The agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency requires Wachovia to pay as much as $144 million: $125 million for a restitution fund, $10 million in civil fines, $3.9 million in revenue, and $5 million for consumer-education programs aimed at the elderly, who were the typical victims of the schemes.

Wachovia was used as a conduit by other firms to withdraw funds from people's personal bank accounts between 2003 and 2006. Wachovia collected millions of dollars in fees from the transactions, which were conducted by other firms using account numbers often obtained fraudulently.

Among the victims was Catherine D. Harrison, a 78-year-old with dementia, who lives in Monroe, Wash., and lost $6,000 to companies linked to Wachovia.

Harrison's sister Joanne Weller, of West Philadelphia, said telemarketers would call continually offering identity protection, medical discount cards, and other products.

"It sounded good, and she would give permission" for them to access her account, Weller said, speaking for her sister. "Even if she had second thoughts, she couldn't call them back" because of her illness.

The government said an 18-month investigation found that Wachovia, the biggest bank in the Philadelphia region, failed to conduct "suitable due diligence on the accounts, even though the bank had reason to know that the payment processors and direct-telemarketers were high-risk customers that posed significant legal, reputational and monetary risk to the bank and . . . consumers."

Wachovia did not admit or deny wrongdoing in the settlement. It has since stopped accepting business from companies that are strictly telemarketers or from companies that process payments for telemarketers, spokeswoman Christy Phillips-Brown said.

"This situation was unacceptable, and we regret it happened," Phillips-Brown said.

Howard Langer, a Center City lawyer seeking class-action certification for a related lawsuit, criticized the Wachovia settlement.

He said the government-set restitution of $125 million is less than his estimate of $150 million taken from victims' accounts and does not include substantial overdraft charges.

"Moreover, the agreement requires victims to file claims and provides that all unclaimed funds will be returned to Wachovia," said Langer, of Langer, Grogan & Diver P.C. "The likely result is that the bulk of the money will be returned to Wachovia rather than compensating victims."

In his lawsuit, Langer is seeking threefold damages, which could approach $500 million.

Telemarketing fraud costs Americans billions of dollars each year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In a typical scheme, a telemarketer tells consumers they are eligible for a $5,000 government grant for a $298 fee, as long as they provide bank account numbers. In reality, after giving their numbers, consumers receive nearly worthless guidebooks on how to apply for grants.

Such telemarketers, often operating from Canada, India or the West Indies, are shut out of normal electronic-payment channels such as the credit-card system by rules designed to reduce fraud. Instead, they rely on payment-processing firms that print special checks - called remote-created checks - that can be cashed without a signature.

After duping victims into giving up their account information, the telemarketers send it to a payment processor, such as Payment Processing Center L.L.C., or PPC, in Newtown.

Using the account information, including the bank routing number, PPC printed at least one million paper checks and deposited them in its own account at Wachovia, according to court documents. If the check cleared, PPC deducted its fee and paid the remainder to the telemarketer.

More than half of the checks PPC deposited from April 2005 through December 2005 failed to clear because the victim or the victim's bank suspected fraud and blocked payment.

The returned-check and other fees paid by PPC earned Wachovia $1.58 million in revenue from March 2005 through January 2006, according to court documents.