SAN FRANCISCO–Wells Fargo has agreed to pay a $575 million fine to divided among all 50 states and the District of Columbia to settle civil charges related to the bank's fake-accounts scandals.
The agreement, which applies to charges brought by states' attorneys general, is in addition to the approximately $1.5 billion in fines the bank has paid for a wide variety of other illegal activities since 2016, when it was discovered the bank’s employees had created as many as 3.5-million fake accounts in customers’ names order to meet aggressive cross-sales goals.
As CUToday.info has extensively reported, Wells Fargo has also been found to have engage in illegal activities around numerous other activities, ranging from unnecessary foreclosures to forcing customers to take insurance products they didn’t need to illegal actions in small business accounts.
As part of the latest agreement with the state AGs, Well Fargo said it will also designate teams to review customer inquiries and create a website that describes the bank's remediation efforts.
"This agreement underscores our serious commitment to making things right in regard to past issues as we work to build a better bank," Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said in a released statement.
Wells Fargo continues to operate under rare restrictions imposed by the Federal Reserve in February of 2018 that place a cap on the bank’s growth and limit it to approximately $2 trillion in total assets under the Fed is satisfied the bank has changed its culture.