JPMorgan reaches settlement in class action lawsuit with Jeffrey Epstein victims
A general view showing the J.P.Morgan Building in Central on May 18, 2023 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo by Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
JPMorgan Chase announced a settlement Monday with the 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 on federal charges accusing him of 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 on 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 written statement early Monday.
According to the lawsuits, JPMorgan provided Epstein 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 and 2013.
The bank continued to count Epstein as a client despite the fact that Epstein was arrested and pled guilty to sex crimes in 2008 in Florida.
The settlement with Jane Doe arrives on the same day that a judge granted Doe's lawsuit class-action status, meaning 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 prepared 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 Chase CEO Jamie Dimon testified in a deposition for the case, where 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.
Both lawsuits were filed after New York state in November enacted a temporary law letting adult victims of sexual abuse to sue others for the abuse they suffered, even if the abuse occurred long ago.
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Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Lawsuits are still pending between the U.S. Virgin Islands and JPMorgan Chase, and the bank is still pursuing its lawsuit against JPMorgan former executive Jes Staley.
Jeffrey Epstein's former home on the island of Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands. (Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
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 to later become CEO of the British bank Barclays. Staley stepped down from that role in 2021 due to his prior relationship with Epstein.