IS COHEN MILSTEIN PROSECUTING ANY OTHER CASES WHERE: "critical retirement savings were impacted( by Wells Fargo’s fraudulent business practices ),"
“If approved, this settlement will help compensate hundreds of thousands of investors — state employees, nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and others — whose critical retirement savings were impacted by Wells Fargo’s fraudulent business practices,” Steven J. Toll, managing partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which represented the investors in the suit, said in a statement. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/business/wells-fargo-shareholder-class-action-settlement.html
Wells Fargo to Pay $1 Billion to Settle Lawsuit by Shareholders A group of shareholders had claimed that the bank misled investors about its progress in cleaning up after a sham accounts scandal a decade ago.
John Yoon By John Yoon May 16, 2023 Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the bank of overstating how much progress it had made in fixing the unlawful practices that regulators said had hurt millions of customers.
The agreement, detailed in court filings on Monday, is the latest in a succession of settlements and penalties the bank has paid stemming from a fraud scandal that came to light nearly a decade ago. From 2002 to 2016, bank employees, facing unrealistic sales goals imposed by their bosses, opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge.
Wells Fargo removed top executives and pledged to regulators that it would fix the internal deficiencies that caused the scandal and other practices that put customers at risk.
The latest settlement resolves a lawsuit brought on behalf of shareholders that focused on the bank’s conduct from 2018 to 2020, after regulators identified many of the problems. The plaintiffs, including pension funds in Mississippi, Rhode Island and Louisiana, said Wells Fargo defrauded investors by giving the false impression that it was further along in the process of tackling regulators’ orders than it had disclosed at the time. The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge in New York, was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
“This agreement resolves a consolidated securities class action lawsuit involving the company and several former executives and a director, who have not been with the company for several years,” Laurie Kight, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, said in a statement. “While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this matter.”
Controversies have engulfed Wells Fargo for years, including sham accounts, improper mortgage changes and accidental releases of client data.
In December, the bank agreed to pay $3.7 billion to settle claims by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it engaged in an array of banking violations. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3 billion in 2020 to settle investigations into consumer abuses that lasted for more than a decade.
Twice in the last seven years, the bank’s chief executive has departed: John G. Stumpf in 2016 and Timothy Sloan in 2019. A top executive, Carrie L. Tolstedt, pleaded guilty in March to a criminal charge linked to the sham accounts scandal and faces up to 16 months in prison.
“If approved, this settlement will help compensate hundreds of thousands of investors — state employees, nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and others — whose critical retirement savings were impacted by Wells Fargo’s fraudulent business practices,” Steven J. Toll, managing partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which represented the investors in the suit, said in a statement.
John Yoon John Yoon reports from the Seoul newsroom of The Times. He previously reported for the coronavirus tracking team, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. He joined The Times in 2020. More about John Yoon
A version of this article appears in print on May 17, 2023, Section B, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Wells Fargo to Pay $1 Billion To Settle Shareholders Suit. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay Shareholders $1 Billion to Settle Class-Action Suit Shareholders claimed the bank and its past leadership were moving slower to address regulatory issues than they acknowledged publicly By Ben EisenFollow May 15, 2023 10:43 pm ET
Wells Fargo’s 2016 fake-accounts scandal revealed problems with the bank’s systems for overseeing risk. PHOTO: THALIA JUAREZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Wells Fargo WFC -0.98%decrease; red down pointing triangle agreed to pay shareholders $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the bank of overstating its progress in cleaning up after its 2016 fake-accounts scandal.
The bank’s shareholders alleged Wells Fargo and its past leadership misled them about how swiftly they were fixing the governance issues and risk-management systems that failed to prevent the bank from opening up perhaps millions of phony accounts.
After the 2016 scandal led to a series of regulatory rebukes, the bank moved slower to address the problems than it suggested publicly, the plaintiffs alleged. When the sluggish pace became clear in 2020, the plaintiffs said, stock-price declines cost shareholders, including mutual funds and pension funds.
The preliminary settlement, outlined in a court filing Monday night, still must be approved in the coming months. It would likely be the 17th-largest settlement in a class action brought by shareholders, according to the filing.
“Wells Fargo betrayed the trust of Rhode Island pensioners and now is rightly facing consequences because of that,” James A. Diossa, general treasurer of Rhode Island, whose pension fund is a co-lead plaintiff in the case, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the bank said the agreement resolves a lawsuit “involving the company and several former executives and a director, who have not been with the company for several years. While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this matter.”
