JPMorgan moved $1.1 million from Jeffrey Epstein to ‘women or girls’ after terminating client relationship, USVI alleges

JPMorgan Chase handled more than $1.1 million in payments from Jeffrey Epstein to “girls or women” after the giant bank terminated the sex offender as a client, a lawyer for the U.S. Virgin Islands told a judge Monday.

Many of the girls or women had Eastern European surnames, and more than $320,000 of the payments were made to “numerous individuals for whom JPMorgan had no previously identified payments,” the attorney Linda Singer wrote to New York federal Judge Jed Rakoff.

Singer in her letter accused JPMorgan of failing to disclose the payments until after the end of the period of time set aside for the exchange of evidence between the bank and the Virgin Islands as part of an ongoing federal lawsuit. Singer wrote that documents recently turned over by JPMorgan contained information that had been previously sought by the Virgin Islands during that since-expired period, which is known as discovery.

The government of the Virgin Islands accuses JPMorgan in that lawsuit of facilitating sex trafficking by Epstein for years when he was a client. Epstein maintained a residence on a private island in the American territory, where he sexually abused scores of women.

JPMorgan says it cut ties to Epstein in 2013. But Monday’s filing challenges the bank’s timeline.

The bank denies any wrongdoing. A spokeswoman for JPMorgan had no immediate comment on the letter.

The letter says that a spreadsheet prepared by JPMorgan listing the dates and beneficiaries of more than 9,000 transactions payable to Epstein-related persons between 2005 and 2019 “had a combined value of over $2.4 billion.”

“Many of the entries reflected accounts and payments, numbering in the thousands and totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars in value, of which USVI had no prior knowledge or information from JPMorgan’s responses and productions during the fact discovery period,” Singer wrote.

The letter says that JPMorgan has argued the information was not disclosed earlier “because it was not in a custodial production and/or did not relate to individuals specifically identified by the USVI as related to Epstein.”

But Singer noted that, “The USVI has repeatedly made clear that its discovery requests are not limited to individuals it specifically identified as being related to Epstein.”

“The USVI specifically identified the individuals it knew were related to Epstein to make its discovery requests clearer — not relieve JPMorgan of its duty to produce known relevant documents,” the lawyer wrote.

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