Emails have been released indicating that JPMORGAN CHASE was aware of Jeffrey Epstein's activities. Since JPMORGAN CHASE was his 'banker,' it would seem significant to know the sources of his wealth - who was paying him & why. Craig Unger wrote extensively about MAXWELL indicating his connections to intelligence communities.
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By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2024 ~
Jeffrey Epstein
On Monday, the transcript of the July 19, 2006 grand jury proceedings involving sexual assaults and rape by Jeffrey Epstein against underage girls in Palm Beach County, Florida was released by a Circuit Court. The Palm Beach Post newspaper had sued in that court for release of the transcript in 2019 in order to shine more light on how Florida State Attorney, Barry Krischer, had ignored a powder keg of evidence against Epstein that had been developed by the Palm Beach Police and cut a sweetheart deal under pressure from Epstein’s attorneys.
Florida legislation, signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis, called for the transcript to be released on or after July 1, in response to the extensive public interest in the case.
Despite police evidence that Epstein had sexually assaulted dozens of underage school girls, Krischer and the U.S. Department of Justice cut a deal that allowed Epstein to serve just 13 months in jail from June 2008 to July 2009 – the majority of the time in a work release program where Epstein was driven to an office each day by his limo driver.
After the work release program, Epstein was supposed to spend one year under house arrest at his Palm Beach residence. But in the Netflix documentary series on Epstein, Filthy Rich, based on the book by the same name, a Palm Beach police official explained what actually happened, stating as follows:
“He would violate his probation almost on a daily basis. There’s 11 pages here of just different violations. I think, I, myself, documented 66 different days that he violated his probation…He would go to New York, to his island, he would go to the airport, jump in his helicopter. Who knows where he went – without telling anybody. Every time I brought the probation office a case, they kept telling me the same thing. What would you like us to do? He’s a celebrity. I mean, just think about this: You have a pedophile out on probation – to violate probation in the state of Florida is illegal, except for Jeffrey Epstein.”
Despite having videotaped testimony from Epstein’s victims and statements confirming the abuse from a multitude of other witnesses, the U.S. Department of Justice allowed this pedophile to remain on the loose – traveling throughout the United States and around the world on his private jets – sexually abusing girls and young women at his multiple mansions for another decade, until his arrest on July 6, 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2019 – just a little more than a month after his arrest. The New York City Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.
The Department of Justice was likely shamed into finally taking action against Epstein in 2019 by reporter Julie Brown’s explosive series on Epstein’s sex crimes that appeared in the Miami Herald in November 2018.
The thrust of mainstream media’s reporting on the grand jury transcript since its release on Monday is the travesty in how the Florida state attorney’s office undermined its own case before the grand jury by outrageously portraying underage sexual assault victims as prostitutes.
But there may be an additional bombshell going unnoticed in that grand jury transcript. According to the Palm Beach County Police detective in charge of the Epstein case, Joe Recarey, the pedophile owned not five opulent homes – that have so frequently been reported – but six homes. Recarey testified in the grand jury proceeding that in addition to Epstein’s mansion in Palm Beach, he owned homes in New York, New Mexico, St. Thomas, Paris and “England.” While the first five homes have been widely reported, Wall Street On Parade is not aware of any mainstream media reporting of Epstein owning a home in the U.K. or England. If true, that could open up a broad new area of investigation since Epstein has already been charged by a victim of loaning her out for sex with Prince Andrew. That case was settled for a reported $16 million in 2022.
Wall Street On Parade’s focus on the Epstein case has centered on the fact that the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, was supplying Epstein with the tens of thousands of dollars in hard cash each month to pay off his victims as well as the young women he hired to recruit more school girls that he could abuse. (JPMorgan Chase has an extensive operation in London.)
But despite the fact that JPMorgan Chase has a rap sheet that rivals that of an organized crime family, including five criminal felony counts, the U.S. Department of Justice has yet to bring a criminal case against the bank for aiding and abetting Epstein in his crimes – despite a mountain of detailed evidence developed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned his own so-called “Pedophile Island” and treated himself and his ultra rich pals to sexually abusing young girls within the isolated confines of his tropical paradise.
The opening witness in the grand jury proceeding of 2006 was Detective Recarey, who died in 2018. During his testimony, Recarey explained that he was a detective in the Palm Beach County Police’s special investigations unit where he pursued “long term investigations, financial crimes, white-collar crimes….” That is extremely relevant because there is strong evidence that serious financial crimes were occurring in tandem with Epstein’s sex crimes.
