SAN FRANCISCO — Lawyers suing Wells Fargo on behalf of aggrieved customers say the bank may have opened about 3.5 million unauthorized accounts, far more than the figure bank and regulators disclosed last year.
In a court filing late Thursday, lawyers representing customers told a federal judge in San Francisco that they believe bank workers created 3.5 million unauthorized accounts in the last 15 years, “based on public information, negotiations, and confirmatory discovery.”
The bank had put the total at about 2 million.
Bank spokesman Ruben Pulido said the new claim was unverified and only an estimation.
“The unauthorized account numbers reported in the filing are estimates made by plaintiffs’ attorneys based on a hypothetical scenario and have not been verified,” Pulido said. “The number of unauthorized accounts estimated in the filing do not reflect actual unauthorized accounts.”
Pulido declined further comment and the bank has not disclosed its own revised estimation.
The bank said last month that an internal review showed bogus accounts opened as far back as 2002.