An $84 Million Settlement Paid Out Into Wells Fargo 401(k) Accounts on August 13 — Nobody Had to File a Claim, and It Is Not the Wells Fargo Settlement You Have Been Reading About

If a deposit appeared in your Wells Fargo 401(k) last week, or a check arrived with an unfamiliar case name on it, this is the case. The court-authorized settlement website carries two dated statements, read again today:

“The Court entered an Order granting final approval of the Settlement on April 20, 2026.” and “Settlement distributions were issued on August 13, 2026.”

That is eight days ago. The case is Randall v. GreatBanc Trust Co. et al., No. 22-cv-2354-LMP-SGE, in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, before Judge Laura M. Provinzino. The settlement fund is $84,000,000.00.

The administrator’s own Important Dates page lays out the whole sequence without ambiguity: rollover form and objection deadlines February 26, 2026; fairness hearing March 17, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. CDT; final approval granted April 20, 2026; disbursement date August 13, 2026; check-cashing deadline February 9, 2027.

That last date is the only one still ahead of you, and it is the one worth writing down.

This is an ERISA case about a retirement plan, not a consumer class action. That single structural fact explains almost every question people are asking about it.

Plaintiffs alleged that Wells Fargo violated ERISA by using dividends earned on Wells Fargo Preferred Stock held by the plan’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) Fund to offset part of the company’s own employer contributions to the plan — and that GreatBanc Trust Company, as the ESOP’s independent fiduciary, knowingly participated and failed to remedy it. The defendants are GreatBanc, Wells Fargo & Company and former CEO Timothy J. Sloan. All defendants deny every allegation; the settlement is expressly not an admission of fault or liability.

Because the plan’s own records show who held what and when, nobody had to prove anything. The FAQ states the allocation is calculated “based on the amount of each Class Member’s holdings in the Fund at each of the 14 dates during the Class Period on which the ESOP’s Preferred Stock dividends were used.” Fourteen dividend dates over a class period running September 27, 2016 to December 30, 2022. Hold more on more of those dates, receive more.

How the money reaches you also depends on your account, not your paperwork. If your plan account still has a positive balance, your share arrives as a direct deposit into that account. If you already withdrew your balance, it comes as a check in the mail — unless you filed a rollover election by February 26 to send it to a qualified plan or IRA.

And there is a floor most coverage omits. For former participants, the FAQ says that if the payment “is less than $10.00, then that Former Participant will not receive a distribution.” If you held a small ESOP position on only one or two of the fourteen dividend dates, receiving nothing is the documented, intended outcome — not an error to chase.

This is where the search traffic is going wrong, and it is an easy mistake to make.

A second, entirely unrelated Wells Fargo settlement is also in its payment phase right now: Stoff v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., Case No. 37-2020-00020808-CU-BT-CTL, in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego — the CARES Act mortgage forbearance case. Its administrator’s site, read today, says the court approved that settlement on June 10, 2026 and that “The Settlement Administrator will mail a check to each Class Member for their pro rata share of the Net Settlement Fund by the end of August 2026.”

Nothing about the two cases overlaps except the defendant’s name:

• Different courts — federal court in Minnesota versus California state court in San Diego.
• Different classes — 401(k) plan participants who held the ESOP Fund, versus mortgage customers placed in CARES Act forbearance.
• Different money — $84,000,000 already disbursed on August 13, versus pro rata checks still being mailed this month.
• Different phone numbers — (833) 647-8979 for the ESOP case, 1-877-307-7268 for the CARES Act case.

If you were a Wells Fargo customer, the ESOP case is not yours. If you were a Wells Fargo employee with 401(k) money in the ESOP Fund between 2016 and 2022, it is — and it has already paid.

Two numbers people want are not published on the settlement website, and we are not going to estimate them.

The first is the fee award. The FAQ discloses only a ceiling: “The amount of any fees requested will not exceed one-quarter of the Settlement Fund.” One quarter of $84,000,000 is $21,000,000 — that is the cap, not a reported award. The site does not state what the court actually granted on April 20. Service awards were separately capped at $25,000.00 each for the three class representatives, Aryne Randall, Peter Morrissey and Scott Kuhn.

The second is a per-person figure. Because shares scale with holdings across fourteen dividend dates, there is no meaningful average, and the administrator publishes none. Any site quoting you a specific Wells Fargo ESOP payout amount is inventing it.

If you believe you were in the class and nothing arrived, the administrator is Simpluris: Info@WellsFargoESOPSettlement.com, (833) 647-8979, or Randall, et al. v. GreatBanc Trust Company et al., c/o Settlement Administrator, P.O. Box 26170, Santa Ana, CA 92799. Class counsel can also be reached at WellsFargoESOPSettlement@baileyglasser.com — the firms of record are Nichols Kaster PLLP (Minneapolis), Bailey & Glasser LLP (Washington, D.C.) and Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman & Wasow LLP (Berkeley).

And if a check did arrive: February 9, 2027. After that the money is no longer yours to collect.