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**AUGUST 5, 2026**

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Wall Street bankers ignored Jeffrey Epstein’s suspicious banking activity for years because he was making them a lot of money. That’s the upshot of a years-long investigation by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. In his report released yesterday, Wyden names names and puts the financial industry on notice that he’s planning to introduce new laws to halt money laundering – ones that would increase prison time and fines for bankers who look the other way. 

**–Whitney Curry Wimbish, staff writer**

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Jon Elswick/AP Photo

Sen. Wyden Report: Banks Systematically Ignored Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes [link removed]

Key executives at Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase routinely ignored the suspicious activities of convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein because he was among their most profitable clients, paying millions in fees and holding influence over other wealthy people, according to a new investigation released on Tuesday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The cover-up should prompt lawmakers to strengthen anti–money laundering laws and pass new legislation to hold individual bankers accountable, said Wyden, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee. The Oregon senator used his report [link removed] on the multiyear investigation to put the financial services industry on notice that he’s preparing to do just that.

“My investigation showed conclusively that the bankers who served Jeffrey Epstein and his ultra-wealthy friends were far too motivated to protect their cash cow, and had far too little respect for the law,” Wyden told the

**Prospect** via email.

The report looked at thousands of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Those are confidential documents that banks and other financial institutions must file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury’s financial intelligence division, when they identify unusual transactions. Executives have 30 days to file a SAR when they suspect things like money laundering or payments to terrorists.

According to Wyden’s report, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase failed to do so for millions of dollars in cash withdrawals that had “no clear business purpose.” Instead, bankers let them ride, and together facilitated more than $1.4 billion worth of suspicious wire transfers over two decades—transactions they only flagged retroactively in 2019, after authorities arrested Epstein on federal sex trafficking charges.

The report names specific bankers who worked for at least one of the three named banks. Jes Staley, a top JPMorgan executive at the time, is the only banker among the group who has faced any consequence for helping Epstein maintain his human trafficking ring; he was forced out as CEO of Barclays. “The rest of the bankers named in this list have faced no known financial consequences or regulatory discipline and remain employed in extraordinarily lucrative positions at JPMC, Bank of America and elsewhere,” the report states.

The transactions they hid “included thousands of wire transfers, major withdrawals of cash, payments to women and girls, and correspondent banking in high-risk foreign jurisdictions (including Russia),” the report states. “They also include tens of millions in payments to his conspirator and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.”

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