Banks fined $549 million for hiding messages in iMessage and Signal

Wells Fargo and other Wall Street firms snuck around and found out.

Several US financial firms, including multiple Wells Fargo companies, will pay a combined $549 million in fines after admitting they couldn’t produce discussions about company business from smartphone messaging apps used by their employees, “including those at senior levels.”

Both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined banks for being unable to produce discussions going back to at least 2019. The regulators say employees used their personal devices to discuss official company business via apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal and that those “off-channel communications” weren’t “maintained or preserved.”

Not keeping records of those conversations violates the 1934 Securities Exchange Act’s recordkeeping rules, as well as similar rules from the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, according to the SEC. The CFTC maintains its own recordkeeping requirements, which it says were violated.

The biggest chunk of the fines go to the Wells Fargo companies, which together will pay almost half of the SEC’s penalties at $125 million, along with another $75 million settlement with the CFTC.

“Here are three takeaways for those firms who haven’t yet done so: self-report, cooperate and remediate,” said SEC enforcement director Gurbir S. Grewal. “If you adopt that playbook, you’ll have a better outcome than if you wait for us to come calling.”

Here’s the full list of banks and their settlements with the SEC:

• Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, together with Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC and Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC, agreed to pay a $125 million penalty;
• BNP Paribas Securities Corp. and SG Americas Securities, LLC have each agreed to pay penalties of $35 million;
• BMO Capital Markets Corp. and Mizuho Securities USA LLC have each agreed to pay penalties of $25 million;
• Houlihan Lokey Capital, Inc. has agreed to pay a $15 million penalty;
• Moelis & Company LLC and Wedbush Securities Inc. have each agreed to pay penalties of $10 million; and
• SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc. has agreed to pay a $9 million penalty.

And the list from the CFTC release:

• BNP Paribas (BNP Paribas S.A. and BNP Paribas Securities Corp.): $75 million
• Société Générale (Société Générale SA and SG Americas Securities, LLC): $75 million
• Wells Fargo (Wells Fargo Bank NA and Wells Fargo Securities LLC): $75 million
• Bank of Montreal (Bank of Montreal): $35 million