You're right that this was primarily a scam on investors, the customers were incidental. Measuring harm to investors is complicated though. Any investors who b

You're right that this was primarily a scam on investors, the customers were incidental. Measuring harm to investors is complicated though. Any investors who bought after the fake gains and did not sell before the scam was exposed have been harmed but other investors have actually gained. I would be interested to see a calculation (by someone other than a prosecutor) of this harm. Unfortunately there is no way of holding "the bank" accountable for that because the punishment for causing investors to lose money is to fine the bank which is owned by those same-(ish) shareholders. It is more accurate to ignore the existence of the legal entity "WF" and deal only with the natural persons. Employees / executives conspired on a massive scale to defraud the shareholders by collecting undeserved incentive payments and realising artificial gains on any stocks they sold. Some investors benefits and some lost out depending on timing of purchase and sales of the stock. A small number of customers suffered miniscule and temporary incidental harm to credit scores and an even smaller number suffered actual cash harm through paying account fees for accounts they did not ask for.