(Image credit: Courtesy Yolanda Quesada)

A Milwaukee Wells Fargo employee was fired after a background check discovered 40-year-old shoplifting incidents from 1972.

Yolanda Quesada, 58, worked in customer service at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Milwaukee for five years. Although she has a number of recognition awards from her employer, two shoplifting arrests when she was 18 were reason enough to be fired, according to her employer.

Wells Fargo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Quesada told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that her employer would not let her explain the shoplifting incidents, which were from a department store in 1972. Although she said she wants her job back, her termination letter stated that she is no longer eligible to work at Wells Fargo, the Journal Sentinel said.

The letter from an outsourced background check company states that she was fined $50 for the first offense and had one year of probation for the second theft.

"Due to legal requirements and changes in the regulatory environment, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage has been performing a thorough background check on all mortgage team members that includes a fingerprint check with the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 2010 on new employees, and on existing employees since last year," a Wells Fargo spokesman told the newspaper. "Because Wells Fargo is an insured depository institution, we are bound by federal law that generally prohibits us from hiring or continuing the employment of any person who we know has a criminal record involving dishonesty or breach of trust."

The letter does not accuse Quesada of lying to Wells Fargo about the shoplifting incidents. When she first applied, she remembers only being asked if she had more serious felonies, which she said she did not, the Journal Sentinel reported.