Well Fargo was ordered by a federal judge to pay California consumers $203 million in restitution for claims that it had manipulated transactions to maximize the overdraft fees it charged, reports the New York Times.

A judge in San Francisco found that instead of processing transactions in an order they were received the bank started with largest and went to smallest further. In his 90-page opinion United States District Judge William Alsup wrote that the practice was unfair and deceptive.

“The bank’s dominant, indeed sole, motive was to maximize the number of overdrafts and squeeze as much as possible” out of customers who spent more than they had in their accounts, the judge wrote. The ruling comes after a two-week trial in the spring heard by the judge.

Wells Fargo, which collected nearly $1.8 billion in overdraft fees in California alone from 2005 to 2007, said it would appeal.

“We’re disappointed with the judge’s ruling,” said Richele Messick, a bank spokeswoman. “We don’t believe the ruling is in line with the facts of the case.”

Ms. Messick said Wells Fargo’s method of processing transactions was “appropriate and consistent with customers’ interest and the laws and rules of governing regulatory authorities.”

It is clear that when a bank processes the big transaction first customer’s balance will get empty faster which means additional fees for overdrawn transactions. Meantime, Wells Fargo and many other banks claim that their consumers prefer having their biggest transactions processed first.

But Judge Alsup ripped apart that argument, saying that a small item like a check to a local government might be more important than a large item. “The supposed net benefit of high-to-low resequencing is utterly speculative,” he wrote. “Its bone-crushing multiplication of additional overdraft penalties, however, is categorically assured.”

The judge also accused Wells Fargo of going “to lengths to hide these practices while promulgating a facade of phony disclosure.” For instance, he said that customers had learned about the change in how Wells Fargo processed transactions only after they complained about it.