Consumerist-
There has been no shortage of lawsuits filed against Wells Fargo in recent years, from accusations the bank pushed mortgages on borrowers who couldn’t repay them to claims the company pressed employees to engage in fraudulent conduct with regard to customer accounts. Now, a recently unsealed whistleblower lawsuit melds together those issues, claiming the bank encouraged employees to withhold information from customers that could potentially lead to foreclosure proceedings.
The former employee claims in the suit, originally filed in 2015, that he was terminated in 2014 after he learned the bank had repeatedly collected on mortgages that it didn’t have proper documentation for.
According to the lawsuit [PDF] — unsealed last week when the Department of Justice declined [PDF] to intervene in the case — the employee claims Wells Fargo defrauded the government by collecting $1.4 billion in federal foreclosure-prevention funding for loans the bank knew lacked proper documentation during the housing crisis.