The New York Times reported Thursday that federal civil rights prosecutors are looking into Wells Fargo's hiring practices.
The headquarters of Wells Fargo Capital Finance is in the financial district.
According to the Times, the probe is still in its infancy.
The Times reported last month that some Wells Fargo staffers were told to interview female and Black candidates for jobs the bank was already planning to give to other applicants.
Wells Fargo said in a statement that it paused its diverse hiring policy so staff could fully understand how the guidelines should be implemented.
It's unclear what areas of criminal law the Manhattan-based prosecutors think Wells Fargo may have violated, but it's generally illegal for employers to discriminate against job applicants based on race or sex.
The bank said in a statement that no one should be put through an interview without a chance of getting a job.
Nicholas Biase, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, refused to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation.
Joe Bruno, a former wealth management executive who said he was instructed to conduct sham interviews with Black candidates, was the focus of the investigation. More than a dozen other Wells Fargo employees and job applicants told the Times they were aware of the practice and that it wasn't systemic. In 2020, the bank pledged to pay over $3 billion to resolve federal claims that employees routinely tried to meet the company's sales goals by opening millions of fake bank accounts. Wells Fargo was accused of discrimination by the Department of Labor.
The National Football League was hit by allegations of sham job interviews. In a lawsuit against the league, former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores claimed that at least two teams had interviewed him for head coaching positions they had no intention of giving him.
A quest to increase diversity leads to fake job interviews.
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