Wells Fargo is still trying to get its house in order and appease regulators. The bank has been operating under a growth cap imposed by the Federal Reserve more than five years ago because it didn’t have adequate governance and controls.
The fake-accounts scandal invited intense regulatory scrutiny that revealed wide-ranging problems with the bank’s systems for overseeing risk. Wells Fargo is still rebuilding them to make sure it has proper oversight to prevent customers from being harmed when they are doing business with the bank.
Wells Fargo in recent months has set aside billions of additional dollars to resolve litigation and regulatory matters, and to compensate customers for wrongdoing tied to its scandals.
In December, the bank entered into a $3.7 billion agreement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to resolve allegations that its actions harmed more than 16 million people with deposit accounts, auto loans and mortgages.
It paid $300 million in February to settle a class action claiming it improperly charged hundreds of thousands of customers for unneeded auto insurance.
The shareholder class action focuses on a period between 2018 and 2020, after many of the bank’s problems had been identified but before they had been fixed. The lawsuit alleges that over the two-year period, the bank gave investors the impression that it was moving quickly to tackle regulators’ orders and was far along in the process.
But in early 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives released a series of internal bank communications that suggested senior leadership knew the bank was failing to comply with the orders, the lawsuit said.
Shareholders claimed that those reports, which were published around the time leadership was scheduled to testify before Congress, proved that the bank was making false and misleading statements about its compliance with the regulatory orders.
The shareholders sued later that year. A judge denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in 2021, and the parties entered into private mediation at the beginning of this year. The judge overseeing the mediation suggested the $1 billion settlement figure, according to the Monday evening court filing.
The filing acknowledged that if the case had gone to trial, the plaintiffs faced significant obstacles in proving their claims. One challenge was that the plaintiffs had pinned their case partly on drops in stock prices in March 2020, when the entire market was sinking because the pandemic was shutting down the economy.
Wells Fargo chief Charlie Scharf has said he was surprised by the scope of the remaining fix-it work when he became CEO in 2019. In his annual letter to shareholders this year, he wrote that this work “takes years when managed effectively, and we were not as far along as I had expected when I arrived.”
On May 15, 2023, Lead Plaintiffs in In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation, No. 1:20-cv-04494-GHW, filed a motion for preliminary approval for a $1 billion settlement with Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) in a securities fraud class action lawsuit. On May 16, 2023, the Honorable Gregory H. Woods of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York preliminarily approved the $1 billion settlement. The final approval hearing is scheduled for September 8, 2023.
The case alleges that between May 30, 2018 and March 12, 2020, the Bank and its top executives made false and misleading statements to the public and Congress regarding issues of critical concern to its investors: its compliance with consent orders imposed by the federal regulators, including the Federal Reserve Board (the “FRB”), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the “OCC”) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the “CFPB”), after the Bank’s 2016 consumer scandal involving the opening of unauthorized customer accounts, as well as when regulators would lift the asset cap they had imposed on the Bank that limited the Bank’s growth
Wells Fargo shareholders incurred significant losses as the truth was finally revealed, culminating with disclosures in March 2020 with the issuance of two U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee reports on March 4 and 5, 2020 and subsequent Congressional hearings, which revealed that Wells Fargo had “clearly demonstrated an unwillingness and inability to stop harming its customers” and that its remediation plans fell “woefully short” of regulators’ expectations.
On August 29, 2020, the Court appointed Lead Plaintiffs, including Cohen Milstein clients, the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi and the State of Rhode Island, Office of the General Treasurer, and approved Lead Plaintiffs’ selection of Lead Counsel for the Class, including Cohen Milstein.
