Wells Fargo has agreed to pay $1 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the financial institution of overstating how a lot progress it had made in fixing the illegal practices that regulators mentioned had damage hundreds of thousands of shoppers.

The settlement, detailed in courtroom filings on Monday, is the newest in a succession of settlements and penalties the financial institution has paid stemming from an enormous fraud that got here to gentle almost a decade in the past. From 2002 to 2016, financial institution workers, dealing with unrealistic gross sales targets imposed by their bosses, opened hundreds of thousands of accounts in prospects’ names with out their data.

Wells Fargo eliminated prime executives and pledged to regulators that it could repair the interior deficiencies that prompted the scandal and different practices that put prospects in danger.

The newest settlement resolves a lawsuit introduced on behalf of shareholders that targeted on the financial institution’s conduct between 2018 to 2020, after regulators recognized most of the issues. The plaintiffs, together with pension funds in Mississippi, Rhode Island and Louisiana, mentioned Wells Fargo defrauded traders by giving the misunderstanding that it was additional alongside within the technique of tackling regulators’ orders than it had disclosed on the time. The settlement, which should be permitted by a federal choose in New York, was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

Wells Fargo, which couldn’t be instantly reached for remark, has mentioned that it’s working to handle issues which have led to the lawsuits and regulatory penalties.

Controversies have engulfed Wells Fargo for years, together with sham accounts, improper mortgage changes and accidental releases of client data.

In December, the financial institution agreed to pay $3.7 billion to settle claims by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it engaged in an array of banking violations. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3 billion in 2020 to settle investigations into client abuses that lasted for greater than a decade.

Twice within the final seven years, the financial institution’s chief govt has been ousted: John G. Stumpf in 2016, and Timothy Sloan in 2019. A prime govt, Carrie L. Tolstedt, pleaded responsible in March to a legal cost linked to the sham accounts scandal and faces as much as 16 months in jail.