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JPMorgan processed $1 billion for Jeffrey Epstein, kept him as client despite sex trafficking indictment: report (nypost.com)

submitted 2 months ago by dude@lemmings.world to c/news@lemmings.world

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[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 32 points 2 months ago (11 children)

I know this is an extreme case, but IMO it's not the banks job to punish criminals. They should continue business as usual, in case the person was wrongfully convicted. It's the governments job to freeze or seize assets. In this particular case this may feel uncomfortable, but you wouldn't want the bank to pro-actively, maybe even automatically freeze your account when you forget to pay a parking ticket or so, because this is where this is going.

[–] bitwize01@reddthat.com 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

From the (very long) NYT article that dropped today about this:

Epstein was likely money laundering for quite some time, Bank ignored red flags because the penalties would almost certainly be less than the profits from moving that much money around. This is the big reason why he didn't get cut loose. I'm sure JPM was taking a cut on all the transfers of non-cash deposits (securities, etc) and also making money on the balance of accounts as they moved through their system (being laundered). Getting to trade on $1B while it's being disbursed is a lot of why these "market makers" are so powerful. Critically, they're supposed to be reporting on large cash withdrawls - if you or I pulled out $180k in a year in physical cash the feds would be coming by to see what was going on.
Despite the potential bad optics of bankrolling a pedophile money launderer, They continued lending & consulting him because he got them add'l whale clients, including the CEO of Google (4B+ Customer) and business with highly profitable hedge funds
When things became untenable (tried + convicted sex offender, serving 18 months in FLA) the senior exec who had been covering for him (and profiting from his referrals and money laundering) lobbied to keep him because he, himself, had been entrapped in Epstein's sex trafficking operation (as a customer, obv).
Once word of one of their seniors being Epstein's pal became public JPM cut everyone loose. This is pretty routine behavior by wall street tbh. Crime until you're caught.

Obviously trustworthy banks don't enable money laundering, so he should really have been dropped in the 90's/00's. Certainly his '11 conviction should have been the end of it. Incarcerated white-collar criminals usually lose big after the first conviction because the revenue stream has dried up and the justice-averting lawyers can't be paid. In this case, his contacts kept the money moving because they were embroiled in the same schemes.

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