Two Wells Fargo & Co. bankers accused the company in a lawsuit of imposing quotas on employees to open unauthorized accounts and then firing or demoting them for missing the targets.

“Wells Fargo knew that their unreasonable quotas were driving these unethical behaviors that were used to fraudulently increase their stock price and benefit the CEO at the expense of the low-level employees,’’ according to the complaint filed in state court in Los Angeles.

Authorities, including the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fined Wells Fargo $185 million on Sept. 8 for potentially opening about 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts without authorization. The scandal escalated this week, when Senate Banking Committee members including Democrat Elizabeth Warren urged  Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf to return his compensation and resign.

Wells Fargo fired 5,300 workers over the matter and said it would eliminate sales goals regulators linked to its practice of cross-selling products.

Wells Fargo hired a law firm to advise the board on potential pay clawbacks as the bank grapples with the fallout from a scandal, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Robert Mundheim, a lawyer with Shearman & Sterling LLP in New York, was retained to help the board determine whether to claw back compensation from Stumpf, Chief Operating Officer Tim Sloan and Carrie Tolstedt, the former head of community banking, the newspaper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Oscar Suris, a spokesman at Wells Fargo, declined to comment. A lawyer for the bankers, Jonathan Delshad, had no immediate comment.