A report by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee has found that three major American banks helped the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein move more than $1 billion in suspicious transfers over nearly two decades, including payments connected to trafficked women. The report names JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America and says more than a dozen bankers were aware of red flags as early as 2002, yet the institutions failed to alert the authorities until after Epstein had been arrested and charged with sex trafficking.
The findings follow a four-year review of Epstein's financial records. JPMorgan, which had Epstein as a client from 1998 to 2013, processed about 5,000 suspicious transfers worth $1.1 billion, according to the report. The bank dropped Epstein in 2013, five years after his first conviction for child sex abuse, but it waited until after Epstein's arrest and death in prison in 2019 to retroactively file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with the US Treasury Department. Those reports included payments to women in Russia, Belarus and Turkmenistan, as well as transfers to women described as having been in relationships with Epstein or as «procurers of women as part of trafficking».
At JPMorgan, internal compliance officials had pushed senior management to cut ties with Epstein for years. One senior compliance officer described Epstein as «scum». But according to the report, senior executives who knew about Epstein's payments to trafficked women, and who joked about his preference for «nymphettes», overruled those objections. The bank kept Epstein as a client until 2013.
After JPMorgan finally dropped Epstein, he moved most of his assets to Deutsche Bank. Between 2013 and 2019, Epstein made 1,140 suspicious transfers through Deutsche Bank, the report says. Deutsche Bank was aware of the unusual transfers, the report says, but submitted SARs to the Treasury only in 2019. Bank of America, meanwhile, failed to report $170 million in payments that Epstein received from the billionaire investor Leon Black. Black has said the payments were for tax advice. The report, however, says much of that money ended up financing Epstein's sex trafficking operation in the US Virgin Islands. Bank of America concluded that the payments had «no apparent economic, business or lawful purpose», but it did not file its SARs until 2020.
Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions are required to notify the government promptly whenever they suspect money is being laundered or used to finance illegal activity. The Senate report says the three banks repeatedly fell short of that obligation. «The bankers who needed to be asking questions didn't ask them», the report states. «Jeffrey Epstein's crimes were hiding in plain sight.»
Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, said the report showed how Wall Street «protected Epstein and enabled his sex trafficking for decades». He also accused allies of President Donald Trump of trying to block the committee from obtaining Epstein's bank records. According to the report, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent refused three requests to turn over details of the SARs, and Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have compelled the Treasury to release the files.