Bank of America sued over alleged financial ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein

Bank of America was sued Wednesday over its alleged financial ties with Jeffrey Epstein, with the lawsuit claiming the financial giant facilitated and also benefited from his alleged sex trafficking venture. 

The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of a Jane Doe, alleges Epstein committed his crimes “through access to funding and financial support from both individuals and institutions, including Bank of America.” Epstein died in 2019 in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.

“Egregiously, Bank of America had a plethora of information regarding Epstein’s sex trafficking operation but chose profit over protecting the victims,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Bank of America said it has no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

The lawsuit comes after Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland and the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, opened an investigation into four large banks, including Bank of America, over their business relationship with Epstein. The probe is seeking more information about roughly $1.5 billion in financial transactions handled by the banks on behalf of Epstein. 

Suspicious activity?

Jane Doe was living in Russia when she met Epstein in 2011, and was sexually abused and trafficked by him until 2019, the lawsuit alleges. It claims Epstein relied on force, threats, fraud and coercion to control her.

In 2013, Epstein’s accountant instructed her to open a Bank of America account, where money could be wired, purportedly to generate records for U.S. immigration authorities and to cover her rent, according to the lawsuit. The banking transactions should have raised red flags with the bank, the complaint alleges. 

“A review of Jane Doe’s account history will show incredibly alarming and erratic banking behavior, as Epstein, through one of his loyal employees, would utilize Jane Doe’s account, often without her knowledge, to conduct business in amounts that were not typical for Jane Doe, and that would have in fact been impossible based on Jane Doe’s income or typical pattern of deposit,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Banks are required by law to report suspicious activity in customer accounts to federal authorities in order to flag potential criminal activity, such as money laundering or fraud. The complaint alleges that Bank of America failed to file suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, until after Epstein’s death in 2019.

According to the New York Times, Bank of America filed two SARs in 2020 related to $170 million in payments made to Epstein by billionaire investor Leon Black. The timing of the SARs was questioned by Raskin in an October 2025 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. 

“These SARs not only were untimely — filed years after the transactions in question — but Bank of America processed the payments without asking for information as to the nature of the transactions,” Raskin wrote. “Financial institutions are often the first line of defense in detecting serious federal crimes, especially the ones that involve significant flows of money like sex trafficking.”

He added, “Flagging and detecting Mr. Epstein’s suspicious withdrawals may well have stopped his crimes years earlier.”

The Oct. 15 lawsuit claims that “Bank of America’s failure to timely file SARs about Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture, in spite of numerous red flags, was wrongful and purposeful.”

The complaint also alleges that Epstein would not have been able to expand his illegal operations “without complicit financial banking institutions that would ignore red flags and assist him in his sex-trafficking scheme.”

JPMorgan’s settlement

In exchange for looking the other way, the suit alleges, Bank of America profited by earning “interest, commissions, service fees, and other financial benefits directly from its connection with Epstein, Epstein-related entities, and others acting in concert with Epstein.”

In 2023, JPMorgan Chase reached a $290 million settlement with Epstein’s victims over allegations the bank overlooked his crimes because of the profits it earned from him. At the time of the settlement, JPMorgan said it regretted its association with Epstein and that it “would never have continued to do business with him if we believed he was using our bank in any way to help commit heinous crimes.”

The lawsuit against Bank of America is seeking class-action status on behalf of other women abused by Epstein. The attorney representing Jane Doe is David Boies of law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, who represented Epstein’s victims in the settlement with JPMorgan.