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So it appears that JP Morgan may have allowed Jeffrey Epstein to continue using their financial services, so of course the Times leads with the most bombastic possible version of this claim. One could imagine an alternative headline like How JPMorgan Conducted its Usual and Customary Business. Probably there are intermediate versions of this headline that are closer to neutral.
Headlines aside, right wing media is picking it up because all the Epstein stuff draws lots of clicks but I'm wondering (and hopefully I'm not alone) whether this is fundamentally about getting upset when banks don't drop unpopular clients even when their relationship has nothing to do with the clients' bad behavior.
That is to say, contra the Times, JPMorgan didn't enable Epstein's crimes in anything but the most useless sense of the world. Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order. It's not money laundering or fraud to pay for underage hookers -- it's child prostitution which is illegal in its own right.
Ultimately where this seems to end is back to a place where banks rightly fear that they are gonna be next on the Times' hitlist because they didn't drop a client fast enough.
There's a big difference between the ordinary JPM customer who has an account with $5,000 in it and who barely interacts with anyone at the bank, and a high net worth client who has private bankers and gets personal attention from higher ups.
Saying those are the same is like equating purchasing Nike shoes with being sponsored by Nike. Or wearing a Cartier watch with being provided a custom Cartier watch at reduced price for promotional reasons. If the Charlie Kirk assassin wears a suit from Polo, I don't know that anyone will notice.
JPM didn't just let Epstein open a checking account at a branch without anyone being aware of it. They extensively courted, discussed, facilitated Epstein's business at the bank.
I also don't think that we've ever gotten a really good explanation for where Epstein's money came from. @2rafa et al put it as "Epstein got an extraordinary deal with Les Wexner and got all his money from there and he didn't have any other clients and case closed." But no one ever puts Epstein in a class of similar people. To my knowledge, there is no class of similar people, there are no other cases that are remotely similar. No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason. No other billionaire signed power of attorney over to some guy. Despite a plethora of gay billionaires, no one ever signed everything over to his boy toy. So "Epstein got all his money from Les Wexner" isn't really a conversation ender to me, it's the start of another more interesting mystery.
There is plenty of evidence regarding Wexner, but because he is still alive, un-charged and very, very rich, and because much of it is hearsay, it is rarely laid out explicitly. In any case, it is hardly unsurprising for even extremely sophisticated, highly intelligent investors to be duped, seduced (platonically) by charismatic con men and adventurers for fortune, and Epstein was both. Here’s a great story about one of the most sophisticated, intelligent fund managers of the last twenty years getting conned by an already-notorious conman just because he was charismatic. And the victim in the above story, unlike Wexner, was actually in finance. Madoff had plenty of intelligent victims. Wexner didn’t even ‘lose’ his or his clients’ money unlike the above, he just made less than he might otherwise have. There are countless private bankers, macro hedge fund managers and late stage VCs who likewise spent the last 15 years (and the 1990s before them) getting fat off the bull run with minimal effort other than client relationship management.
This is before you go into the other aspects of the case, like Wexner’s previously confirmed bachelorhood and various 80s and 90s NYC rumors that are hard for any legitimate journalist to discuss without getting sued. (Nick Denton, who is obviously gay and was in the NYC scene through the 90s, hinted toward it many years ago).
Do we have other examples of billionaires signing over power of attorney to their finance guys?
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