New York (CNN Business) The Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday charged former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf and a top lieutenant with misleading investors about the success of the division at the heart of the bank's fake-account scandal. Tolstedt embraced a metric, known as "cross-sell," even though this measure was "inflated by accounts and services that were unused, unneeded or unauthorized," according to the SEC. In other words, the former Wells Fargo executive bragged to investors about how many different accounts customers had — despite the fact that millions of these accounts were fabricated by employees trying to meet wildly unrealistic sales goals set by management. Moreover, the SEC said Tolstedt signed off on the accuracy of Wells Fargo's public disclosures "when she knew or was reckless in not knowing" that statements about the bank's cross-sell metric were "materially false and misleading."

Source: CNN November 13, 2020 15:48 UTC