In Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that a few dozen funds may pursue their mortgage-backed securities fraud lawsuits against Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) According to Reuters, five lawsuits are involved and plaintiffs include funds from Prudential Financial Inc.(PRU), BlackRock Inc. (BLK), TIAA-CREF, and Pacific Investment Management…
$165M Class Action Settlement Reached in MBS Fraud Case Involving NovaStar Securities Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Deutsche Bank AG (DB) have reached a $165M with investors in their class action mortgage-backed securities case involving underwriting for NovaStar Mortgage Inc., a former…
A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority securities arbitration panel ruled that Wells Fargo Advisors (WFC) must pay investor Anthony J. Pryor $357K related to purportedly unsuitable housing and energy investments. In his securities fraud claim, Pryor alleged negligent misrepresentation, negligent supervision, breach of fiduciary, and other causes. Wells Fargo denies Pryor’s…
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is ordering 12 firms to pay a collective total of $14.4M in fines over deficiencies involving the way they preserved customer and brokerage firm records. The firms who are subject to these sanctions include: · RBS Securities (RBS) for $2M · LPL Financial (LPLA) for…
This week, Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU) announced that is no longer distributing certain term life insurance policies, including its My Term product, through Wells Fargo’s (WFC) retail bank. The decision comes after Prudential employees filed a complaint claiming they were let go because they reported certain sales practices related to…
Wells Fargo Fined $1M Over Supervision of Consolidated Client Reports The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority says that Wells Fargo (WFC) must pay a $1M fine for not having reasonable supervisory systems in place to oversee the generation of consolidated reports for clients. The broker-dealers that were specifically cited were Wells…
In New York, US District Judge Deborah A. Batts has certified a class of investors to go ahead with fraud claims that they’ve brought against Wells Fargo (WFC), RBS Securities (RBS), and Deutsche Bank (DB). The banks underwrote $7.7B of NovaStar mortgage-backed securities. The lead plaintiff in the MBS fraud…
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Wells Fargo (WFC) violated whistleblower protections, in the wake of allegations of aggressive and illegal sales tactics, and misled investors over these allegations. The probe comes after Senators Jeff Merkeley (D-Ore), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) sent the Commission…
A plaintiff who is a participant in Wells Fargo’s 401(K) plan is suing the bank. The individual claims that the company’s cross-selling scandal has caused its stock price to drop significantly and this has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the retirement plan. It was just…
Ex-UBS Broker is Accused of Inflating Customer’s Account The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has barred Jeffrey Hamilton Howell from the broker-dealer industry. The former broker is accused of giving a customer bogus weekly account statements that overvalued an account by up to $3M. The alleged misconduct is said to…