Previously released documents indicate that Recarey aggressively pursued the Epstein case and was not intimidated by Epstein’s power, money or teams of attorneys and private investigators who sought to dig up dirt on the victims to undermine their credibility. This raises the question – at what point, if any, did the Palm Beach County Police, which eventually turned their case over to the FBI, inquire into where Epstein was getting the tens of thousands of dollars in hard cash he needed monthly to pay off his victims and recruiters.
The federal lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands alleged that JPMorgan Chase had “actively participated” in Epstein’s sex trafficking. A Memorandum of Law arguing for partial summary judgment in the case, that was filed by the Attorney General for the U.S. Virgin Islands, makes the following points:
“Even if participation requires active engagement…there is no genuine dispute that JPMorgan actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture from 2006 until 2019. The Court found allegations that the Bank allowed Epstein to use its accounts to send dozens of payments to then-known co-conspirators [redacted] provided excessive and unusual amounts of cash to Epstein; and structured cash withdrawals so that those withdrawals would not appear suspicious ‘went well beyond merely providing their usual [banking] services to Jeffrey Epstein and his affiliated entities’ and were sufficient to allege active engagement.”
The U.S. Virgin Islands had previously alerted the court to the unfathomable sums of hard cash that Epstein was able to take from the accounts he maintained at JPMorgan Chase without the bank filing the legally mandated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to law enforcement. In the Memorandum linked above, it tallied up the giant pile of cash, writing as follows:
“Between September 2003 and November 2013, or approximately ten years, JPMorgan handled more than $5 million in outgoing cash transactions for Epstein — ignoring its own policy discouraging large cash withdrawals….”
The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorneys cite to internal emails at JPMorgan Chase showing that employees at the bank were aware of Epstein’s “[c]ash withdrawals … made in amounts for $40,000 to $80,000 several times a month” while also being aware that Epstein paid his underage sexual assault victims in cash.
After a scorched earth campaign by JPMorgan Chase’s attorneys to humiliate the U.S. Virgin Islands in the media over its own unseemly political ties to Epstein, the case was settled, with the bank paying the U.S. Virgin Islands $75 million.
JPMorgan Chase’s involvement in the Epstein sex trafficking ring was also alleged in a class action lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase brought by lawyers David Boies and Bradley Edwards on behalf of Epstein’s victims. At a March 13, 2023 court hearing in the case, Boies argued in open court that JPMorgan Chase had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm provided the following details on that allegation:
“As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge acquisition.
“In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan.
“Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire who ran Highbridge Capital Management.
“Through Epstein’s connection, it has been reported that Staley arranged for JP Morgan to buy a majority stake in Dubin’s fund, which resulted in a sizeable profit for JP Morgan. This arrangement was profitable for both Staley and JPMorgan, further incentivizing JP Morgan to ignore the suspicious activity in Epstein’s accounts and to assist in his sex-trafficking venture.
“For example, despite that Epstein was not FINRA-certified, Epstein was paid more than $15 million for his role in the Highbridge/JP Morgan deal.
“Moreover, Highbridge, a wholly-owned subsidiary of JP Morgan, trafficked young women and girls on its own private jet from Florida to Epstein in New York as late as 2012.”
With the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice still failing to take action against JPMorgan Chase for its alleged money laundering for Epstein, and the Boies/Edwards lawsuit on behalf of victims now settled for $290 million by JPMorgan Chase – with victims’ lawyers getting $87 million in legal fees and $2.5 million in expenses while victims are guaranteed nothing other than a requirement to release their claims – there is no assurance that the American people will ever get genuine transparency.
According to court filings in the Epstein/JPMorgan Chase cases, Epstein was running a “sex-themed cult.” According to a deposition of a JPMorgan banker, the only money-generating business that Epstein had was tending to his “network.” According to witness testimony, fulfilling the sexual fantasies of powerful men in Epstein’s “network,” was how he obtained six opulent homes and hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth.
There is also the unseemly reality that Federal District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, who presided over the Epstein/JPMorgan Chase cases filed in Manhattan, has allowed the bulk of the deposition testimony and thousands of other documents to remain under seal.
