Sen. Ron Wyden is accusing the bank of failing to report suspicious activity involving Epstein’s accounts.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Thursday released a memorandum accusing JPMorgan Chase of underreporting suspicious activity involving Jeffrey Epstein and calling for the bank be further investigated over its relationship with the late convicted sex offender.
The memo, prepared by Democratic staff on the Senate Finance Committee for which Wyden serves as ranking member, said recently unsealed court records “contain evidence that JPMC underreported Epstein’s suspicious transactions to the federal government for nearly two decades.”
The memo centers on allegations that JPMorgan failed to properly send suspicious activity reports, which banks are required to flag to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when illicit activity is suspected, for transactions involving Epstein’s accounts.
Between 2002 and 2016, JPMorgan filed seven so-called SARs “flagging only $4.3 million in suspicious transactions from Epstein’s accounts,” the report said. But in fall 2019, after he was arrested, the bank “filed two SARs flagging more than 5,000 suspicious wire transfers moving approximately $1.3 billion in and out of Epstein’s accounts.”
“It is crucial that Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice investigate whether the bank deliberately withheld information from the Treasury Department in apparent violation of the Bank Secrecy Act,” the report said.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan, Patricia Wexler, said in a statement that the bank “acted appropriately in filing SARs as early as 2002.”
“The second the government finally made public the sex trafficking details in 2019 — information they clearly had for years — we identified for law enforcement a range of Epstein’s past transactions intended to assist with the investigation,” she said.
The report also took aim at JPMorgan executives including asset and wealth management division CEO Mary E. Erdoes, whom the memo said “maintained regular contact with Epstein and kept close tabs on him while he was a client of the bank.”
The report comes as President Donald Trump is also targeting JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein. He called on social media last week for the bank and a range of prominent figures in the Democratic Party to be investigated for their ties to Epstein.
Trump’s push to cast the spotlight on others’ ties to the late sex offender comes amid scrutiny of his own relationship with him: Documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week contained emails in which Epstein said Trump “knew about the girls” he was trafficking. Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that Trump took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation. The president also has maintained that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago.
The president signed a bill on Wednesday that will require the Justice Department to release more information related to its investigation into Epstein after previously working to kill the effort in Congress.