Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 6, 2023 ~ There are extremely strange things happening in a very high-profile federal court case in Manhattan where the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, stands accused by victims of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring that sexually abused minors as the bank doled out $40,000 to $80,000 a month in hard cash for more than a decade without filing the legally required Suspicious Activity Reports. Further implicating the bank is the fact, documented by internal emails, that executives and staff of JPMorgan Chase were visitors to Epstein’s Manhattan mansion where rapes and sexual assaults of minors have been alleged by victims as occurring. (See our report: A JPMorgan Court Filing Shows Another Bank Exec Visited Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex-Trafficking Residences 13 Times – Two More Times than Jes Staley.) A recent entry on the docket of the case shows that a federal … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 1, 2023 The Attorneys General of 16 states and Washington, D.C. are challenging the settlement crafted by Big Law firm WilmerHale on behalf of JPMorgan Chase and by the high-profile lawyer, David Boies, on behalf of the sex-trafficked victims of the late Jeffrey Epstein. The class action settlement agreement was filed with the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York in June. The court set a date of November 9 for the final Fairness Hearing – a legal requirement for class action settlements where the court must hear from any objectors impacted by the agreement. Depending on the strength of those objections, the Court could decide to reject the settlement as not “fair, adequate and reasonable” as required under Rule 23 for class actions, and ask the parties to go back to the drawing board. The state Attorneys General filing the objection … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 30, 2023 ~ Last Friday, at 6:32 a.m. ET, headlines started rolling with the news that Jamie Dimon, the long-tenured Chairman and CEO of the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, was going to start selling a significant part of his sizeable stock holdings in the bank next year. The revelation came in an 8K filing with the SEC and noted that he and his family “currently intend to sell 1 million shares,” leaving open the door that he and his family might decide to sell more. The 8K filing also stated that “This is Mr. Dimon’s first such stock sale during his tenure at the company.” The reality is that Dimon, his wife and his Trusts held over 10 million common shares of JPMorgan Chase in 2017 according to SEC filings and now they hold 8.6 million shares, according to a May … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 20, 2023 ~ At some point, federal regulators, the Senate Banking Committee and the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice are going to reach the same conclusion that Wall Street On Parade reached quite some time ago: JPMorgan Chase is a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured bank. JPMorgan Chase is the largest U.S. bank, with $3.9 trillion in assets and 4,863 Chase Bank branches sucking in mom and pop deposits across the United States. According to its regulators, it is also the riskiest bank in the United States. And, two trial lawyers have written a fact-intensive book describing how the bank resembles the Gambino crime family. The bank’s admission to five criminal felony counts since 2015 and spiraling rap sheet would seem to back up that theory. Now comes the latest revelation in the bank’s own 8K filing with the Securities … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2023 ~ Bank of America is the second largest bank by assets in the United States, topped in assets by only JPMorgan Chase. Both mega banks have seen a steady decline in deposits since the first quarter of 2022. But the decline in deposits at Bank of America represents just 65 percent of the deposit outflows that have occurred at JPMorgan Chase in the past seven quarters. (Bank of America, as the chart above shows, did report a small uptick in deposits in the current quarter.) At the end of the first quarter of 2022, Bank of America held $2.046 trillion in deposits. According to the 8-K filing the bank made with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, as of September 30, 2023 Bank of America’s deposits had declined to $1.885 trillion, a shrinkage of $161 billion. In the same span of time, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 16, 2023 ~ On May 1, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced that First Republic Bank had failed and that it was being sold to JPMorgan Chase. At the time, JPMorgan Chase was already the largest and riskiest bank in the United States. The sweetheart deal the bank got from the FDIC to take over First Republic included the FDIC eating 80 percent of any losses on single-family residential mortgages for 7 years and 80 percent of any losses on commercial loans, including commercial real estate, for five years. The FDIC also provided JPMorgan Chase with a $50 billion, five-year fixed-rate loan at an undisclosed interest rate. According to the filing that JPMorgan Chase made with the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday, the deal also gave JPMorgan Chase something that it desperately needed: deposits. According to the 8-K filing that JPMorgan Chase made with the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2023 ~ Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a “two-fisted money grab from banks.” Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase. In a Tweet, Eisinger said: “This is corruption, but isn’t called that because it’s so quotidian.” Now there is the appearance that a quid pro quo is coming full circle. According to a press release posted on JPMorgan Chase’s website, “it has been designated by the United States Treasury Department under a financial agency agreement to provide account validation services for federal government agencies” in order to ensure “Treasury’s commitment to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 2, 2023 ~ In the eyes of Wall Street veterans who are paying close attention to what’s going down at the mega banks on Wall Street, federal regulators are making the crime wave at these banks worse, not better. The federal fines for egregious behavior at these banks are getting smaller and more meaningless by the day. Take, for example, what happened on Friday. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined three of the largest trading houses on Wall Street a combined $53 million for derivative reporting violations. Those trading houses were units of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase. But what was particularly tone deaf about the CFTC’s settlement with JPMorgan Chase was the tiny amount of the monetary fine and the praise heaped on the five-count felon bank for its “cooperation” with the federal regulator. According to the CFTC, over … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 27, 2023 ~ JPMorgan Chase would like the public to believe that it’s going to walk away from the sleaziest financial crime of the century just $365 million poorer in the process. That’s just not going to happen. Yesterday, the bank settled for $75 million the Jeffrey Epstein related claims brought by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, after settling class action claims brought by Epstein’s victims for $290 million in June. (The June settlement was so questionable that we initiated an inquiry into the presiding Judge, Jed Rakoff, who called it a “really fine settlement.”) Both lawsuits alleged that JPMorgan Chase actively participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors enterprise by turning a blind eye to his ongoing crimes and failing to file the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) as Epstein took upwards of $40,000 to $80,000 in hard cash … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 18, 2023 ~ The full day conference sponsored by nonprofit watchdog Better Markets last Wednesday was a unique opportunity to gain brilliant insights from academic experts who have battled on the frontlines of the most unprecedented and ongoing era of corruption in U.S. financial history. (You can watch it on YouTube at this link.) In fact, at the close of the conference, Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, summed up the U.S. financial system in five words: “Corruption has become the system.” Admati’s celebrated 2013 book, The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It, co-authored with German economist Martin Hellwig, will have an expanded new edition coming out in early January. The new edition includes coverage of the banking failures this spring and four new chapters: “Too Fragile Still,” “Bailouts and Central … Continue reading →