NEW YORK: Wells Fargo will pay $1.2 billion to refund US agencies for wrongly certifying bad loans for federal home insurance ahead of the 2008 housing bust, the Department of Justice announced on Friday. The settlement resolves charges that Wells Fargo, a giant in the US mortgage lending, employed shoddy underwriting practices to drive up loan volume, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill when mortgages failed. The government faulted Wells Fargo’s actions under the federal direct endorsement lender programme.