[Photo: by Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal]

Sometime in the last 2 weeks, the senior most bank examiner overseeing Wells Fargo was reportedly stripped of his supervisory responsibilities by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the lead regulator for national banks. The source of the report were 3 anonymous individuals who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The supervisor, Barry Linskens, was responsible for day-to-day supervision of Wells Fargo and managed a staff of more than 60 people, according to past notices from the OCC. He joined the OCC in 1993 and earliest oversight of Wells Fargo began in 2006.

In 2016, Linskens was honored with the title "senior national bank examiner" and received accolades in a news release from Comptroller Thomas Curry, who runs the OCC.

In September, Curry ordered an internal review of how the OCC handled the Wells Fargo matter and whether the agency has "gaps in our supervision." That review is drawing to a close, said an OCC official.