Other Important Rulings On September 30, 2021, the Honorable Gregory H. Woods of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York denied in most respects Defendants’ motion to dismiss In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation, holding that Plaintiffs had plausibly alleged that the vast majority of Defendants’ challenged statements were false and misleading or omitted material facts, and that the case could proceed against Defendants Wells Fargo; Timothy J. Sloan, former CEO and President; John R. Shrewsberry, former Senior Executive Vice President and CFO; Allen Parker, former Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel and interim CEO; and Elizabeth Duke, former director on Wells Fargo’s Board and Chairwoman of the Board. Judge Woods ruled that Defendants misled investors by claiming they had shared all relevant information with investors, the Bank was in agreement with the regulators, and the Bank was in advanced stages of the consent decrees. As the Court succinctly stated, in light of the fact that the Bank had not even submitted an acceptable plan to regulators at the time of the challenged statements, “[p]lainly, there was no basis for [Defendant’s] statements that the Bank was ‘largely there’ and that the Bank and the Regulators had reached a ‘meeting of the minds.’” The Court also found that Plaintiffs adequately pled scienter – or the requisite mental state – finding that the Defendants were well aware of the lack of Wells Fargo’s progress on the consent decrees because they were in direct communication with the regulators and were directly responsible for Wells Fargo’s compliance programs. Finally, the Court also upheld the Section 20(a) control person claims against certain of the defendants.
Case Background Wells Fargo is a financial services company that provides retail, commercial, and corporate banking services. In September 2016, investors learned that Wells Fargo had engaged in widespread consumer abuses, including fraudulent bank account opening practices. Exposure of these practices drew intense regulatory scrutiny and resulted in the U.S. Department of Justice, SEC, and other federal and state authorities collectively levying billions of dollars in financial penalties on Wells Fargo. On February 2, 2018, the first day of the Class Period, the Company agreed to a Consent Order (“Federal Reserve Consent Order”) with the Federal Reserve System (“FRS”) to address the oversight failures of Wells Fargo’s Board of Directors that had facilitated widespread abuses and compliance breakdowns. That day, the Company announced its confidence in its ability to satisfy the Federal Reserve Consent Order’s requirements.
Soon after, on April 20, 2018, Wells Fargo entered into consent orders with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (together with the Federal Reserve Consent Order, the “Consent Orders”). The Consent Orders required payment of $1 billion in civil penalties and development of a comprehensive plan to identify and remediate present and future consumer harm.
Throughout the Class Period, Defendants repeatedly reassured investors that the Company was developing and implementing the required governance and risk management reforms, was aligned with regulators, and was making meaningful progress toward meeting its obligations under the Consent Orders. As a result of Defendants’ false and misleading statements and omissions, shares of Wells Fargo common stock traded at artificially inflated prices throughout the Class Period.
The truth began to be revealed on March 4, 2020, after the market closed, when the House Financial Services Committee released a 113-page report (the “House Report”) detailing its yearlong investigation into Wells Fargo and concluding that Wells Fargo was not in compliance with the Consent Orders and was unwilling to take the steps necessary to satisfy its obligations. The House Report described Wells Fargo’s risk management plans as “materially incomplete” and “woefully short” of the FRS’s expectations, and the House Report revealed that in March 2019, the FRS had sent Wells Fargo a letter stating that the Company’s remediation plans “remain materially incomplete” and were “riddled with errors and discrepancies.” On this news, Wells Fargo shares declined from $41.40 per share on March 4, 2020 to $38.90 on March 5, 2020, on heavy trading volume.
Then, on March 10, 2020, Defendant Scharf testified before the House Financial Services Committee and finally acknowledged that Wells Fargo “ha[s] not yet done what is necessary to address [its] shortcomings” and that “the [C]ompany’s leadership failed its stakeholders” and “we did not have the appropriate controls in place across the [C]ompany.” Additionally, that day, House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters requested that the DOJ review 2019 testimony by Defendant Sloan to investigate whether he had lied to Congress in violation of federal laws. As a result of these disclosures, Wells Fargo shares declined from $35.08 per share on March 10, 2020 to $32.33 on March 11, 2020 and then down to $27.20 on March 12, 2020 on heavy trading volume.
As a result of Defendants’ false and misleading statements, and the precipitous decline in the value of Wells Fargo common stock as the truth was revealed, the putative class members suffered significant losses and damages.
The original case was named: Adam Perry v. Wells Fargo & Company, et al., Case No. 1:20-cv-04494, United States District Court, Southern District of New York.
The case is named: In re Wells Fargo & Company Securities Litigation, Case No. 1:20-cv-04494-GHW, United States District Court, Southern District of New York.
