Wells Fargo Probed for Identity Theft Over Fake Accounts

California’s attorney general is investigating whether Wells Fargo & Co. bankers committed criminal identity theft by creating millions of fraudulent accounts.

Kamala Harris’s office issued a search warrant to the bank on Oct. 5, seeking the names of bankers who opened unauthorized accounts from May 2011 to July 2015. The warrant, provided by Harris, also demands detailed communications, the bank’s fee structure and a calculation of losses suffered by customers associated with the accounts.

Harris’s office said a probe by Los Angeles officials revealed state penal code violations for impersonation and unauthorized use of personal information not only for bank accounts, but also for lines of credit, credit cards, mortgages and wealth management accounts, according to a filing attached to the search warrant.

“We are cooperating in providing the requested information,” Mark Folk, a bank spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement. Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Harris, declined to comment on the warrant.

Federal prosecutors in New York as well as San Francisco have opened criminal probes of the bank, a person familiar with the matter has said. Under Justice Department guidelines, investigators will be looking into both potential corporate and individual wrongdoing, the person said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net; Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

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