Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has agreed to a settlement with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
The tentative agreement, announced June 12, settles a lawsuit brought last fall over the bank’s ties to the disgraced financier, who built a sex trafficking operation during the 2000s and 2010s and sexually abused dozens of underage girls. The original class action lawsuit accused JPMorgan of ignoring warnings and red flags about Epstein’s sex trafficking and continuing to do business with him after he pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from an underage girl in 2008 because he was a valuable client.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and it still needs to be approved by a judge. Per reports, it’s possible the JPMorgan settlement could be larger than the $75 million Deutsche Bank agreed to pay Epstein’s victims after settling a similar lawsuit last month. And it’s possible the number of victims seeking damages from JPMorgan could be over 100.
In a statement shared with Rolling Stone, JPMorgan said, “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. 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.”
Brad Edwards, one of the lawyers representing Epstein’s victims, said, “We promised to bring full justice to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and this is a giant step toward fulfilling that promise. Holding a financial institution accountable for facilitating sex trafficking had never been done before now. Let’s hope it is the last time we ever need to do that. A settlement of this size finally acknowledges the magnitude of the suffering of Epstein’s victims, the degree to which our system is broken, and the extent of Epstein’s influence to corrupt our system.”
As The New York Times notes, JPMorgan provided banking services to Epstein from about 1993 to 2013, a period during which Epstein’s sex trafficking operation was reportedly at its height. During that time, bank employees filed suspicious activity reports about Epstein’s large cash withdrawals, and the bank even designated him as a “high-risk client” in 2006. Still, the bank continued to work with him, even as allegations of his sexually abusing teenage girls emerged, along with evidence that some of that cash was being used to pay young women.
As part of the JPMorgan lawsuit, numerous employees at the bank sat for depositions, including Jamie Dimon, its longtime chief executive. Per a redacted transcript, Dimon denied meeting or communicating with Epstein and claimed he didn’t remember being briefed about any Epstein-related issues, like his 2008 conviction in Florida and registration as a sex offender. Dimon, one of Wall Street’s most powerful and prominent figures, insisted he didn’t know much about Epstein — who was otherwise known as a major New York-based hedge fund manager — until Epstein’s July 2019 arrest on two counts of sex trafficking minors. (Epstein died by suicide in jail later that year as he was awaiting trial.)
Despite the settlement with Epstein’s victims, JPMorgan is still facing another lawsuit filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands, which claims the bank should pay it damages for allegedly facilitating Epstein’s establishment of a sex trafficking operation on his private island. JPMorgan has denied the claims and pointed to Epstein’s close relationship with some U.S. Virgin Island government officials. (Back in May, the U.S. Virgin Islands subpoenaed Elon Musk, seeking documents as part of the case.)