Wells Fargo has become embroiled in a legal dispute over manipulation of customer account data to maximize profits.
Having been caught practicing so-called ‘reordering’ along with other major US banks, the international giant is seeking a ruling from the courts again after six years of battling payout claims from misled customers.
“The bank is being uniquely aggressive,” National Consumer Law Center associate director Lauren Saunders told Vice.
The legal debacle centers on Wells Fargo rearranging the order of transactions on bank statements to ensure an unarranged overdraft fee is applied as often as possible in a given period.
Known as reordering, the trick has made headlines in recent years after banks such as JPMorgan and Bank of America promised huge payouts.
Wells Fargo has vowed to keep fighting, however, and the dispute could ultimately end up at the US Supreme Court.
The events constitute a poignant reminder that even among banks pioneering use of technologies such as Blockchain to disrupt legacy processes, traditional models of profit-making remain.
Wells Fargo was behind the first-of-its-kind international freight shipment to China earlier this year, in what was the world’s first interbank Blockchain trade.
In 2016, the institution found itself in hot water again after it created millions of fake bank accounts to meet sales targets.