If you thought 5300 was a big number, try the payout to Carrie Tolstedt on her way out the door.

The executive who oversaw this group of rogue employees, Carrie Tolstedt, conveniently announced plans to retire over the summer and, according to Fortune, is being paid $124.6 million on the way out.

To put that in context, the penalty levied against Wells Fargo was $185 million. Somebody in the C-Suite went without an appetizer at lunch to cover that unanticipated cost.

The head honcho, John Stumpf, in an interview given to the San Francisco Chronicle, said:

“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.”

Looks like Carrie solved that problem. Just do it, and don’t bother with that nasty “offering the customer” part. More seriously, if it’s assumed that Stumpf was being reasonably honest, and this was the culture he hoped to instill at Wells Fargo, something went seriously awry.

Clearly there is a disconnect between whatever Mr. Stumpf was telling the public and what was actually going on at Wells Fargo — and that’s putting it politely.

Here’s Mr. Stumpf from that same interview in The Chronicle: “We think everyone here is a risk manager,” he said. “Whether it’s your official title or not, everything we do is a part of that.”

While many are calling for heads to roll, not to mention a clawback of Tolstedt’s golden handshake, the inconsistency of the payout in light of Wells Fargo’s knowledge of what was happening under her watch is mind-boggling. Bear in mind, the investigation into this cesspool was happening well before Tolstedt decided to call it a day, and well before Wells Fargo handed her the big check.  It’s not like they didn’t know this had happened.

You want an exec to go to prison when Wells Fargo handed her almost $125 million instead?

“The magnitude of this situation warrants thorough and comprehensive review,” Senate Banking Committee members, led by Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, wrote in a letter to the committee’s chairman, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama.

A “thorough and comprehensive review.” Not one of those quickie ones. Not a shallow one. A “thorough and comprehensive” one. Thanks for making that clear, Senator.

The letter continued, “Specifically, the committee should thoroughly examine this issue, including: How it is possible that more than 5,000 employees could bilk customers over the course of five years; the timing, extent and disposition of customer complaints; whether Wells Fargo’s sales and compensation structure incentivized employees to engage in deceptive and abusive practices; and what additional safeguards may be needed to prevent this type of behavior.”

Yeah, how is it possible? And how is it possible that the person charged with overseeing these scoundrels, whose job it was (along with everybody else at the bank) to be a “risk manager,” got a payout that would make a small nation blush?

Among the many inexplicable problems here is that Wells Fargo is considered to be one of the good guys. Well, at least one of the better guys.

That’s an important issue because Wells Fargo has always had a reputation as one of the best-managed banks, especially when it comes to risk. On Monday, the bank said it had temporarily suspended its cross-selling initiative, to be on the safe side.

See? The bank suspended its cross-selling initiative just to be safe. Doesn’t that prove what good guys they are? Always thinking of the customer, except when 5300 employees are creating false bank accounts and opening credit cards in their names. Just to be safe.

That people believe someone must be held responsible is easy, but who, why, for what?  Do you think there’s a memo from Carrie Tolstedt telling the people below her to engage in blatant fraud?  Is there some regulation that can be introduced that will prevent this from happening again?

Given all the regulations in place and the billions of dollars poured into compliance efforts, how could something so staggeringly widespread and so blatantly corrupt have happened in the first place?

There’s no answer to this question. There are regulations covering everything shy of how many sheets of toilet paper can be used at a sitting. There is an internal industry of compliance with these regulations, inside cops who are paid to keep them honest. All to no avail, despite the fortunes spent on compliance people who earn no money for the corporation, but exist to appease the regulators and keep the public believing that they’re not robbing them blind.

And this is Wells Fargo, the good bank. Don’t even think about Citibank.

So far, these are all just questions without answers. Wells Fargo took out full-page ads last week in many newspapers (including this one) to “take responsibility.” But taking responsibility includes answering those questions — and we are all still waiting.

The failing here is the assumption that there is “an answer,” that someone or something went terribly wrong, finding a crack in the compliance system through which “566,000 phantom credit card accounts” fell and nobody with an iota of honesty in their blood noticed.  Maybe the answer is right in front of us and we’re just not seeing it:

Despite knowing about the widespread misconduct on her watch, Wells Fargo gave Ms. Tolstedt a glowing farewell. John Stumpf, the chief executive, called her a “role model for responsible leadership” and “a standard-bearer of our culture.” Her compensation — more than $27 million over the last three years — has never been dinged as a result of these problems.

Tolstedt was in charge of a division of Wells Fargo. Not the whole magillah, but just a slice. And still she was paid an astounding salary, only to be compounded by $124.6 million as a small sign of Wells Fargo’s appreciation. Because she wouldn’t have been motivated enough to get out of bed for a measly, oh, $1,246,000, and would have stayed home and baked cookies instead.

While there may be no institutional mechanism that will impact corporations the way they impact individuals to punish them for wrongdoing, the individual incentives are pretty obvious and pervasive. Imagine what Tolstedt would have been paid if she wasn’t in charge of 5300 low-level fraudsters. Who got caught.