(credit: Julian Ortiz)

Wells Fargo employees were creating fake accounts in customers’ names without their authorization as early as 2005, according to a letter obtained by Vice News. The letter comes from a former branch manager at a Washington state-based Wells Fargo Branch and was written in January 2006. Wells Fargo recently paid fines totaling $185 million for the creation of 2 million unauthorized accounts since 2011. The bank has said that it will investigate additional unauthorized accounts opened in 2010 and 2009, but it has not acknowledged that such a practice occurred as early as 2005.

Former branch manager Dennis Hambek wrote the 2006 letter to Carrie Tolstedt, who was Wells Fargo’s head of regional banking at the time. In it, Hambek documents a few instances of alleged misconduct, including employees applying for loans far greater than what their customers requested, as well as opening accounts without the customers’ consent.

Tolstedt became Wells Fargo’s Head of Community Banking in 2007. Just weeks before the news of Wells Fargo employee misconduct broke, she retired at the age of 56, entitling her to a severance and a bonus at the end of the year. Last month, Tolstedt forfeited her severance as well as $19 million in bonuses after Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf was questioned by congressional committees on the company’s scandal.