Wells Fargo orders executives to pay back an additional $75 million

Wells Fargo said Monday that two former senior executives, including its longtime CEO John Stumpf, must return an additional $75 million in compensation after a scathing internal report found the bad sales practices that have rocked the mega bank date back far longer than initially acknowledged.

Stumpf, who stepped down in October, already had agreed to give up $41 million in compensation as the scandal roiled the San Francisco bank. Now, Wells Fargo says it will 'claw back” an additional $28 million from Stumpf.

The former head of retail banking, Carrie Tolstedt, who stepped down last year and agreed to give up $19 million in compensation, will lose an additional $47 million in stock options.

It is by far one of the most aggressive uses of a compensation clawback by Wells Fargo in its more than 100-year history.

The report was the culmination of a six-month investigation by the bank's independent board members and comes as Wells Fargo struggles to move beyond the sales scandal. It indicates that the problems at Wells Fargo went on for far longer than originally acknowledged and likely involved more employees and customers.

Wells Fargo admitted last year, for example, that it had fired 5,300 employees over five years for opening accounts for customers they didn't want or know about. But the report found that Stumpf was notified of a problem at one of the bank's Colorado branches in 2002 that led to 'mass termination” of bank employees, according to the report.

The roots of the problem, the report said, was the autonomy given to Wells Fargo's community banking division and the apathy of senior executives who downplayed the problems. The executives tended to view the sales abuses as largely 'minor infractions and victimless crimes” committed by a relatively few bad apples, and clung to a sales culture that had helped the bank grow so large.

'The community bank identified itself as a sales organization, like department or retail stores, rather than a service-oriented financial institution. This provided justification for a relentless focus on sales, abbreviated training and high employee turnover,” the report said.

Wells Fargo has been in lawmakers' crosshairs since acknowledging last year that some of its employees created as many as two million fake accounts - from credit cards to checking accounts - to meet sales goals. In some cases, Wells Fargo customers faced various fees for accounts they did not request, or bank employees took money from an authorized account to create a fake one.

Tim Sloan, who replaced Stumpf as chief executive, escaped without much critique in the report.

In addition to the investigation led by the bank's independent board members, Wells Fargo is also being investigated by several regulators. Federal prosecutors are considering criminal or civil charges against the company, the U.S. Labor Department is investigating whether it illegally fired employees who reported the wrongdoing.

Several cities and states have stopped doing business with the bank for now. The House Financial Services Committee also is reviewing thousands of pages of documents turned over by Wells Fargo.