Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay $2.09 billion to settle a U.S. probe into its creation and sale of mortgages that allegedly misstated buyers’ income.
Investors including federally insured financial institutions suffered billions of dollars in losses on securities that contained the debts, the Department of Justice said Wednesday in a statement announcing the settlement.
“Abuses in the mortgage-backed securities industry led to a financial crisis that devastated millions of Americans,” Alex Tse, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said in the statement. “Today’s agreement holds Wells Fargo responsible for originating and selling tens of thousands of loans that were packaged into securities and subsequently defaulted.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.