Judge approves Bank of America’s $72 million settlement with Epstein victims

The settlement follows JPMorgan Chase’s $290 million payout and Deutsche Bank’s $75 million deal with Epstein victims years prior.MANAHTTAN (CN) ­— A New York federal judge on Thursday gave final approval to Bank of America’s $72.5 million settlement with victims of Jeffrey Epstein over the bank’s role in the late pedophile businessman’s sex trafficking operation.“No amount of money can make up for the wrongs that they suffered and the harms that they still feel,” Senior U.S District Judge Jed Rakoff said in Manhattan federal court as he greenlit the payout to a class of victims who say they were trafficked by Epstein and his associates for sexual abuse between June 30, 2008, and Epstein’s arrest in July 2019.Represented by Boies Schiller lead attorney Sigrid McCawley, a Jane Doe plaintiff accused Bank of America in the class action of deliberately ignoring multiple red flags of criminality in Epstein’s financial transactions in the decade after he was investigated and charged with sexually abusing underage girls.Rakoff, a Bill Clinton appointee, also presided over large class action settlements in 2023 with other international financial institutions regarding their facilitation of Epstein’s sex trafficking conspiracy, including JPMorgan Chase’s $290 million settlement and Deutsche Bank’s $75 million deal to resolve claims.Similar to those other two settled cases, Bank of America was accused in the class action of “purposely and deliberately” failing to timely file required Suspicious Activity Reports detailing Epstein’s suspicious banking activities until after his jailhouse death in 2019.Bank of America preliminarily agreed to the settlement deal in March. The class action resolution was mediated by claims administrator Simone Lelchuk, who also handled the Deutsche Bank settlement before Rakoff.The judge gave his oral approval to the settlement at the hearing on Thursday, and promised a written order formalizing the final approval by the end of the week.Rakoff said Thursday he’d consent to plaintiffs’ attorneys from Boies Schiller Flexner receiving 30% of the $72.5 million settlement, applauding them for delivering a public service in their representation of Epstein victims and delivering “actual justice, even if partial … as opposed to mere talk.”“We all know there’s endless stuff online and in the media about ‘why aren’t those who facilitated Mr. Epstein not being brought to justice,’ or some words to that effect,” he said toward the end of the settlement conference. “A substantial number of Epstein victims are receiving substantial amounts of money, and some modest amount of justice is being achieved, not just talk.”Boies Schiller previously represented Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who died by suicide last April at age 41, in her now-settled civil action against Britain’s Prince Andrew and separately in her litigation against Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz.Epstein died by hanging in a New York City federal jail in August 2019 before he could stand trial over sex trafficking charges.His ex-girlfriend and coconspirator, the British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested the following year over her role in luring underage girls and vulnerable young women into Epstein’s sphere of influence and grooming them for predatory abuse. She was later convicted at trial in December 2021, and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.Maxwell’s lawyers have repeatedly claimed Epstein’s controversial 2007 nonprosecution agreement in Florida shielded her from prosecution as a protected coconspirator, but that defense has continually been shot down by judges.The U.S. Supreme Court this past October declined to hear Maxwell’s appeal of her criminal charges.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads