Wells Fargo says that it has found 1.4 more potentially fraudulent bank accounts for a total 3.5 million fraudulent accounts. Also Wells Fargo may have uncovered yet another problem: unauthorized enrollment of customers on its online bill paying services, about 528,000 such cases where customers were signed up without their knowledge or consent. The major problems were uncovered in September of last year when the company admitted that it had created millions of customer accounts without their permission. The bank paid $185 million to settle government lawsuit for this issue.t thousands of employees, trying to meet aggressive sales goals, created accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge. Employees received bonuses for meeting the bank’s sales targets and could be fired if they did not meet them.
At the time, the bank said that 2.1 million suspect accounts had been opened from 2011 to mid-2015. The bank later expanded its review by three years and examined 165 million bank accounts that were created from January 2009 through September. Former employees/whistleblowers have said that they tried to alert bank executives about the problem as long as ten year ago. It is not clear as to whether a new investigation of the company will be started by the Department of Justice.
Jeffrey Newman represents whistleblowers.
