The Court File Has the Number the Settlement Site Never Posted: Wells Fargo's $56.85 Million CARES Act Checks Were Estimated by Class Counsel at About $255 Each — Not the $100–$150 Trackers, Including Ours, Guessed. As of September 30, the Administrator Still Has Not Said the Checks Went Out.

If you are a California homeowner who took a CARES Act forbearance on a Wells Fargo mortgage, this is the state of the Wells Fargo $56.85 million settlement as of September 30, 2026. The Superior Court in San Diego approved it on June 10. The administrator, A.B. Data, Ltd., committed on its website to “mail a check to each Class Member for their pro rata share of the Net Settlement Fund by the end of August 2026.” A month after that deadline, the sentence has not changed. The home page still says “will mail,” not “mailed”; it gives no mailing date and no check amount, and the FAQ still describes the April 17 hearing as scheduled, although the final hearing took place on May 15.

The court file is just as quiet. The San Diego Superior Court's online register lists the case as “Post Judgment.” The last filings by the parties are the notice of entry of the final approval order and its proof of service, both dated June 15, 2026. Nothing about the distribution has been filed since, and no further hearing is on the calendar. That fits the way this settlement is built: the agreement has A.B. Data report the results of the mailing — how many checks went out, how many were never cashed — to the lawyers on both sides, and neither the agreement nor the orders we read set a date for a report to the court.

What we can add is indirect. Since August 31, people have been searching Google for the case name, often in a form that reads like the payer line on a check: “stoff class action settlement fund” showed our pages 2,921 times between September 1 and September 28. We read that as a sign that checks are arriving. It is an inference, not a confirmation, and we have not seen a check ourselves.

No official notice, FAQ or order states a check amount. But when the settlement came up for preliminary approval on December 5, 2025, Judge Katherine A. Bacal's tentative ruling summarized class counsel's own papers: “Plaintiff's counsel anticipates that if all requested fees and expenses are granted, that out of the common fund of $56,850,000, each class member will receive approximately $255 plus accrued interest.” In the same ruling the judge asked, “Is the estimated number of class members identified in the papers? If so, where and if not, why not?” Nothing in the public record we could read gives that count.

Counsel had asked for attorneys' fees of up to 30 percent of the fund, expenses of up to $190,000 and service awards of up to $98,000, and anticipated about $297,000 in administration costs. On June 10, 2026 the judge granted the 30 percent — $17,055,000 — the $190,000 and the administrator's actual costs, but only the $90,000 service award for the class representative, Michael Stoff; the $8,000 requested for six other class members was denied. Before the final hearing the judge had also noted that the administrator's actual costs “appear to be significantly less than the original estimate,” and the fee order sends any unspent part of the $297,000 to the class. The judge granted nothing beyond what counsel had requested when the $255 estimate was made.

Assuming counsel's estimate deducted exactly the amounts requested, our arithmetic runs like this: $56,850,000 minus $17,055,000, $190,000, $297,000 and $98,000 leaves $39,210,000, and $39,210,000 divided by $255 is about 154,000 class members. With the amounts actually awarded, the net is $39,218,000 before interest and before any administration savings — still about $255 a check at that class size. So if the class count behind counsel's estimate held, a check should be close to $255, perhaps a little more, plus interest from the escrow account. That is an estimate built on counsel's estimate; the administrator has not published the real figure.

One more detail from the record. In her tentative ruling for the May 15 final hearing, Judge Bacal said she was inclined to cut the fee to 25 percent and move the difference into the class fund. The order she signed on June 10 awards 30 percent. The documents we could read do not say what changed at the hearing.

A correction. Our Wells Fargo CARES Act tracker and our articles of July 31 and August 9 carried an analyst estimate of $100 to $150 per borrower, and on September 3 we tabulated what a check would be at class sizes from 150,000 to 500,000. Class counsel's estimate in the court record points to the bottom of that range of class sizes and to a check of about $255; the $100–$150 figure was well below that estimate.

The class is everyone with a mortgage on California property whose account was “current” when they received a CARES Act forbearance on or after March 27, 2020, and whose account Wells Fargo then reported to a consumer reporting agency as “in forbearance” or something similar. The court certified that class on February 5, 2024. “Current” is broader than it sounds: under the settlement agreement, an account counts as current if the payment was no more than 29 days past due when the borrower first contacted Wells Fargo about a CARES Act forbearance, and in April 2025 a tentative ruling of the court directed Wells Fargo to produce a supplemental class list of borrowers who were 1–29 days behind and to pay for notice to them. Wells Fargo denies wrongdoing.

Nobody had to file anything. Wells Fargo gave the class list to the lawyers and the administrator on November 7, 2025; the administrator was to check the addresses against the Postal Service's change-of-address system, and every class member who did not opt out gets the same share. One class member asked to be excluded on time, and the court allowed one late exclusion.

Addresses are the weak point. Before the final hearing, the judge noted that 8,305 postcard notices had to be re-mailed to forwarding addresses and 6,063 more after skip tracing — 14,368 in all, or roughly 9 percent of a class of about 154,000, by our arithmetic. If you have moved since your forbearance, or your notice came back, assume the check may have gone to an old address and call A.B. Data now rather than in late November.

The settlement agreement is strict about time. Each check “shall be void after 90 days, if not cashed,” and class members whose checks are not cashed within 90 days after the distribution date “shall be automatically rendered ineligible for future payments.” If your check shows a void date, go by that date. For a check issued on August 31, 2026, day 90 is November 29, 2026, by our arithmetic.

There is no automatic replacement. The agreement lets A.B. Data work with class counsel on steps that “may include providing additional notice, reissuing checks, and extending deadlines as mutually agreed to by Class Counsel and Counsel for Wells Fargo.” That is permission, not a promise: if your check is lost, damaged or never came, ask for a reissue before the void date, not after it.

Money from uncashed checks does not go back to Wells Fargo. Within 14 days after the 90-day window, the administrator must tell both sides' lawyers how many checks went out, how many were not cashed and the dollar totals. What is left is then “distributed evenly to Class Members who cashed a previous Settlement check, unless those Class Members would receive less than $5 each”; anything remaining 90 days after that second round, or if the second round would be under $5 a person, goes to the non-profit Credit Builders Alliance. Cashing the first check is therefore also the ticket to any second one. Under the agreement, the settlement website comes down within 180 days after the second-round payments.

A genuine payment in this case is a paper check in the mail. The official FAQ says “You do not need to take any action to receive a Settlement Share,” and the checks go out “without the need for claim forms or documentary proof.” Anyone who asks you to register, confirm a bank login, pay a fee or a tax to release the money, or send a gift card or wire transfer is not part of this settlement. The only official website is CaresActLitigation.com; type it in rather than following a link from a text or an email.

The official contacts are A.B. Data at 1-877-307-7268, info@CaresActLitigation.com, or Wells Fargo CARES Act Mortgage Credit Reporting Class Action, c/o A.B. Data, Ltd., P.O. Box 173008, Milwaukee, WI 53217. The court-appointed class counsel are the Law Offices of Andrew J. Brown in San Diego, (619) 501-6550, and Thompson Consumer Law Group, (888) 332-7252; the notice says contacting them costs nothing. The site asks class members not to call the court or the clerk's office. Wells Fargo has settled several unrelated cases, so a check that names neither this case nor A.B. Data is probably a different payment; our tracker explains how they differ.