Wells Fargo adds 1.4M to accounts scandal
Wells Fargo’s fraudulent accounts scandal expanded Thursday with the disclosure of roughly 1.4 million more potentially unauthorized accounts than the bank originally estimated when the episode emerged nearly a year ago.
The announcement confirmed Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan’s Aug. 22 forecast that the investigation likely would confirm wider consumer damage from the scandal by disclosing a new detail: unauthorized enrollment of customers in the bank’s online bill payment system.
While the new disclosures concluded the bank’s review of the issue, investigations or reviews of the episode by the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve and other authorities are continuing.
The San Francisco-based bank initially reviewed 93.5 million current and former customer accounts opened from May 2011 through mid-2015 and identified roughly 2.1 million potentially unauthorized accounts.
But Wells Fargo said the newly completed independent review, which examined more than 165 million retail banking accounts opened from January 2009 through September 2016, found approximately 3.5 million potentially unauthorized accounts.
In all, consumer and smallbusiness owners of approximately 190,000 accounts incurred Wells Fargo fees and charges, up from roughly 130,000 accounts previously identified. The bank said it would provide a total of
$2.8 million in new refunds and credits beyond the $3.3 million previously refunded.
The expanded review also examined online bill payment services and found approximately
528,000 potentially unauthorized enrollments. Wells Fargo said it would refund $910,000 to customers who incurred fees or charges in connection with the services.
“We apologize to everyone who was harmed by unacceptable sales practices that occurred in our retail bank,” Sloan said in a statement issued with the disclosure. “To rebuild trust and to build a better Wells Fargo, our first priority is to make things