New York • Wells Fargo is now saying 3.5 million accounts were impacted by its fake accounts scandal, a dramatic increase from the 2.1 million accounts it originally estimated.
After the bank acknowledged in September 2016 that its employees opened 2.1 million accounts without getting customers’ permission, Wells Fargo agreed to look for fake accounts going back an additional two years to 2009. This was because news reports showed that problems at Wells started before 2011, which is what Wells originally admitted.
Wells plans to pay out an additional $2.8 million in refunds to the impacted customers.
Separately Wells also found 528,000 customers were signed up for online bill payment when they did not ask for it. The bank will give $910,000 in refunds to those customers.