JPMorgan’s $365 Million Epstein Victims Settlement Won’t Teach Banks A Lesson

In the last four months, JPMorgan has agreed to pay $365 million in settling lawsuits surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operations. Only recently did JPMorgan notify the U.S. Department of Treasury that there had been over $1 billion in transactions at the bank related to Epstein’s human trafficking dating back 16 years. As former Congresswoman Jackie Speier sadly wrote, Epstein’s “15-year client relationship with JPMorgan Chase
JPM
exceeded the ages of some of his victims.” This is a bank that invests millions of dollars in sophisticated technological systems to price financial derivatives and to measure the value-at-risk of its multi-billion-dollar capital markets portfolios. Yet, we are to believe that it did not have the systems to spot irregularities in Epstein’s financial transactions for sixteen years.

Earlier this summer, Deutsche Bank also agreed to pay $75 million in lawsuit settlements, since after JPMorgan no longer wanted Epstein, he became a client. Somehow, no one at Deutsche Bank thought to ask why Epstein was finally no longer welcome at JPMorgan?