Wells Fargo & Co. confirmed in a quarterly filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission is one of the federal and state agencies probing matters related to its sales practices, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The San Francisco bank didn’t specify what the SEC is looking, for but the filing follows a Wall Street Journal report that the agency is in the early stages of probing whether Wells Fargo violated rules around investor disclosures and other matters relating to its recent sales-tactics scandal. That resulted in a $185 million fine in September and a raft of other federal and state investigations, including by the Justice Department. The SEC sent requests for information to the bank asking for documents in recent weeks, following three Democratic senators’ calls in late September for the SEC to investigate whether Wells Fargo misled investors and violated whistleblower protections while allegedly engaged in illegal sales practices.
