The U.S. government wants to add Wells Fargo (WFC) Vice President Kurt Lofrano personally to its lawsuit involving claims that the bank defrauded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — saying the executive played a "critical role" in Wells Fargo's decision to hide fraudulent loans from the government agency.
Lofrano, who was in charge of self-reporting for Wells Fargo, “played a critical role in the bank’s decision not to report to HUD, as required, more than six thousand materially defective loans that Wells Fargo had falsely certified to HUD for FHA insurance,” the government said in the filing.
The U.S. sued Wells Fargo last year under the Federal False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 1989. The government said it notified Wells Fargo Nov. 1 that it planned to add Lofrano to the case.
The government has been going after individual executives with more regularity in recent months, most recently securing a guilty verdict in a civil fraud case that had named former Countrywide executive Rebecca Mairone as an individual defendent, along with the bank itself.
