But it never really got its basic business in order. There were signs that something was going terribly awry beneath the bank's profitable veneer. In 2005, a securities regulator fined Wells Fargo $3 million for ripping off its mutual fund clients. In 2007, it paid $12.8 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the bank had stiffed its employees for overtime pay. In January 2008, eight months before the failure of Lehman Brothers, the City of Baltimore filed a civil rights lawsuit against Wells Fargo alleging that the bank had been steering borrowers of color into predatory subprime mortgages. A year later, the state of Illinois filed a similar lawsuit.