JPMorgan reaches $290-million settlement with Jeffrey Epstein abuse victims
JPMorgan Chase announced a tentative $290-million settlement Monday with victims of Jeffrey Epstein who had accused the bank of being the financial conduit that allowed the financier to continue operating a sex-trafficking operation.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York. He was found dead in jail Aug. 10 of that year, at age 66. A medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court in November, sought to hold JPMorgan financially liable for Epstein’s decades-long abuse of teenage girls and young women. A related lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“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,” JPMorgan Chase said in a statement early Monday.
The proposed settlement, which must still be approved by the judge in the case, totals $290 million, according to lead plaintiff attorney David Boies.
According to the lawsuits, JPMorgan provided Epstein with loans and regularly allowed him to withdraw large sums of cash from 1998 through August 2013 even though it was aware of his participation in sex trafficking. The anonymous victim, referred to as Jane Doe, said she was sexually abused by Epstein from 2006 to 2013.
The bank continued to count Epstein as a client even after he was arrested and pleaded guilty to sex crimes in 2008 in Florida.
Newly obtained documents related to Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide underscore how fundamental failings at the Bureau of Prisons contributed to his death.
The settlement with Jane Doe was announced on the same day that a judge granted Doe’s lawsuit class-action status, meaning that future awards would be granted to Doe and other victims.
“Any association with him was a mistake, and we regret it,” the bank said in a statement. “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.”
The settlement comes roughly two weeks after JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon testified in a deposition in the case in which he denied knowing about Epstein and his crimes until the financier was arrested in 2019, according to a transcript of the videotaped deposition released last month.
Litigation is still pending between the U.S. Virgin Islands and JPMorgan Chase, as well as JPMorgan Chase’s claims against former executive Jes Staley.
The bank has denied the allegations and sued Staley, saying he hid Epstein’s crimes to keep him as a client. Staley left JPMorgan in 2013 and later became chief of the British bank Barclays. Staley stepped down from that role in 2021 because of his prior relationship with Epstein.
