A federal judge in California ordered Wells Fargo to pay $203 million in restitution to its California customers for its overdraft policies, in a whistleblower lawsuit.

According to court documents, Judge William Alsup found Wells Fargo’s overdraft fees to be deceptive. Alsup blasted the practice of “processing larger checks and debit-card payments before smaller ones, rather than in the actual order.” The policy maximizes overdraft fees for customers and can mean exponentially more revenue for the bank.

Alsup explained the practice in his ruling saying: “…the essence of this case is that Wells Fargo has devised a bookkeeping device to turn what would ordinarily be one overdraft into as many as ten overdrafts, thereby dramatically multiplying the number of fees the bank can extract from a single mistake. The draconian impact of this bookkeeping device has then been exacerbated through closely allied practices specifically “engineered” — as the bank put it — to multiply the adverse impact of this bookkeeping device.These neat tricks generated colossal sums per year in additional overdraft fees, just as the internal bank memos had predicted. The bank went to considerable effort to hide these manipulations while constructing a facade of phony disclosure.”

Wells Fargo is expected to appeal the decision.

If you are a whistleblower with information about fraud on the government, you may be able to bring a Qui Tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act. Please contact the Qui Tam Lawyers of Tycko & Zavareei, LLP, at 202-973-0900 today.