• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Wells Fargo to pay $37.3 million to settle U.S. claims it fraudulently overcharged customers

September 27, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 27, 2021

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wells Fargo & Co will pay $37.3 million to settle U.S. government claims it fraudulently overcharged commercial clients on foreign exchange services, the latest in a string of scandals over the bank’s treatment of customers.

Monday’s settlement resolves U.S. Department of Justice civil fraud charges against the fourth-largest U.S. bank, and includes a $35.3 million fine plus a $2 million forfeiture.

Wells Fargo previously returned $35.3 million to customers as restitution, making its total payout about $72.7 million.

The Justice Department said sales specialists jokingly used expressions such as “back the truck up” and “when in doubt, spread them out” when they were overcharging customers, with one referring to the sales group as a “bucket shop.”

Wells Fargo declined to comment, pending required approval of the settlement by U.S. District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan federal court.

The San Francisco-based bank has been subject since 2018 to a Federal Reserve cap on assets, which must remain below $1.95 trillion until it improves its governance and risk controls.

Wells Fargo has already paid more than $5 billion in fines since the scandals began in 2016.

On Sept. 22, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank was closely monitoring the bank’s efforts to address “widespread and pervasive” problems.

Powell spoke eight days after Massachusetts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for Wells Fargo to be broken up.

Shares of Wells Fargo closed down 36 cents, or 0.8%, at $47.56.

Monday’s settlement resolves claims that Wells Fargo defrauded 771 commercial customers, including many small- and mid-sized businesses, on foreign exchange services between 2010 and 2017.

The government said Wells Fargo systematically charged higher spreads and sales margins than it promised, and encouraged the overcharges by linking specialists’ bonuses to how much revenue they generated.

According to court papers, specialists also used what they called the “big figure trick” or “transposition error game” to cheat customers, such as by charging $1.0213 to buy euros instead of $1.0123, picking up an extra 89 basis points.

A whistleblower, former Wells Fargo foreign exchange trader Paul Kohn, will receive $1.6 million from the bank’s payout, the maximum available.

His lawyer, Jonathan Willens, said Kohn had worked on a different desk from where the alleged fraud occurred, but was in the same room and could hear what transpired.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter and Dan Grebler)

Source Link Wells Fargo to pay $37.3 million to settle U.S. claims it fraudulently overcharged customers

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. China Evergrande to delay loan interest payments to banks, REDD reports
  2. China says U.S. and allies have duty to aid Afghanistan
  3. France urges Britain to uphold Brexit deals, restore trust
  4. A life and death question for regulators: Is Tesla’s Autopilot safe?

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • “On A Timescale Of Millions Of Years”: Scientists Detect Pulsing “Heartbeat” Under Africa
  • Skin Moles: What Are They And When Should You Get Them Checked?
  • 20 New Bat Viruses – Some “Cousins” Of Deadly Hendra And Nipah – Spark Fears Of Human Disease
  • “Nobody Expected This”: Earth’s Rotation Will Speed Up In July And August, Bucking The Downward Trend
  • What Is The “Heat Dome” Causing Baking Temperatures In The Eastern US This June?
  • Over 500 Bird Species At Risk In Next Century As We Face “Unprecedented” Extinction Crisis
  • World First: Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring
  • Largest Ever Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory Begins Construction
  • Plastic Trash? This Bacterium Can Turn It Into Paracetamol – AKA Tylenol®
  • What Is The Earliest Evidence For Blue Eyes In Humans?
  • Now 124 Years Old, Henry Is The World’s Oldest Known Crocodile – And He’s A Big Boy
  • What Happened When A Kansas Family Lived With 2,055 Brown Recluse Spiders For 5 And A Half Years
  • The Last Thing A NASA Spacecraft Saw Before Plunging Into Saturn
  • Neolithic Ireland Wasn’t Ruled By Incestuous “God-Kings” After All
  • NASA’s Voyager 1 & 2 Were Not The First Missions To Reach The Outer Solar System
  • See Incredible First Images From Space Mission That Will Weigh All The World’s Forests
  • Nudes Of The Stone Age: 6,000-Year-Old Kołobrzeg Venus Is A Prehistoric Masterpiece
  • Cannabis And Human Remains Sent To Space Go Missing After Returning To Earth On SpaceX Mission
  • Mercury’s Steep Cliffs Might Be The Result Of The Sun Squeezing The Planet
  • Dennis Hope: The Man Who Allegedly Sold Presidents Land On The Moon (That He Doesn’t Own)
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version