Wells Fargo exec ordered to pay $10M in fraud scandal instead will pay nothing
A settlement was reached with federal regulators and a former Wells Fargo executive, who had been ordered to pay $10 million for her role in the bank’s sprawling fake sales accounts scandal. Now, she won’t have to pay anything.
Claudia Russ Anderson, the bank’s former community bank group risk officer, was ordered to pay $10 million in civil penalties imposed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in January, in the waning days of the Biden administration.
At the time, the Comptroller also imposed fines on David Julian, Wells Fargo’s former chief auditor, for $7 million; and Paul McLinko, former executive audit director, for $1.5 million. The trio was based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, according to the OCC.
The penalties were tied to Wells Fargo’s fake sales accounts scandal, where thousands of bank employees opened millions of unauthorized and fraudulent accounts, along with other financial products, from 2002 to 2016 to meet excessive sales goals.
Russ Anderson, Julian and McLinko knew that the sales practice misconduct was widespread and systemic, according to former Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu.
The trio were among 11 former Wells Fargo senior executives charged by the comptroller’s office. The other eight executives settled for over $43 million in civil penalties, including former CEO John Stumpf, who was ordered to pay $17.5 million.
In April, the comptroller office settled with Julian and McLinko for $100,000 and $50,000, respectively. That’s a decrease of more than $8.3 million.
Earlier this month, the comptroller settled with Russ Anderson for no money — it’s final case against one-time executives caught up in the scandal.
In a statement to The Charlotte Observer Thursday, a comptroller spokesperson said the settlement “marks the culmination” of the office’s action to hold the “Wells Fargo executives accountable for their roles in the bank’s sales practices misconduct.
“In total, the (comptroller’s office’s) significant actions have resulted in the collection of more than $43 million in civil money penalties and included orders of prohibition against Wells Fargo’s former Chairman & CEO John Stumpf and former Head of the Community Bank Carrie Tolstedt,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not address a question about why the OCC wiped away the $10 million that Russ Anderson was to pay.
Wells Fargo declined on Thursday to comment on the settlement.
The bank is based in San Francisco and has its largest employment hub in Charlotte, with about 27,000 workers.
Fake sales accounts, other Wells Fargo scandals
From 2013 to 2016, the comptroller’s office said that Russ Anderson failed to provide information or provided false, incomplete or misleading information during compliance examinations in 2015.
Russ Anderson also failed to challenge the bank’s incentive compensation program, failed to institute effective controls and repeatedly downplayed sales practices misconduct, Hsu previously said.
Because of her actions, Russ Anderson was initially ordered to pay $5 million and that later increased to $10 million. She was also barred from banking, which also was rescinded in the October settlement.
Since the sales account scandal, regulators identified additional problems with how Wells Fargo handled mortgages, auto loans and consumer deposit accounts.
- In 2018, Wells Fargo was charged a combined $1 billion from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the OCC for improper mortgage and auto-lending practices that harmed consumers.
- Also in 2018, the Federal Reserve put a growth cap on the bank as punishment for the account scandal. In June, the $1.95 trillion asset cap was lifted.
- In 2020, the bank agreed to pay a $3 billion fine to federal prosecutors and the SEC over its practices.
- In May 2023, Wells Fargo was settling a class-action lawsuit from shareholders for $1 billion over claims the bank misled them about how it was complying with regulators in the aftermath of its fake sales scandal.
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 12:03 PM with the headline "Wells Fargo exec ordered to pay $10M in fraud scandal instead will pay nothing."