WALL STREET ON PARADE
A judge in Florida released grand jury transcripts related to Jeffrey Epstein's state sex crimes case. The 2006 testimony reveals that the case against Epstein began a year earlier. Two victims were questioned during the proceedings, including one who alleged Epstein molested her when she was 14. Each weekday morning, "CBS Mornings" co-hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson bring you the latest breaking news, smart conversation and in-depth feature reporting. "CBS Mornings" airs weekdays at 7 a.m. on CBS and stream it at 8 a.m. ET on the CBS News app.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Florida prosecutors knew the late millionaire and financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually assaulted teenage girls two years before they cut a plea deal that has long been criticized as too lenient and a missed opportunity to imprison him a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday.
The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many by law enforcement over the past two decades into Epstein’s rape and sex trafficking of teenagers — and how his ties to the rich and the powerful seem to have allowed him to avoid prison or a serious jail term for over a decade.
The investigations uncovered Epstein’s close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as his once friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump and numerous others of wealth and influence who have denied doing anything criminal or improper and not been charged.
Circuit Judge Luis Delgado’s release of approximately 150 pages Monday came as a surprise, since there was scheduled hearing next week over unsealing the graphic testimony. Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed a bill in February allowing the release on Monday or any time thereafter that Delgado ordered. Florida grand jury transcripts are usually kept secret forever, but the bill created an exemption for cases like Epstein’s.
The transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, who was then in his 40s, had raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion, often paying them so he could commit statutory rape or assault. The teenagers testified and told detectives they were also paid cash or rented cars if they found him more girls.
“The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”
In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with South Florida federal prosecutors that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution. He was sentenced to 1.5 years in the Palm Beach County jail system, during which he was allowed to go to his office almost daily as part of a work-release program, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender.
Criticism of the deal resulted in the 2019 resignation of Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney for South Florida in 2008 and signed off on the deal. A 2020 Justice Department investigation concluded that Acosta used “poor judgment” in his handling of the Epstein prosecution, but it didn’t rise to the level of professional misconduct.
The chief prosecutor in the Epstein case, former Palm Beach County State Attorney Barry Krischer, did not immediately respond Monday to an email and a voicemail seeking comment about the transcripts’ release.
Current Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg, who was not involved in the investigation, said in a statement he is glad the records have been released. He said he has not yet read the transcripts, so could not comment on whether Krischer should have pursued a tougher prosecution of Epstein.
Brad Edwards, an attorney for many of the victims, said in a statement that the transcripts show that Krischer’s office “took the case to the Grand Jury with an agenda — to return minimal, if any, criminal charges against Jeffrey Epstein.”
“A fraction of the evidence was presented, in a misleading way, and the Office portrayed the victims as criminals,” he said. “It is so sad, the number of victims Epstein was able to abuse because the State carried water for him when they had a chance to put him away.”
Epstein’s estate is paying $155 million in restitution to more than 125 victims.
According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the initial investigation began when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter who was in high school at the time said she received $300 in exchange for “sexual activity with a man in Palm Beach,” Recarey testified.
Another teenager, whose name was redacted in the transcript, told detectives that she was 17 years old when she was approached by a friend who said she could make $200 by providing a massage at Epstein’s home.
At the house, when Epstein tried touching her, she told him she was uncomfortable. He then told her that he would pay her $200 if she brought “girls” to the house. “And he told her, ‘The younger, the better,’” Recarey said.
Over time she brought six friends to Epstein’s house, including a 14-year-old, and likened herself to Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss in October 2005 interviews, Recarey recounted.
When she brought over a 23-year-old friend, Epstein told her that the friend was too old.
“The more you did, the more money you made,” the detective said the teen told him. “She explained that there was going to be a massage or some possible touching, and you would have to provide the massage either topless or naked.”
Another teen testified she visited Epstein’s house hundreds of times in the early 2000s, starting when she was 16. She testified that Epstein paid her $200 each time she gave him a massage while naked, rented her a car and gave her $1,000 the time he raped her.
A 2005 police search of Epstein’s mansion found evidence supporting the girls’ testimony. Also, Epstein’s houseman told detectives that the teenagers who came to the mansion were “very young. Too young to be a masseuse.”
Epstein in 2018 was charged with federal sex trafficking crimes in New York — where he also had a mansion that was a scene of abuse — after the Miami Herald published a series of articles that renewed public attention on the case, including interviews with some victims who had been pursuing civil lawsuits against him. Epstein was 66 when he killed himself in a New York City jail cell in August 2019, federal officials say.
Delgado in his order wrote that the transcripts show why Epstein was “the most infamous pedophile in American history.”
“For almost 20 years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much anger and has at times diminished the public’s perception of the criminal justice system,” Delgado wrote.
Associated Press reporters Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Florida, Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.
