The U.S. Virgin Islands government said in a court filing on Friday that it intended to sue JPMorgan Chase for at least $190 million in damages as part of a claim that the bank assisted in facilitating sex trafficking through one of its former clients, Jeffrey Epstein. According to CNBC.com’s article on the complaint, the bank is accused of being involved with Epstein, a longtime JPMorgan Chase client, in the lawsuit.
According to the article, the U.S. Virgin Islands government requested a court order that would compel JPMorgan Chase to take different steps to protect young women and children from potential exploitation by future predators in addition to seeking damages.
“These sets of recommendations aim to address the same core problem: JPMorgan’s knowledge of and failure to report Epstein’s trafficking because it lacked the economic incentive and motivation to place compliance with the law and prevention of trafficking ahead of its own profits,” the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said, according to the outlet.
Additionally, the U.S. territory declared its intention to seek additional compensatory damages on behalf of Epstein’s victims. The almost $300 million that JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay to resolve a lawsuit brought by one of Epstein’s victims just last month would be separate from this. The precise amount sought for these additional damages on behalf of Epstein’s victims was not stated in the court document, CNBC.com reported.
According to the site, the new filing was made in response to Judge Jed Rakoff’s order made last week, which asked the U.S. Virgin Islands to offer precise information on the damages it seeks as the case moves closer to trial.
The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, is accused in a lawsuit brought by the Virgin Islands of profiting from Epstein’s trafficking of young women who were abused by him and others for 15 years while he was a client of the bank.
The complaint alleges that despite multiple warning indications that were brought to the attention of the bank’s employees over the years, JPMorgan Chase allowed Epstein to keep substantial sums of money in accounts at the bank that he used to bankroll his exploitation of women.
JPMorgan Chase has always denied any accusations of wrongdoing in connection with the case, but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
“We are pursuing this enforcement action because JPMorgan Chase’s institutional failure enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking, and JPMorgan Chase must make significant changes to detect, report and stop human trafficking,” U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Ariel Smith noted in a statement on Friday.
“Financial penalties, as well as conduct changes, are important to make sure that JPMorgan Chase knows the cost of putting its own profits ahead of public safety,” added Smith.
The AG noted further if the Virgin Islands wins its suit, it will use any monetary damages it receives “to support efforts to strengthen, inform, and expand local law enforcement and enhance the Virgin Islands’ services for victims of human trafficking and other victims of crime.”
The U.S. Virgin Islands is requesting a minimum of $150 million in civil penalties as a separate part of the case, according to the document. In addition, the petition demands that JPMorgan Chase forfeit fees generated from Epstein’s financial dealings totaling at least an extra $40 million. Included in these fees are those Epstein generated himself as well as those the bank collected from other “ultra-high net worth clients” Epstein referred.
“Those clients, the filing said, included Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Lex Wexner, the founder of Limited Brands, and the billionaire Glenn Dubin,” CNBC.com noted further.
Besides the monetary damages, the Virgin Islands also is asking JPMorgan be compelled “to implement new policies, including separating its business and compliance functions and designating an independent compliance consultant, to prevent human trafficking,” according to a press release from Smith’s office.
Almost 200 mobile devices were utilized by individuals who frequented Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious “pedophile island” in the years preceding to his passing. The cellular signals they emitted created an untraceable data trail that extended back to the visitors’ residences and workplaces.
Maps of these visits were created by a controversial multinational data broker with military sector links, Wired reported. Those trails show the repeated excursions of affluent and prominent persons who seemed unconcerned with Epstein’s position as a convicted sex offender.
Near Intelligence, a location data broker embroiled in allegations of mismanagement and fraud, has gathered data that reveals with high precision the residences of many guests of Little Saint James, a property in the United States Virgin Islands where Epstein is accused of grooming, assaulting, and trafficking numerous women and girls.
Prosecutors said some of the girls were as young as fourteen. The former Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands said that children as young as 12 were smuggled to Epstein by members of his high social circle.
Near Intelligence recorded devices visiting Little St. James from 80 cities spanning 26 US states and territories, with Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York leading the way, according to the report. The locations corresponded to estates in gated communities in Michigan and Florida, properties on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts, a nightclub in Miami, and a walkway across from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
According to The Wall Street Journal, many ad exchanges have canceled agreements with Near, arguing that the company’s usage of their data breached the terms of service.
Officially, this data is meant for use by businesses looking to establish where prospective consumers work and live. However, in October 2023, the Journal found that Near had already delivered data to the US military via a complex network of hidden marketing organizations, middlemen, and conduits to defense contractors. According to bankruptcy filings acquired by Wired, Near Intelligence signed a year-long deal with nContext, a subsidiary of military contractor Sierra Nevada, in April 2023.
