Key executives at Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase routinely ignored the suspicious activities of convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein because he was among their most profitable clients, paying millions in fees and holding influence over other wealthy people, according to a new investigation released on Tuesday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).
The cover-up should prompt lawmakers to strengthen anti–money laundering laws and pass new legislation to hold individual bankers accountable, said Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee. The Oregon senator used his report on the multiyear investigation to put the financial services industry on notice that he’s preparing to do just that.
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“My investigation showed conclusively that the bankers who served Jeffrey Epstein and his ultra-wealthy friends were far too motivated to protect their cash cow, and had far too little respect for the law,” Wyden told the Prospect via email.
The report looked at thousands of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Those are confidential documents that banks and other financial institutions must file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury’s financial intelligence division, when they identify unusual transactions. Executives have 30 days to file a SAR when they suspect things like money laundering or payments to terrorists.
According to Wyden’s report, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase failed to do so for millions of dollars in cash withdrawals that had “no clear business purpose.” Instead, bankers let them ride, and together facilitated more than $1.4 billion worth of suspicious wire transfers over two decades—transactions they only flagged retroactively in 2019, after authorities arrested Epstein on federal sex trafficking charges.
The transactions they hid “included thousands of wire transfers, major withdrawals of cash, payments to women and girls.”
The report names specific bankers who worked for at least one of the three named banks: Paul Barrett, David Brigstocke, Mary Casey, Stephen Cutler, John Duffy, Mary Erdoes, Jane Heller, Jeff Matusow, Paul Morris, Justin Nelson, Stewart Oldfield, Jes Staley, and Karen Weiss.
Staley, a top JPMorgan executive at the time, is the only banker among the group who has faced any consequence for helping Epstein maintain his human trafficking ring; he was forced out as CEO of Barclays. “The rest of the bankers named in this list have faced no known financial consequences or regulatory discipline and remain employed in extraordinarily lucrative positions at JPMC, Bank of America and elsewhere,” the report states.
The transactions they hid “included thousands of wire transfers, major withdrawals of cash, payments to women and girls, and correspondent banking in high-risk foreign jurisdictions (including Russia),” the report states. “They also include tens of millions in payments to his conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.”
Deutsche Bank and Bank of America both take their legal obligations seriously, spokespeople for both banks said. The Deutsche spokesperson added that the company regrets its past relationship with Epstein, has cooperated with investigations, and has been “transparent in addressing deficiencies and investing in strengthening our control environment in parallel.” Bank of America, meanwhile, “did not facilitate wrongdoing,” the spokesperson said.
A JPMorgan spokesperson failed to respond to a request for comment on the record.
WYDEN TOLD THE PROSPECT that he is “proposing a set of changes to put some teeth into the law so that elite bankers are held accountable for covering up for the Epstein class.” The forthcoming legislation will introduce a new level of accountability that banking executives would face for failing to report suspicious transaction activity, as the bankers who protected Epstein did. It would require senior managers to sign annual attestations confirming that accounts of high-net-worth clients comply with anti–money laundering laws; impose higher fines or prison sentences for individual bankers who fail to promptly report suspicious activity to the Treasury Department; and claw back bonuses paid to executives responsible for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). It would also require bank executives to disclose to the Treasury Department every time they fire a client for suspicious financial activity or restrict a client’s cash withdrawals or wire transfers.
The legislation will specifically target activity that suggests a bank’s client may be engaged in human trafficking. It would require banks to conduct a greater level of screening for bank accounts that individuals open for unrelated people younger than 25 years old, and require a client to submit to an interview when they want to open an account for a woman younger than 25 years old in another country. And it would encourage professional consequences for participating in human trafficking by giving federal agencies the authority to revoke certain registrations and licenses to accountants and attorneys.
This type of enforcement regime could have provided legitimate accountability in the Epstein case, Wyden believes. He argues that JPMorgan’s termination of Epstein as a client in 2013 illustrates that they knew something was wrong. But the fact that executives waited until 2019 to report more than 5,000 suspicious wire transfers worth well over $1 billion merits further attention. He notes a detail in a legal filing showing that between 2009 and 2014, JPMorgan gained $8.1 million from Epstein “in fees alone,” and was one of the bank’s largest clients.
Wyden’s report also details multiple instances in which powerful figures used their positions to obstruct his investigation. In one glaring example, he described CBS suppressing an interview he did with former 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi in March. That was five months after David Ellison, a Trump ally and child of billionaire Larry Ellison, took over CBS through its parent company Paramount and appointed right-wing pundit Bari Weiss to run the network.
New legislation will specifically target activity that suggests a bank’s client may be engaged in human trafficking.
Wyden discussed his SARs investigation with Alfonsi, and possible consequences for banks, as part of a larger segment on the conduct of Wall Street bankers and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. But Weiss fired Alfonsi once Ellison took over. “David Ellison’s handpicked partisan lieutenant killed the segment and fired the lead reporter on the piece,” Wyden told the Prospect.
The experience gave Wyden “a first-hand view of how the far-right takeover of corporate media is protecting predators and standing in the way of justice … Blocking corporate media consolidation and supporting independent media is absolutely vital to defending our democracy and getting justice for ultra-wealthy criminals.”
A spokesperson for CBS did not respond to a request for comment.
MILLIONAIRE TREASURY SECRETARY Scott Bessent is likewise working to stymie Wyden’s SARs investigation, according to the report. Bessent rejected three requests from Wyden to give the Senate Finance Committee copies of Epstein’s bank records, while simultaneously making public statements that the records were “sitting there” and that Treasury’s only job was “simply to collect the reports,” which is a false representation of the department, given that it routinely investigates and fines financial institutions for failing to promptly report suspicious transactions.
Bessent’s fellow Republicans have joined in on undermining Wyden, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who claimed Democrats were stonewalling “efforts to crack the Epstein trafficking ring wide open” while simultaneously rejecting Wyden’s request to support his subpoena of Epstein’s bank records.
Blackburn, who faces a primary election for governor of Tennessee tomorrow, did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to proposing new legislation, Wyden recommends the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and Comptroller of the Currency open investigations into how banks handled Epstein’s accounts and that the Department of Justice open criminal investigations into banks and Epstein’s associates, including his lawyer Darren Indyke and his accountants Richard Kahn and Harry Beller. The current House Oversight Committee investigation should consider subpoenas for the individual bankers named in the report, Wyden argued. And Bessent should turn over all the SARs banks have filed in relation to Epstein.
“The pattern of transactions through Epstein’s accounts was well outside the ordinary course of business. All of the Wall Street banks financing Epstein’s activities knew, or should have known, that his transactions were suspicious,” the report states. “By failing to do exactly what the Bank Secrecy Act requires, these Wall Street bankers enabled unspeakable harm to hundreds of Epstein’s victims.”
