Wells Fargo to pay $175 million to settle lending bias allegations - latimes.com

Wells Fargo to pay $175 million to settle lending bias allegations - latimes.com

Wells Fargo & Co.'s settlement of allegations that it overcharged minorities for home loans and wrongly steered them into subprime mortgages requires the bank to pay $125 million in damages, including about $10 million to African Americans and Latinos in the Los Angeles area.


The settlement, announced Thursday by theU.S. Justice Department, also requires the San Francisco company, by far the nation's largest home lender, to provide $50 million in down-payment assistance to residents of areas where the alleged discrimination had a significant effect.


Those regions include the San Francisco Bay Area and the Inland Empire but not Los Angeles County, where Wells Fargo already has provided an assistance plan for buyers.


The $175-million total is the second-largest fair-lending settlement by the civil rights arm of the Justice Department. The largest, reached in December, requiresBank of America Corp.to pay $335 million to settle claims against Countrywide Financial Corp., the aggressive Calabasas lender it acquired in 2008.
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