A former high Wells Fargo government averted jail time for her position within the financial institution’s sham accounts scandal, after a federal choose on Friday as an alternative sentenced her to 6 months of residence confinement and three years of probation. She was additionally ordered to pay a $100,000 superb and carry out 120 hours of group service.
The previous government, Carrie L. Tolstedt, who was head of retail banking at Wells Fargo, was the one high-ranking government on the financial institution to be criminally charged for its misdeeds. She pleaded responsible this 12 months to 1 legal cost of obstructing a financial institution examination.
Prosecutors had sought a 12-month jail sentence, saying in a authorized submitting that imprisoning Ms. Tolstedt, 63, could be a “normal deterrence to different executives who would possibly discover themselves tempted to skirt the reality.”
Ms. Tolstedt’s attorneys had pressed for probation, citing comparable sentences in different instances and invoking Ms. Tolstedt’s “lifelong charitable works.” Each the prosecution and the protection additionally cited Ms. Tolstedt’s well being points, the small print of which had been redacted from the general public variations of authorized filings, as an element favoring leniency.
Ms. Tolstedt ran Wells Fargo’s retail branches through the years that the financial institution opened what could have been hundreds of thousands of fraudulent financial institution accounts, a scandal that burst into public view in 2016 and toppled two successive chief executives.
Though pretty few clients had been instantly harmed by the financial institution’s actions — its toll fell extra closely on workers, who confronted intense strain to interrupt the legislation or threat being fired — the revelation centered regulators’ consideration on Wells and led to the invention of extra misdeeds. The financial institution has paid billions of {dollars} in fines, together with a $3.7 billion penalty levied final 12 months for acts together with wrongfully repossessing some debtors’ automobiles and houses and charging overdraft charges even when clients had sufficient cash to cowl their purchases.
Ms. Tolstedt had constantly denied any wrongdoing within the sham accounts difficulty. She had retired from the financial institution shortly earlier than its actions grew to become public, and she or he was later retroactively fired for trigger.
Ms. Tolstedt “totally accepts accountability for her offense, and acknowledges it was mistaken,” her attorneys wrote in a pre-sentencing submitting. In March, she agreed to pay $17 million to settle civil prices introduced towards her by the Workplace of the Comptroller of the Foreign money.
Ms. Tolstedt was sentenced by Choose Josephine Staton, in Los Angeles. A spokesman for the U.S. lawyer for the central district of California declined to touch upon the sentence. Ms. Tolstedt’s lawyer additionally declined to remark.
Wells Fargo continues to be haunted by the results of its succession of scandals. Since 2018, it has operated below a draconian asset-cap restriction imposed by the Federal Reserve that sharply limits its progress. That restriction “is a press release of the truth that we nonetheless have extra work to do,” Charles Scharf, the San Francisco-based financial institution’s chief government, informed analysts on a name in July. He added, “It’s vital that we proceed on our highway to finish that work.”
