theory Can Improve a Compliance Program” (Jul. 25, 2018).