Various media reported this week that victims of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have filed class action lawsuits against Bank of America and Bank of New York-Mellon, after JPMorgan Chase paid a $290 million settlement to accusers for similar reasons two years ago, in addition to a $75 million settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands by Chase. The Wall Street Journal reported about this week’s filings:
The two class-action lawsuits were filed in federal court on Wednesday on behalf of a Jane Doe and other women who have accused Epstein of abuse. They allege that Epstein’s trafficking operation wouldn’t have existed without the banks that provided special treatment to Epstein and his co-conspirators. The suits seek unspecified financial damages…
The Jane Doe plaintiff in the Bank of America suit is a woman who said she was abused by Epstein from 2011 until 2019. The suit claims that she opened an account at Bank of America in May 2013 at the direction of Epstein’s accountant and that he transferred about $14,000 into the account. Epstein and his accountant continued to use accounts set up for the woman at the bank for years, including one until 2019, the suit says…
Banks are required to monitor and report suspicious activities to avoid enabling money laundering and other criminal activity. Senate Finance Committee ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) recently revealed that several banks filed “suspicious activity reports,” or SARs, after Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in 2019 and long after the transactions in question.
Bank of America filed SARs in 2020 covering $170 million in transactions between Epstein and billionaire investor Leon Black, the former chief executive of Apollo Global Management.
Black, one of the alleged ribald contributors to Epstein’s birthday book when he turned 50, paid his own $62.5 million settlement to the Virgin Islands over the allegations. That Bank of America didn’t report the suspicious transactions related to the victim’s account until long after large sums were transferred — and after Epstein’s death — does not reflect well on the company.
In early 2023 NLPC called out the hypocrisy by JPMorgan Chase by continuing to provide financial services to Epstein, while at the same time debanking conservative customers.
Bank of America may now be in a similar situation for allowing Epstein’s transactions to flow without scrutiny long after his abuse convictions (and his death), while almost concurrently turning over credit card data to federal law enforcement for customers who made purchases in the Washington, DC area on or around January 6, 2021, during the uprising at the U.S. Capitol. No subpoena or warrant was issued for the information, yet Bank of America handed over the records to the government anyway, for which the company was heavily criticized by the House Judiciary Committee.
Bank of America also received criticism earlier this year from President Trump for allegedly debanking conservatives.
NLPC submitted a shareholder proposal at Bank of America that was intended to be considered at this year’s annual meeting, which would have called upon the company to explain why it violated its customers’ financial privacy by handing over credit card information to the government without it being asked for. However, carryovers at the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the bank to exclude our proposal from consideration at the meeting.
(Image above created by Grok AI).
