Federal regulators are seeking $1 billion in civil penalties from Wells Fargo & Co. for overcharging tens of thousands of customers for improper mortgage fees and unneeded insurance policies, the troubled bank said Friday.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo reported its preliminary first quarter financial results of $5.9 billion in net income, but said the figure “may have to be revised to reflect additional accruals” for the penalty.

It acknowledged it is in talks with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency over the latest sanction, but “cannot reasonably estimate” the loss yet.

Wells Fargo added, “The CFPB and OCC have collectively offered to resolve [the matters] for an aggregate of $1 billion in civil money penalties.” That figure is believed to be a record penalty from the regulators.

Peter Gilchrist, Wells Fargo's corporate communications manager, said the bank would not comment further on the negotiations.

“At this time, we are unable to predict final resolution of the CFPB/OCC matter and cannot reasonably estimate our related loss contingency,” the bank's statement continued. “Accordingly, the preliminary financial results we report today may need to be revised to reflect additional accruals for the CFPB/OCC matter when we file our final financial statements in our quarterly report on form 10-Q with the SEC.”

Chief Executive Officer Tim Sloan said in the statement, “The efforts to build a better Wells Fargo during the quarter included continuing to improve our compliance and operational risk management programs, investing in innovative products and services that enhance the customer experience including the roll-out of our digital mortgage application and predictive banking service, and increasing the minimum hourly pay rate for U.S.- based team members.”

The potentially huge penalty would be the latest in a series of sanctions against the bank as legal and other costs associated with its regulatory problems and related lawsuits continue to hit its bottom line. In the first quarter noninterest expenses were $14.2 billion, down from $16.8 billion in the prior quarter but up 3 percent from a year ago.

Operating losses of $668 million in the first quarter were “elevated due to litigation accruals for a variety of matters, including mortgage-related regulatory investigations, sales practices and other consumer-related matters,” the bank said.

The bank's problems date back to the fall of 2016 when it announced it was paying $185 million in penalties after creating over 3.5 million fake bank accounts using customers' information without their knowledge.

In 2017 alone, Wells Fargo paid $142 million to settle a class action suit over the sham accounts, spent $108 million to settle a whistleblower suit over alleged illegal fees on veterans' loans, agreed to refund fees to 110,000 customers who were wrongly charged for mortgage rate-lock extensions and said it would return $80 million to 570,000 car loan customers who were charged for insurance they did not need. That year, the company also agreed to pay investors $3.4 million for selling them products highly likely to lose money after telling them otherwise and took a $1 billion charge for litigation costs in one quarter.

The problems since 2016 also led to a management shakeup that included a new CEO, general counsel and chief compliance officer, among others.

Back in February, Corporate Counsel reported that Wells Fargo had brought on Sarah Dahlgren, a former executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as head of regulatory relations to help work with regulators on the bank's “legal and compliance makeover.”

Sloan said Friday, “I'm confident that our outstanding team will continue to transform Wells Fargo into a better, stronger company; however, we recognize that it will take time to put all of our challenges behind us.”