(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Four banks flagged $1.5B of suspicious activity in Epstein's accounts. Where'd the money come from? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-18
Epstein and the banks
It’s not just the sex. It’s the money. In 2008, a Florida court convicted Jeffrey Epstein of procuring a child for prostitution and soliciting prostitutes. In 2019, the DOJ charged him with sex trafficking minors. After his arrest, four banks issued suspicious activity reports (SARs) flagging transactions through the pedophile’s bank accounts. We’re talking serious money here.
The NYT story
On Thursday, The New York Times published a piece titled: In Epstein Case, Follow the Money, Democratic Senator Says . The sub-head fleshed out the topic:
Senator Ron Wyden has found that four banks waited until Mr. Epstein’s arrest on federal charges to flag $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions. Mr. Wyden wants the documents made public.
The article adds detail:
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has been digging into Mr. Epstein’s financial network for the past three years. Some members of his staff have viewed confidential files that shed light on the immense sums of money that, they say, Mr. Epstein moved through the banking system to fuel his vast sex-trafficking network. In particular, filings by four big banks flagged more than $1.5 billion in transactions — including thousands of wire transfers for the purchase and sale of artwork for rich friends, fees paid to Mr. Epstein by wealthy individuals, and payments to numerous women, the senator’s office found. The filings came after Mr. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges.
Where did Epstein’s money come from?
Some commentators have wondered how a college dropout — who was dismissed as a teacher at the Dalton school for “poor performance,” could have left an estate valued at $577 million. The anodyne version of Epstein’s success is that he provided tax and investment advice to high-net-worth individuals. Advice that was so beneficial to the wealthy, it was worth the millions in fees he received for his work.
Epstein did have financial acumen. After his dismissal by Dalton, he joined Bear Stearns as a junior assistant to a floor trader. He made a mark. In 1980, four years after joining the company, Epstein was made a limited partner. That did not last long. In 1981, Stearns fired him for a “Reg D” violation.
Epstein established his own company, Intercontinental Assets Group Inc. He helped his clients recover money lost to fraudsters and crooked lawyers. He proved to be a charming and masterful networker. He met important people who introduced him to wealthy people who shared his name with their peers. The rest is history — and murky. That is why Wyden’s work deserves more attention.
What exactly did Epstein do for his money? The NYT reports:
“Some of the Epstein money transfers disclosed in a report from JPMorgan Chase involved accounts at two Russian banks before those institutions were subject to U.S. sanctions. A few transactions red-flagged were for as much as $100 million.”
It seems unlikely that legitimate tax mitigation strategies for U.S. citizens would involve Russian banks. Panama, the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Singapore, the Channel Islands, et al. are the usual suspects. However, to get the answers, Wyden needs help.
Wyden and Bondi
Despite being a U.S. senator, his investigative power is limited. Wyden needs the cooperation of the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the details of where the money came from — and who received it and for what purpose. The DoJ has the bank reports, along with other information about the wealthy individuals and financial institutions in Mr. Epstein’s network.
Unsurprisingly, given who her boss is, AG Pam Bondi has not cooperated. Instead of giving Wyden what he wanted, she declared that the Epstein investigation was closed and there was nothing to see. Even her commitment to release grand jury testimony relating to Epstein’s last arrest is a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of information.
DOJ has 100,000 documents relating to Epstein. Prosecutors provide just enough information to grand juries to obtain an indictment, no more. The vast majority of evidence that would remain hidden is where the action is. The NYT explains:
The confidential bank reports filed with a Treasury Department agency could be crucial, because they provide the most comprehensive look at the enormous financing machine behind Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation in Manhattan, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To date, only bits and pieces of the financial transactions involving Mr. Epstein’s network have come out through civil litigation and news reports. “In this era of misinformation, these reports are the coin of the realm,” Mr. Wyden said of the confidential bank reports.
The NYT gives an example of the sort of activity Wyden’s team would be interested in.
Mr. Wyden began his investigation roughly three years ago, with a particular focus on the more than $158 million in payments the billionaire investor Leon Black made to Mr. Epstein for tax and estate planning services. Mr. Black, who socialized with Mr. Epstein, was a co-founder of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
“Socialized?” Was all of the “$158 million in payments” for financial services?
More money
In addition, there’s a lot more money involved than that. The paper states:
The single largest suspicious activity report reviewed by the congressional team was filed in late 2019 by JPMorgan for $1.1 billion. The report covered 4,700 transactions dating to 2003, including payments to women from Belarus, Russia and Turkmenistan. Many of Mr. Epstein’s victims included young women from Eastern European countries.
Where did the money come from? There’s more:
The next largest was by Deutsche Bank for about $400 million, followed by Bank of New York Mellon for $378 million and then Bank of America, which filed reports on Mr. Black’s payments to Mr. Epstein.
The banks have already made some restitution. The NYT reports:
In 2023, JPMorgan paid $290 million to Mr. Epstein’s victims and Deutsche paid $75 million to settle lawsuits that claimed the banks ignored red flags about potential sex trafficking.
Again, where did the money come from?
Trump is the most prominent figure in the entire affair. But beyond Leon Black, there have to be many who paid Epstein — was some of it for more than financial and tax advice?. The administration may try to oil troubled waters with the release of the grand jury testimony. However, if the media keeps the heat on, and the MAGA conspiracy theorists get their way, that will not be enough to quell the demand for the whole kit and caboodle.
The reach of the Epstein affair could be even bigger than most imagined.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/18/2334080/-Four-banks-flagged-1-5B-of-suspicious-activity-in-Epstein-s-accounts-Where-d-the-money-come-from?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
