Beginning in at least in 2009, Wells Fargo teamed up with a home warranty firm to foist a product on unsuspecting mortgage customers, according to a new investigation bubbling up in the Wall Street trade press.

The story was first reported by The Capitol Forum, a paywalled investigative site catering to policymakers and investors, and based on several dozen consumer complaints filed online and with the Federal Trade Commission. Complainants allege that they discovered surprise charges on their mortgage bills for the service, labeled an “optional product,” and found it difficult to get Wells Fargo to remove them.

“I was never contacted … with any offer, they never sent any receipt or contract; but I was billed $43 extra on my mortgage bill by Wells Fargo,” claims one borrower from Herndon, Virginia, who didn’t leave a name. After appearing to rectify the matter, a similar charge appeared again the next month.

An FTC spokesman would neither confirm nor deny whether the commission had looked into the complaints, citing government policy regarding public comments. Such complaints, when they become public, tend to attract class-action attorneys, who suspect the complaints might just be the tip of the iceberg.

Wells Fargo claims they ended the marketing arrangement with the third-party company pushing the warranty service in 2012. But it’s unclear how many borrowers were affected by this charge in the past without knowing; we only have the complaints of those who caught it and were bothered enough to report it.

“It’s hard to put your finger on what’s going on,” said bankruptcy attorney O. Max Gardner, a legendary consumer advocate. “When you think you’ve seen it all, you see this stuff.”

In a statement to The Intercept, a Wells spokesperson hinted that there may be an iceberg there. “Wells Fargo stopped marketing home warranties from American Home Shield, along with other optional products, to our mortgage customers in 2012 and has been discontinuing arrangements through which these products had been billed to customers through their monthly mortgage statements,” the statement reads.

That raises a question attorneys are likely to ask: what “other optional products” were sold? And what does “has been discontinuing” mean? Has it been fully discontinued, or are some customers still getting smacked with bills every month? (If you have a third-party charge on your mortgage statement you didn’t sign up for, email us at [email protected])

Wells said that customers knew what they were buying. “Wells Fargo’s processes for customers who purchased home warranty coverage through American Home Shield included a written or recorded verbal authorization at the time of enrollment,” according to the statement, which added that it would look into any specific complaints.

Meanwhile, we uncovered a cinematic representation of what that “written or recorded verbal authorization” may have looked like: