- A former Wells Fargo exec agreed to plead guilty to charges she obstructed a bank examination.
- Carrie Tolstedt, who led the bank's retail division, will pay a $17M fine and faces prison time.
A former Wells Fargo executive is facing prison time for her role in the bank's decade-long scandal that involved opening millions of unauthorized customer accounts.
Former head of Wells Fargo's Community Bank Carrie Tolstedt agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges of obstructing the government's investigation into the bank's sales practices, the agreement filed on Wednesday said.
The plea agreement calls for Tolstedt to serve up to 16 months in prison. In a separate settlement with the government, Tolstedt agreed to pay a $17 million fine and accepted a ban from working in the banking industry.
Well Fargo previously admitted that from 2002 to 2016, employees opened millions of unauthorized accounts to meet the bank's target sale goals or receive certain incentives. From 2007 to 2016, Tolstedt was head of the bank's consumer and small business retail division, per the plea agreement, which lays out that she was aware of the misconduct.
Tolstedt "corruptly obstructed the OCC's examination by seeking to minimize the scope of the sales practices misconduct issue," the plea agreement reads, referring to the government's Office of the Comptroller Currency.
Specifically, she did not disclose the number of employees who were terminated or who resigned in connection with sales misconduct.
She left Wells Fargo in September 2016, just before the scandal came to light, which resulted in the firing of 5,300 employees for falsifying bank records and other violations, per the Associated Press the Associated Press. Tolstedt is the first Wells Fargo executive to be criminally charged for the scandal.
Tolstedt's attorney did not reply to a request to comment from Insider.