Wells Fargo Unauthorized Accounts Settlement and Payouts

The Wells Fargo unauthorized accounts settlement was a $142 million class action resolution, Jabbari v. Wells Fargo & Company, that paid customers whose bank accounts, credit cards, or lines of credit were opened in their names without permission between May 1, 2002, and April 20, 2017. The distribution phase is finished. Every settlement check has already been issued, and the deadline to cash the original checks has passed.¹ If you were a class member and never cashed yours, you may still be able to request a replacement, but only for a limited time before the money is turned over to your state.

Who the Settlement Covered

The class action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Case No. 3:15-cv-02159-VC) on behalf of customers who had unauthorized accounts opened in their names during the roughly 15-year window between May 2002 and April 2017.² Judge Vince Chhabria granted preliminary approval in July 2017.³

The $142 million fund was non-reversionary, meaning any unspent money stayed with the class rather than going back to the bank. It paid three kinds of losses:

Reimbursement of fees charged on unauthorized accounts.
Credit impact damages for customers whose credit scores were harmed.
Non-compensatory damages distributed pro rata based on how many unauthorized accounts a person had.⁴

By January 2018, the settlement administrator had received about 165,774 claims, and class counsel sought a 15% attorney fee from the fund.⁴⁵⁶

If You Never Cashed Your Check

Payments have all been issued and the original cashing deadline has passed, but the settlement administrator is still holding uncashed funds during a dormancy period. That window runs anywhere from one to five years depending on where the recipient lives. Once it closes, the money is transferred to the state’s unclaimed property department through escheatment.¹

To request a replacement check before the dormancy period ends, contact the settlement administrator directly:

Email: info@wfsettlement.com
Mail: Wells Fargo Unauthorized Accounts Settlement, P.O. Box 2594, Faribault, MN 55021-9594

Include your full name, current mailing address, phone number, email address, and any prior addresses you used when the original claim was filed. Once the dormancy window closes for your state, the administrator can no longer reissue the check, and you would need to look for the funds through your state’s unclaimed property office instead.¹

New claims cannot be filed. The claim deadline is long past, and the class period ended in April 2017.

What the Class Action Doesn’t Cover

The Jabbari settlement is limited to unauthorized deposit accounts, credit cards, and lines of credit opened in customers’ names. It doesn’t cover the other categories of Wells Fargo misconduct that came to light later, which were handled through separate regulatory actions and produced their own restitution programs:

Auto loan customers charged for unwanted collateral protection insurance, including roughly 570,000 borrowers, some 20,000 of whom were pushed into default.⁷
Mortgage borrowers, roughly 110,000, charged for rate-lock extension fees caused by Wells Fargo’s own delays.⁷
Wrongful auto repossessions, improperly denied mortgage modifications, surprise overdraft fees, and accounts frozen based on a faulty fraud filter — the categories addressed in the 2022 CFPB order that directed more than $2 billion in restitution to about 16 million consumer accounts.⁸

Restitution for those categories moved through the CFPB, the OCC, the Department of Justice, and a 50-state attorneys general settlement, not through Jabbari. If you believe you were harmed by one of those practices rather than by an unauthorized account, the class action check you’re looking for came from a different pipeline.

How the Fake Accounts Case Started

The unauthorized account practices ran between 2002 and 2016. Employees were pushed to hit aggressive daily sales quotas, and to meet them they opened deposit accounts, credit cards, and lines of credit without customer permission. The Department of Justice later documented that employees forged signatures, created PINs to activate unauthorized debit cards, moved money from real customer accounts into fake ones, and altered contact information so customers wouldn’t learn about the accounts or receive satisfaction surveys.⁹ Wells Fargo fired about 5,300 employees over improper sales practices between 2011 and 2016.¹⁰

Public exposure came in December 2013 with a Los Angeles Times investigation.¹¹ On May 4, 2015, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a civil suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court alleging that employees engaged in “gaming” by opening fee-generating accounts and manipulating customer information to hit quotas.¹² The same day the suit was filed, Wells Fargo self-reported to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which opened a supervisory review four days later.

