WASHINGTON—The Department of Justice is probing Wells Fargo’s wholesale banking unit for fraud in the wake of reports that employees adjusted corporate customers’ information on documents without their knowledge or consent.
Workers in the bank’s wholesale unit are said to have added or changed personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers and addresses for people associated with its business clients in 2017 and early 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the unit was pressed with regulatory deadlines, including one related to anti-money laundering controls.
The DOJ is said to be investigating whether management influenced employee actions, people familiar with the matter told the Journal, looking to see whether there is a pattern of behavior when it comes to management pressure.
Wells Fargo became aware of the incident in May and told FOX Business at the time that the incident involved internal documents used for internal purposes only, and no customers were negatively impacted.
Bank’s Own Review
The bank’s own review revealed that the issue within the wholesale banking unit was spread out among more divisions than it initially thought, according to the Journal.
In a statement on Thursday a spokesperson for the company said, "the situation involved a new process and a new required document," adding that additional training and procedures have since been implemented. The bank reiterated that no customers were negatively impacted.
As CUToday.info has reported previously, the bank’s troubles began with its phony accounts scandal in which employees opened approximately 3.5 million unauthorized accounts as they sought to meet aggressive sales quotas. Wells Fargo has since paid more than $1 billion in fines for the account-opening scandal and numerous others and is operating under a growth cap put in place by the Federal Reserve.