CASE DOCUMENTS RELATED PROFESSIONALS RELATED NEWS & EVENTS
On April 10, 2023, Cohen Milstein, on behalf of plaintiff Northwest Biotherapeutics (OTCQB: NWBO), filed an amended complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that market makers Canaccord Genuity LLC, Citadel Securities LLC, G1 Execution Services LLC, GTS Securities LLC, Instinet LLC, Lime Trading Corp., Susquehanna International Group LLP, Virtu Americas LLC, deliberately engaged in repeated manipulative spoofing of NWBO’s stock from December 5, 2017 – August 1, 2022, causing NWBO to issue more than 49 million shares at artificially depressed prices in violation of Section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and Section 9(a)(2) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Their alleged actions also constitute as fraud under New York state common law.
Case Background NWBO is a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on the development of personalized cancer vaccines designed to treat a broad range of solid tumor cancers more effectively than current treatments, and without the side effects of chemotherapy, through a proprietary manufacturing technology which enables the Company to produce a personalized vaccine in an efficient and cost-effective manner. The Company’s lead product, DCVax®-L, received the first-ever “Promising Innovative Medicine” designation under the United Kingdom’s “Early Access to Medicines Scheme” on September 16, 2014.
NWBO recently completed a 331-patient Phase 3 clinical trial of DCVax-L in the United States, Canada, U.K., and Germany for patients with glioblastoma multiforme (“GBM”), the most aggressive and lethal form of brain cancer.
On May 10, 2022, positive top-line results from the clinical trial were presented at the Frontiers of Cancer Immunotherapy Conference of the New York Academy of Sciences, showing that DCVax-L had reached both its primary and its secondary endpoints with statistical significance under the Statistical Analysis Plan for the Phase 3 trial. The survival data of the trial was promising; no other GBM trial in decades has shown such improvements in both median survival and the “long tail” of extended survival in both newly diagnosed and recurrent (late stage) GBM patients.
Most recently, on November 17, 2022, JAMA Oncology, the highly respected, peer-reviewed cancer journal, reported that the trial results demonstrated that DCVax-L was “associated with a clinically meaningful and statistically significant extension of overall survival” and “also had an excellent safety profile and noteworthy tails of long-term survival curves.”
Despite the string of encouraging news about its lead product, NWBO’s share price has not followed suit. Quite the opposite actually—and that is not by chance. Rather, because of Defendants’ spoofing, NWBO’s share price has dropped.
Spoofing is a form of market manipulation that, in this case, was accomplished by placing “Baiting Orders” in the Limit Order Book2 or Inter-Dealer Quotation System (“IDQS”)3 that are not intended to be executed and have no legitimate economic purpose. The purpose of these Baiting Orders is to create a false illusion of market interest (either positive or negative) that will generate a response from other market participants that the spoofers can use to their advantage. For example, if the goal of the spoofing scheme is to drive the price down, the spoofer enters Baiting Orders to sell, to create an appearance of a downward trending market, which will then bait other market participants into entering their own sell orders to minimize or avoid suffering losses. Shortly thereafter, the spoofer will place orders to buy, or “Executing Purchases,” which are intended to be executed against the other market participants’ sell orders at the lower artificial prices prompted by the false Baiting Orders to sell. Immediately after placing these Executing Purchases to buy, the spoofer then cancels all of the Baiting Orders to sell, which completes the profitable spoofing cycle.
This scheme can be used multiple times during a trading day, and then repeated throughout a protracted trading period. To maximize the speed of their market access and execution of their trading strategies, spoofers typically utilize algorithmic trading programs through high-frequency trading computer systems which enable thousands of Baiting Orders to be placed in a matter of seconds and sometimes milliseconds.
During the Relevant Period, Defendants engaged in spoofing to manipulate the price of NWBO shares on OTC Link LLC and NYSE ARCA Global OTC, thus creating an imbalance in the market for NWBO shares and inducing other market participants to buy or sell at artificial prices. In order to carry out their spoofing scheme, Defendants placed tens of millions of Baiting Orders and executed millions of orders at manipulated prices during the Relevant Period. Indeed, Defendants engaged in spoofing on 395 of 1,171—or nearly 34%—of the trading days during the Relevant Period.
Plaintiff NWBO sold over 49 million shares at manipulated prices as a result of Defendants’ actions. By repeatedly and brazenly manipulating the market through their spoofing, Defendants directly impacted the price of NWBO’s shares in the market, causing Plaintiff significant losses as it sold millions of shares of NWBO stock at artificially depressed prices.
Case style: Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. v. Canaccord Genuity LLC, et al., Case No. 1:22-cv-10185, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
