Wells Fargo Said to Face DOJ Probe of Wholesale-Banking Business

Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Co. is facing a Department of Justice investigation into whether employees in the company’s wholesale-banking unit improperly altered customer data, a person familiar with the matter said.

The changes were made to meet a regulatory deadline, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday.

“This particular situation involved a new process and a new required document called Certification of Beneficial Owners that our team members have to complete to help ensure we know our customers,” Alan Elias, a bank spokesman, said. “We’ve recognized that in certain circumstances additional training and new procedures were needed and have now been applied.”

Elias, who declined to comment on the Justice Department’s involvement, said customers weren’t negatively affected by the actions, but added that “we take all issues relative to documentation seriously. If we get something wrong, we fix it.”

Some workers added information to internal customer records without the clients’ knowledge, a person briefed on the situation said in May. The bank discovered the improper activity and reported it to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the person said.