A longtime Wells Fargo banker has accused the company's advisory and brokerage businesses of sex discrimination, alleging in a new lawsuit that her high-producing boss verbally and emotionally abused her in a behavioral pattern directed only at female employees.
Dinah Mirson, who worked at Wells Fargo Advisors and Wells Fargo Clearing Services and predecessor Wachovia in Palm Beach, Florida, from 2008 to 2023, contends that her performance was stellar and that she was held in high esteem across all business channels, serving some of the bank's highest-net-worth clients for years.
While on medical leave to treat a condition created by the alleged mistreatment, Wells Fargo advised Mirson this month that her employment would be terminated effective Friday, according to a new lawsuit, which describes her as "a successful banker in a male dominated industry."
Mirson was registered as a broker with Wells Fargo Clearing Services from June 2008 to July 2023, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's BrokerCheck database.
"Notwithstanding her performance, everything changed in or around November 2012 when Ms. Mirson almost exclusively began supporting Jeffrey Bowman, one of the bank's top financial advisors," she alleges in the lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Southern Florida.
Bowman served a book of business worth roughly $820 million, including many accounts exceeding $50 million with complex trusts and estates structures, according to the lawsuit. He died in April 2023, an online obituary indicates.
"Specifically, and in stark contrast to the manner in which he treated Ms. Mirson's male colleagues, Mr. Bowman constantly berated and belittled Ms. Mirson, and treated her as a second-classed citizen," the complaint says.
Bowman allegedly disciplined Mirson for issues that were not her fault or were beyond her control, the suit says.
He "was verbally and psychologically abusive" toward Mirson "because she is a woman, including while she was preparing for medical appointments and infusions to treat her Crohn's Disease and Colitis that returned after years of remission due to the stress and anxiety created by Mr. Bowman's unlawful mistreatment," the complaint alleges.
Bowman was registered as a broker with Wells Fargo from 2004 to 2023, according to BrokerCheck.
