Court Filing: JPMorgan Chase “Actively Participated in Epstein’s Sex-Trafficking Venture”

[Gunnar Larson]

>
> https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/07/court-filing-jpmorgan-chase-actively-participated-in-epsteins-sex-trafficking-venture/
>
>
> Court Filing: JPMorgan Chase “Actively Participated in Epstein’s
> Sex-Trafficking Venture”
>
> By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 26, 2023 ~
>
> Jamie Dimon Sits in Front of Trading Monitor in his Office (Source -- 60
> Minutes Interview, November 10, 2019)
> Jamie Dimon Sits in Front of Trading Monitor in his Office (Source: 60
> Minutes Interview, November 10, 2019)
>
> The Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, armed with highly
> effective legal talent from the law firm, MotleyRice – which stakes its
> reputation on its “boldness” – has filed new documents in its federal
> lawsuit against the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. The
> new documents are, indeed, breathtakingly bold.
>
> The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorneys have clarified to the court that they
> plan to show in a trial scheduled for October that JPMorgan Chase not only
> facilitated the sex trafficking of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein but
> that the bank “actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture
> from 2006 until 2019.”
>
> That is a very explosive assertion. For starters, it throws up a giant red
> flare as to why the American public has heard nothing from the criminal
> division of the U.S. Department of Justice about a criminal case against
> the bank for laundering money for Epstein. The case brought by the U.S.
> Virgin Islands is a civil case.
>
> The U.S. Virgin Islands filed hundreds of pages of new court documents on
> Monday and Tuesday. Most of the exhibits have been filed under seal. A
> Memorandum of Law arguing for partial summary judgment in the case,
> however, is only lightly redacted and makes the following points:
>
> “Even if participation requires active engagement…there is no genuine
> dispute that JPMorgan actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking
> venture from 2006 until 2019. The Court found allegations that the Bank
> allowed Epstein to use its accounts to send dozens of payments to
> then-known co-conspirators [redacted] provided excessive and unusual
> amounts of cash to Epstein; and structured cash withdrawals so that those
> withdrawals would not appear suspicious ‘went well beyond merely providing
> their usual [banking] services to Jeffrey Epstein and his affiliated
> entities’ and were sufficient to allege active engagement.”
>
> The U.S. Virgin Islands has previously alerted the court to the
> unfathomable sums of hard cash that Epstein was able to take from the
> accounts he maintained at JPMorgan Chase without the bank filing the
> legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to law enforcement. In
> the new filing, it has tallied up the giant pile of cash, writing as
> follows:
>
> “Between September 2003 and November 2013, or approximately ten years,
> JPMorgan handled more than $5 million in outgoing cash transactions for
> Epstein — ignoring its own policy discouraging large cash withdrawals….”
>
> The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorneys cite to internal emails at JPMorgan
> Chase showing that employees at the bank were aware of Epstein’s “[c]ash
> withdrawals … made in amounts for $40,000 to $80,000 several times a month”
> while also being aware that Epstein paid his underage sexual assault
> victims in cash.
>
> JPMorgan Chase’s active participation in the Epstein sex trafficking ring
> was also alleged in a separate class action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase
> brought by lawyers David Boies and Bradley Edwards on behalf of Epstein’s
> victims. At a March 13 court hearing in the case, Boies argued in open
> court that JPMorgan Chase had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge
> fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking
> operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm
> provided the following details on that allegation:
>
> “As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting
> Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge
> acquisition.
>
> “In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running
> at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan.
>
> “Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire who ran
> Highbridge Capital Management.
>
> “Through Epstein’s connection, it has been reported that Staley arranged
> for JP Morgan to buy a majority stake in Dubin’s fund, which resulted in a
> sizeable profit for JP Morgan. This arrangement was profitable for both
> Staley and JPMorgan, further incentivizing JP Morgan to ignore the
> suspicious activity in Epstein’s accounts and to assist in his
> sex-trafficking venture.
>
> “For example, despite that Epstein was not FINRA-certified, Epstein was
> paid more than $15 million for his role in the Highbridge/JP Morgan deal.
>
> “Moreover, Highbridge, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JP Morgan, trafficked
> young women and girls on its own private jet from Florida to Epstein in New
> York as late as 2012.”
>
> With the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice sitting on
> its hands in this matter, and the Boies/Edwards lawsuit on behalf of
> victims now settled for $290 million by JPMorgan Chase – with victims’
> lawyers getting $87 million in legal fees and $2.5 million in expenses
> while victims are guaranteed nothing other than a requirement to release
> their claims – there is no assurance that the American people will ever
> hear the hard facts about sex trafficking via a corporate jet owned by the
> largest bank in the United States.
>
> Thus, it is becoming critically important that the U.S. Virgin Islands
> actually bring its case to trial in a public courtroom and not fold like
> another cheap suit by accepting a pile of tainted money from JPMorgan
> Chase. If the U.S. Virgin Islands wants to make good on its promise to
> serve the public interest, its hundreds of sealed documents need to get
> unsealed during the trial instead of serving as an incentive on the court
> docket for JPMorgan Chase to pay up to keep the documents sealed.
>
> In its latest filings, the U.S. Virgin Islands also note that JPMorgan
> Chase didn’t just bank Epstein’s accounts but it also banked “all the girls
> and women publicly alleged in 2006 to be recruiters, accomplices, or
> victims…” and regularly transferred monies into these accounts from Epstein
> to buy everyone’s silence. In the case of Epstein’s accomplice-in-chief,
> Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for her
> role in the sex trafficking ring, the new filing notes that JPMorgan Chase
> “made over $25 million in payments to Maxwell from Epstein….”