While many of the coordinates captured by Near point to multimillion-dollar homes in multiple US states, others point to lower-income areas where Epstein victims are known to have lived and attended school, such as West Palm Beach, Florida, where police and a private investigator say they have located approximately 40 of Epstein’s victims.
“Most of the clients who come to me, their number one concern is privacy and safety,” says attorney Lisa Bloom, who represented 11 of Epstein’s alleged victims. “It’s deeply concerning to think that any sexual abuse victims’ location will be tracked and then stored and then sold to someone, who can presumably do whatever they want with it.”
A Department of Justice representative for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Epstein was charged in 2019, refused to comment on whether its investigators ever conducted business with Near.
No one was charged for the Epstein sex trafficking operation, except for Jeffrey Epstein himself and his “madame” Ghislaine Maxwell. The FBI is in possession of Epstein’s video recordings, black book, and client list.
The Jeffrey Epstein files were partly made public in January.
Judge Loretta Preska presided over the announcement that documents would be unsealed on a rolling basis until completed.
The Epstein list included more than 150 names discovered in court documents, and revealed prominent figures associated with Epstein and convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The records were sealed as part of a defamation case filed by one of their accusers, Virginia Giuffre.
In regards to Jane Doe #3, the newly released files exposed disturbing information about Prince Andrew and Jean Luc Brunel.
Former President Bill Clinton is possibly the most prominent name revealed in the records. He was formerly known as “Doe 36” and was mentioned in scores of redacted court documents. He did not object to the records mentioning him being unsealed, and the materials are not likely to raise any fresh allegations of misconduct against him. In one newly revealed document, an excerpt from Maxwell’s deposition, Maxwell claims she doesn’t know how many times Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private plane, but she’s “sure” he had a meal while on it.
Michael Jackson was listed as one of the Epstein associates. Jackson allegedly met one of the Jane Does at Epstein’s Palm Beach house. No illicit behavior is alleged in the testimony.
Tom Pritzker, a member of the prestigious environmental radical group the Aspen Institute and Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels, is accused of having slept with Virginia Giuffre. The accusation came up in an exchange with a witness.
Billionaire Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn and a mega-donor to Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, is supporting former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in her bid for the presidency to derail former President Donald Trump’s from securing the Republican nomination.
Hoffman, who is worth $2.1 billion, has admitted to visiting convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epsein’s private island. The Stand for America PAC, which backs Haley in the GOP primary, was approached by Hoffman in December about contributing a $250,000 donation to Haley’s campaign. Hoffman published an open letter on his LinkedIn platform on Tuesday, admitting his sole purpose for making the large donation to Haley’s campaign in the GOP primary is to stop Trump.
Hoffman, along with billionaire George Soros, is one of the Democrat Party’s biggest billionaires and is behind a clandestine group that bills itself as the “Good Information Foundation.” He has since fashioned himself into a Democratic mega-donor, though his activities are largely hidden from public view.
He is one of the key framers of the modern political infrastructure that is contouring the current American landscape by allowing the super-wealthy to use nonprofits and lenient disclosure laws to make large political contributions in relative obscurity.
Hoffman’s shady political activity includes funding a series of pro-Doug Jones ads in Alabama that were modeled on the much-decried Russian propaganda peddled on Facebook and Twitter in 2016. The project’s operatives posed as conservative Alabamians on Facebook and tried to use the platform to divide Republicans, pushing them toward a write-in candidate and away from Roy Moore, the GOP’s nominee for Senate. They also ran a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter.
Hoffman is also an occasional collaborator with communist China on a direct level. LinkedIn is the most China-friendly American-owned social networking site, and Hoffman is known as “the most connected man in Silicon Valley.”
JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands to settle claims that the bank enabled sex trafficking acts committed by financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The settlement will go towards local charities and assistance for victims, while $20 million will go towards legal fees.
The Virgin Islands sued JPMorgan last year, claiming that the bank enabled Epstein’s recruiters to pay victims and was “indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise”, which according to new documents revealed to the public, seems to be true. JPMorgan also agreeing to payout a settlement to keep this quiet also screams guilt all over it.
The settlement averts a trial set to start next month. JPMorgan also reached a confidential legal settlement with James “Jes” Staley, the former top JPMorgan executive who managed the Epstein account before leaving the bank.
JPMorgan had already agreed to pay $290 million in June in a class-action lawsuit involving victims of Epstein’s trafficking crimes. Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019.
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