The Bigger Financial Picture

The $142 million class action is one piece of more than $7 billion in fines, settlements, and consumer restitution Wells Fargo paid across the scandal. Most of that money went to regulators or to restitution programs run outside the class action:

The First Round: $185 Million in September 2016

On September 8, 2016, the CFPB, the OCC, and the Los Angeles City Attorney announced coordinated penalties of $185 million: $100 million from the CFPB, $35 million from the OCC, and $50 million from Los Angeles.¹³ The CFPB order also required full restitution to every victim charged unauthorized fees.¹⁴

$1 Billion in 2018

On April 20, 2018, the OCC and CFPB imposed a combined $1 billion penalty on Wells Fargo for auto insurance and mortgage lending abuses. The OCC collected $500 million; the CFPB assessed $1 billion and credited the OCC portion toward that total.¹⁵

$575 Million 50-State Settlement

In December 2018, Wells Fargo agreed to a $575 million settlement with all 50 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia, covering unauthorized accounts, improper insurance referrals, auto loan insurance overcharges, and mortgage fee abuses from May 2002 through July 2018.¹⁶ The agreement included over $385 million in remediation for roughly 850,000 auto loan customers, more than $100 million in mortgage fee refunds, and over $37 million in refunds for auto protection products. Wells Fargo did not admit liability.¹⁷

$3 Billion DOJ and SEC Resolution

In February 2020, Wells Fargo agreed to a $3 billion resolution with the Department of Justice and the SEC. The DOJ portion was a three-year deferred prosecution agreement on criminal charges of false bank records and identity theft. Wells Fargo admitted pressuring employees to meet unrealistic goals, collecting millions in unauthorized fees, harming customer credit ratings, and misusing customers’ personal information. The SEC’s $500 million share addressed misleading investors about the “cross-sell” strategy the fake accounts had inflated.⁹¹⁸

$3.7 Billion in 2022

In December 2022, the CFPB ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion in what it called its largest-ever enforcement action: a $1.7 billion civil penalty plus more than $2 billion in restitution to about 16 million consumer accounts. That order was tied to auto loan, mortgage, and deposit account problems separate from the unauthorized-accounts practices at the heart of Jabbari.⁸

For consumers, only two of these produced direct individual payments: the class action and the restitution components of the regulatory orders. If you believe you’re owed money from one of the regulatory restitution programs rather than from the class action, contact the CFPB or the agency that ran the specific program. If your uncashed check was from Jabbari v. Wells Fargo specifically, the settlement administrator is your route, and the dormancy clock is running.

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Wells Fargo Unauthorized Accounts Settlement. Wells Fargo Unauthorized Accounts Settlement
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Keller Rohrback LLP. Court Grants Preliminary Approval of $142 Million Settlement With Wells Fargo
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Los Angeles Times. Wells Fargo Settlement Reaches Preliminary Approval
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Courthouse News. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Final Approval of Class Action Settlement
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Los Angeles Times. Wells Fargo Revises Fake Account Estimate Upward
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Bloomberg. Wells Fargo Increases Fake Account Estimate 67% to 3.5 Million
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Congressional Research Service. Wells Fargo Consumer Lending Abuses
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CFPB. CFPB Orders Wells Fargo to Pay $3.7 Billion for Widespread Mismanagement of Auto Loans, Mortgages, and Deposit Accounts
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Department of Justice. Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations Into Sales Practices
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Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. Unprecedented Enforcement Actions Against Eight Former Wells Fargo Executives
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House Financial Services Committee. Interim CFPB Wells Fargo Report
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Daily News. Los Angeles Sues Wells Fargo Over Opening Extra Accounts to Hike Sales Quotas
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CFPB. CFPB Fines Wells Fargo $100 Million for Widespread Illegal Practice of Secretly Opening Unauthorized Accounts
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CFPB. Wells Fargo Bank Enforcement Action 2016
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OCC. OCC and CFPB Announce Coordinated Enforcement Actions Against Wells Fargo
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Pennsylvania Attorney General. Wells Fargo Multistate Settlement Agreement
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Texas Attorney General. AG Paxton Announces $575 Million Settlement With Wells Fargo
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SEC. Wells Fargo to Pay $3 Billion to Resolve Criminal and Civil Investigations