Even pet insurance is not safe from Wells Fargo’s scandals

Wells Fargo (WFC) has begun refunding customer who were harmed when the bank charged them for products including pet insurance, legal services, home warranties and other forms of insurance, a person familiar with the matter told CNNMoney on Thursday.

An ongoing review at Wells Fargo has found billing and telemarketing problems with so-called “add-on” products that are added to customer accounts, the source said.

Hundreds of thousands of Wells Fargo customers may have been charged for dozens of products they didn’t fully understand, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

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Wells Fargo Can’t Duck Federal Class Action Suit

SANTA ANA, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge indicated Monday that he will allow nationwide litigation to go forward accusing Wells Fargo Bank of forcing unneeded auto insurance on borrowers.

However, in a tentative decision, U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford said he may pare back the plaintiffs’ claims dramatically, including racketeering claims.

The litigation — a number of class actions from around the country consolidated in front of Guilford in Southern California — is only one of the problems to beset Wells Fargo since it admitted two years ago having pressured workers to sign customers up to unwanted bank accounts without their knowledge.

The bank has agreed to pay a $142 million settlement to those customers surreptitiously saddled with unwanted accounts. A federal judge in San Francisco approved the settlement May 30.

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Wells Fargo fired whistleblower for complaints about incentives to mislead: lawsuit

The former head of beleaguered San Francisco-based bank Wells Fargo’s foreign exchange group claims he was fired weeks before he was to tell federal regulators about incentives that encouraged employees to “make false and misleading representations to customers, to engage in abusive sales practices, and to enrich themselves at the expense of clients.”

That’s according to the legal firm representing him in a lawsuit filed Thursday in San Francisco County Superior Court.

Wells Fargo declined to comment.

Simon Fowles alleges that he was terminated after years of making complaints to his managers and high-level executives about goings-on in the foreign exchange sales department. He had told bank management he planned to tell the U.S. Office of Controller of the Currency about the incentives, and was sacked “just weeks before” he was scheduled to talk to the regulators, his law firm said.

Fowles claims he had warned management of “significant risks of illegal activity, mail and wire fraud, unlawful profiteering, and regulatory violations he believed would result from the compensation plan used by Wells Fargo to compensate members of the FX (foreign exchange) sales team,” according to the San Francisco law firm of attorney Daniel Feder.

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Sacramento sues Wells Fargo, says bank discriminated against black and Latino borrowers

The city of Sacramento has filed a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo alleging the banking giant steers African American and Latino borrowers into high-risk and high-cost mortgages.

The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, also seeks monetary damages against Wells Fargo, alleging the mortgages forced the city “to divert resources intended for other programs” to provide services to blighted neighborhoods impacted by the lending practices.

“These illegal practices suppressed property values in minority and low income communities in Sacramento, reduced the city’s property tax revenues, and increased the cost of providing municipal services such as police, fire fighting and code enforcement,” the city’s lawsuit reads.

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Robins Kaplan LLP Appointed Co-Lead Counsel in Civil Action over Wells Fargo Auto Insurance Scheme

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–National trial firm Robins Kaplan LLP^® has been court appointed as co-lead counsel on behalf of plaintiffs impacted by Wells Fargo’s acknowledged practice of wrongfully charging auto loan borrowers for unnecessary and duplicative auto insurance. A report by The New York Times uncovering the bank’s misconduct indicated that more than 800,000 customers were affected, and Wells Fargo has estimated that it will provide customers with at least $130 million in cash remediation and account adjustments.

“We are eager to vindicate the rights of borrowers who have endured financial harm, repossessions, and lasting credit damage as a result of Wells Fargo’s admitted scheme,” said Kellie Lerner, a partner with Robins Kaplan’s Antitrust and Trade Regulation group in New York, who is representing the plaintiffs.

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Wells Fargo Fights Oakland’s Lending Lawsuit

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Wells Fargo on Thursday asked a federal judge to reject Oakland’s lawsuit claiming the bank’s racist lending practices cost the city millions in lost tax revenue.

“If a borrower got a bad loan, did they default because of that or because they lost their job?” Wells Fargo attorney Paul Hancock, of K and L Gates in Miami, asked during the Thursday hearing.

Oakland sued Wells Fargo in 2015, claiming the bank steered minority homebuyers into predatory loans that caused hundreds of foreclosures, lost tax revenue, and extra city spending to tackle blight and abandoned homes.

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More Wells Fargo workers allege retaliation for whistleblowing

More former Wells Fargo employees allege they were fired after they tried to blow the whistle on shady activity at the bank.

That’s according to a new filing by Wells Fargo (WFC), which disclosed claims of “retaliation” by ex-employees.

Wells Fargo has been at the center of a number of scandals over the past year. This filing addresses two in particular — when the bank forced thousands of customers into car insurance they didn’t need, and when it wrongly charged homebuyers to lock in mortgage rates.

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Workers at shuttered Wells Fargo call center in Bethlehem accuse bank of sending their jobs overseas

Workers whose jobs are among 460 to be eliminated at a Bethlehem Wells Fargocall center are alleging in federal documents that the company is shipping their work overseas.

Three call center employees, Lou Falcone, Morgan Weinhold and Karrissa Arevalo, this week filed a petition for Trade Adjustment Assistance with the U.S. Labor Department, seeking additional job training and re-employment assistance through the federal program that is designed to help workers who lose their jobs due to the impact of foreign trade.

The workers’ petition is listed online as under investigation until the Labor Department makes a determination to certify or deny the request.

In the filing, the workers base their request on “CEO affirmation on various media outlets” of jobs being shipped overseas, as well as foreign job postings in their call center. The workers do not have listed telephone numbers and could not be reached for comment.

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Wells Fargo faces lawsuits over mortgage and auto loans

(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co is facing litigation over previously disclosed sales problems related to its auto lending and mortgage businesses, the bank disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday.

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Wells Fargo Hit by Surprise Charge From Pre-Crisis Mortgages

• Bank takes $1 billion charge for pre-crisis mortgage probe
• Surprise charge adds to headaches from fake accounts episode

Nearly a decade after the financial crisis, Wells Fargo & Co. is getting stung by bad behavior in the housing bubble.

The company took a surprise $1 billion charge in the quarter for previously disclosed regulatory investigations into its pre-crisis mortgage activity, the third-largest U.S. lender said Friday in a statement. The expense pushed total costs to a record $14.4 billion.

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