Two more banks implicated- Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon
In June 2023, JP Morgan settled with scores of survivors of Jeffrey Epstein to the tune of $290 million. The bank didn’t admit liability in Epstein’s international sex-trafficking operation, but it did concede that the women “were the victims of Epstein’s terrible abuse.” Now, two more banks are being forced to reckon with allegations that they, too, were party to Epstein’s crimes.
This month, an anonymous survivor sued both Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), alleging that the banks had unlawfully enabled Epstein. The woman, who met Epstein in her native Russia in 2011, says she was trafficked and abused by Epstein until his death in 2019. According to the lawsuit, in 2013, his accountant instructed the woman to open a Bank of America account to allow for money to be wired to cover her rent. The banking transactions, as the suit notes, should have raised red flags with the bank.
“A review of Jane Doe’s account history will show incredibly alarming and erratic banking behavior, as Epstein, through one of his loyal employees, would utilize Jane Doe’s account, often without her knowledge, to conduct business in amounts that were not typical for Jane Doe, and that would have in fact been impossible based on Jane Doe’s income or typical pattern of deposit,” the lawsuit alleges.
“Epstein committed these crimes by means of not only his own extraordinary wealth and power, but through access to funding and financial support from both individuals and institutions, including BNY,” one lawsuit claims. “Egregiously, BNY had a plethora of information regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking operation but chose profit over protecting the victims.”
The Bank of America suit detailed similar claims, alleging that the institution “knowingly provided the financial support and the veneer of institutional legitimacy for Epstein and his co-conspirators to fuel their international sex trafficking organization under the guise of non-criminal business activities.” Furthermore, the filing said that Bank of America also neglected to advance suspicious activity reports against Epstein.
Legal experts told the Guardian that while the suits are unlikely to be successful, it would become a potential “PR nightmare” for the banks to fight the suits given the public’s investment in the pursuit of justice for survivors. “No one wants to go litigate any of the Epstein-related cases,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani said.
The JP Morgan suit was prompted by claims filed by an unnamed woman, identified only by the pseudonym Jane Doe. According to Doe, JP Morgan not only knew of Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, but continued a beneficiary relationship with him for 15 years. Doe, who alleges that she was raped and trafficked by Epstein, sued the bank on behalf of a “large number” of fellow survivors. The suit was filed in November 2022, and claimed the number of women who allege Epstein abused them over the period in which he remained a client of JP Morgan could rise to over 100. Notably, the bank maintained a relationship with Epstein even after his 2008 guilty plea to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl. The bank didn’t drop him until 2013.
“We all now understand that Epstein’s behavior was monstrous, and we believe this settlement is in the best interest of all parties, especially the survivors, who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of this man,” JP Morgan said in its statement. “Any association with him was a mistake and we regret it. We would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank in any way to help commit heinous crimes.”
Though any amount of money isn’t justice, here’s hoping the same outcome will prevail for the plaintiff of these new suits.
JP Morgan Alerted US to Suspect Epstein Transactions
I had this bookmarked to share before all hell broke loose here!
After Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death, the bank reported more than $1 billion in potentially suspicious transactions.
Weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody in 2019 awaiting prosecution on sex-trafficking charges, JPMorgan Chase filed a report alerting the U.S. government to tens of millions of dollars of potentially suspicious transactions involving him and
prominent Wall Street and business figures.The so-called suspicious activity report that JPMorgan filed identified transactions with Leon Black, the co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management; Glenn Dubin, a well-known hedge fund manager; the lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and trusts controlled by Leslie Wexner, the retail tycoon.
The nature of the transactions, as well as Mr. Epstein’s role in them, is unclear.
JPMorgan said in its report that it was flagging about 4,700 transactions, totaling more than $1 billion, because they were potentially related to reports of human trafficking involving Mr. Epstein. It also mentioned Mr. Epstein’s wire transfers to Russian banks and sensitivities around “his relationships with two U.S. presidents.” Mr. Epstein at times was close with President Trump and former President Bill Clinton.
The report was included in hundreds of pages of previously sealed court records that JPMorgan released on Thursday at the instruction of a federal judge, Jed S. Rakoff. He ordered the documents unsealed in response to requests from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Several other suspicious activity reports that JPMorgan filed in the years before Mr. Epstein’s 2019 arrest were also included in the documents released on Thursday. They notified federal regulators to some of Mr. Epstein’s voluminous cash withdrawals, which experts say are a potential hallmark of money laundering and human trafficking.
Yet JPMorgan continued to do business with Mr. Epstein for years. The bank lent him money, moved his funds overseas and enabled payments to some of his sex-trafficking victims, The Times reported in September. Bank employees repeatedly raised concerns about the risks of being associated with Mr. Epstein, but senior executives decided to keep his accounts open.
In the case of Mr. Wexner’s trusts, it described $65 million of wire transfers from the mid-2000s that appeared to move between multiple banks. Mr. Epstein served as a trustee for some of Mr. Wexner’s trusts.
For nearly two decades, until around 2007, Mr. Epstein was a close financial adviser to Mr. Wexner, whose company controlled retailers like the Limited and Victoria’s Secret. Soon after Mr. Epstein’s death, Mr. Wexner accused him of having misappropriated “vast sums” of his money.
The suspicious activity report pointed to unidentified transactions with Mr. Black, his wife and a Black family partnership. The Times recently reported that Mr. Black had paid Mr. Epstein about $170 million and hundreds of thousands of dollars to at least three women who were associated with Mr. Epstein.
Mr. Epstein’s relationship with Mr. Dubin was multifaceted. Mr. Epstein helped broker the sale of Mr. Dubin’s hedge fund to JPMorgan, for which Mr. Epstein received a $15 million fee. Mr. Epstein previously dated Mr. Dubin’s wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin, and was the godfather to the Dubins’ children.
The suspicious activity report that JPMorgan disclosed on Thursday did not provide details about the transactions involving the Blacks, the Dubins or Mr. Dershowitz.
Devon Spurgeon, a spokeswoman for the Dubins, said the transactions in question were “related to charitable giving, personal gifts or business matters” and unrelated to Mr. Epstein’s crimes.
Mr Dershowitz has been on a bit of a tear lately…