>
> What was the bank getting out of all of its sleazy dealings with Epstein?
> The U.S. Virgin Islands makes a very credible case that the bank was
> getting lots of profits – both from trading in Epstein’s own accounts as
> well as his referrals of rich clients to the bank. The Memorandum of Law
> filed on Monday notes that Epstein “was “bringing in over $8 million in
> revenues to the Private Bank — the top revenue and nearly double the amount
> of the next highest client….”
>
> As for the client referrals that Epstein made to the bank, the U.S. Virgin
> Islands writes as follows:
>
> “In 2003, Epstein was, by double, the top revenue generator in the Private
> Bank, and the source of Google co-founder Sergey Brin (‘one of the largest
> [relationships] in the Private Bank, of +$4BN’), Glenn Dubin (billionaire
> founder of Highbridge), and many other ultra-wealthy clients and
> connections, which would come to include Bill Gates, Leon Black, Larry
> Summers, the Sultan of Dubai, Prince Andrew, Ehud Barak, Thomas Pritzker,
> Lord Peter Mandelson, and Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
>
> Among that client referral list above, Leon Black, the co-founder and
> former CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, is facing a
> current lawsuit in federal court over allegations he violently raped one of
> Epstein’s victims in Epstein’s upper East Side mansion in Manhattan when
> she was 16. The alleged victim suffers from mosaic Down Syndrome according
> to the lawsuit. This is only the latest in multiple charges of sexual
> assault that have been lodged against Black. (But, once again, the silence
> from the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice is deafening.)
>
> Reporter Matt Goldstein broke the story last Friday in the New York Times
> that Leon Black had quietly settled charges with the U.S. Virgin Islands
> earlier this year with a payment of $62.5 million.
>
> Another rich, powerful man on Epstein’s client referral list to JPMorgan
> Chase is Prince Andrew, who settled claims last year of sexually assaulting
> Epstein’s sex slave, Virginia Giuffre, when she was 17 and loaned out to
> him by Epstein. The monetary details were not disclosed. In a BBC interview
> in 2022, Giuffre said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” for
> sex with Epstein’s powerful friends.
>
> Wall Street On Parade has been reporting for years on how the systemic
> culture of JPMorgan Chase is to ignore the law in pursuit of profits. One
> striking example was investigated by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent
> Subcommittee on Investigations. The Subcommittee got its hands on internal
> emails at JPMorgan Chase showing that when a young recent graduate of a law
> school submitted his resume to the bank, and bragged about finding a
> loophole that could be gamed by the bank to extract obscene profits from
> the California electric market, an executive at the bank wrote: “Please get
> him in ASAP.”
>
> The bank hired the young recruit and deployed the strategy. The bank was
> eventually fined $410 million in penalties and disgorgements by the Federal
> Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
>
> It was also revealed during the Senate hearing into the matter that while
> JPMorgan was being investigated, it continued to engage in other
> manipulative electricity schemes, a total of 11 in all. The Senate report
> noted that FERC officials told the Subcommittee “that in the years since
> Congress gave FERC enhanced anti-manipulation authority in the Energy
> Policy Act of 2005, the CAISO and MISO regulators had never before
> witnessed the degree of blatant rule manipulation and gaming strategies
> that JPMorgan used to win electricity awards and elicit make-whole
> payments.” (See our report: JPMorgan Rushed to Hire Trader Who Suggested on
> His Resume That He Knew How to Game Electric Markets.)
>
> Gaming electric markets is, of course, a trivial matter for a bank that
> has admitted to five criminal felony counts since 2014, which includes
> laundering money for the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history (Bernie
> Madoff) and rigging the market for U.S. Treasuries – the market that the
> U.S. government uses to pay its bills.
>
> Throughout this unprecedented crime spree and non-prosecution agreements
> and deferred-prosecution agreements generously lavished on JPMorgan Chase
> by the bizarrely forgiving U.S. Department of “Justice,” the Board of
> Directors of the bank has kept Jamie Dimon in place as both Chairman and
> CEO. For the conflicts of interest between the bank and its Board that
> might explain that lack of action, see our report here.
>
> Now Dimon and specific members of the Board of Directors also find
> themselves being sued directly for their role in facilitating Jeffrey
> Epstein’s crimes. The lawsuit has been brought by two pension funds on
> behalf of shareholders. The lawsuit’s theory of the case is that specific
> members of the Board of JPMorgan Chase “put their heads in the sand” and
> ignored that the bank had become a cash conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s child
> sex trafficking ring because they were hoping that their own business ties
> to Epstein “would go unnoticed.”
>
> The pension fund case, the Epstein victims’ case that was settled last
> month for $290 million, and the U.S. Virgin Islands’ case, are all before
> the same judge, Jed Rakoff, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern
> District of New York – a District Court where Big Law is known for getting
> sweet deals for Wall Street’s recidivist miscreants.
>
> Representing the Board Members who have been named in the latest lawsuit
> brought by the pension funds is Big Law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton
> & Garrison. For background on how Paul Weiss services Wall Street, see our
> report: Meet the Lawyer Who Gets Citigroup Out of Fraud Charges and The
> Untold Story of the Paul Weiss Internal Investigation that Didn’t Catch a
> Massive Stock Fraud and Judge Issues Scathing Rebuke of DOJ and Law Firm,
> Paul Weiss.
>
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