Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC

Wells Fargo Clearing Services was fined $900,000. Without admitting or denying the findings, the firm consented to the sanctions and to the entry of findings that it submitted approximately 22,000 blue sheets to FINRA that inaccurately reported one or more of 10 types of transaction information.

The findings stated that the firm initially disclosed to FINRA three separate software coding errors that caused the firm to misreport the exchange where trades were executed and to misidentify the registered representative for trades.

Subsequently, FINRA discovered that the firm reported customer names and addresses as “Privacy Protected” on certain blue sheets, instead of reporting the actual names and addresses of the customers.

The firm then reviewed its prior blue sheet submissions and reported to FINRA additional blue sheet errors caused by software coding issues.

In particular, the firm’s blue sheet submissions contained inaccurate information with respect to (among other things): the exchanges where additional trades were executed (other than those the firm previously disclosed earlier); the taxpayer identification indicators for a certain account; average price indicators; the order execution time of certain dividend reinvestments; buy/sell codes for certain options transactions; and state and/or zip code information.

Collectively the firm failed to include required transactions or transaction information, or included incorrect information, for approximately 5.5 million transactions.