A federal investigation into sales practices at Wells Fargo & Co. now includes the bank’s wealth-management business, extending the probe beyond the firm’s retail-banking unit where the problems originated, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting the investigation into the wealth-management business. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been interviewing some wealth-management employees in the Phoenix area as recently as this week. Several U.S. attorney’s offices, as well as a bevy of federal and state regulators, have been investigating Wells Fargo since the fall of 2016 when the bank disclosed widespread sales-practices problems. Those included bank employees opening as many as 3.5 million accounts without customers’ knowledge or authorization. Wells Fargo has said it is cooperating with the investigations.
