Jeffrey Epstein Victim Sues Bank of America and BNY Mellon for Enabling Sex Trafficking Scheme

A woman identified as Jane Doe has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon, accusing both financial institutions of knowingly aiding the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in his sex trafficking operation. The complaint, filed Wednesday, seeks unspecified damages and claims the banks facilitated suspicious transactions that supported Epstein’s criminal network for years.

Represented by Boies Schiller and Edwards Henderson, the same law firms that secured multimillion-dollar settlements with Deutsche Bank ($75 million) and JPMorgan Chase ($290 million), Doe alleges that both banks ignored clear warning signs despite Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Neither Deutsche Bank nor JPMorgan admitted wrongdoing in their settlements.

According to court documents, Doe met Epstein in 2011 while living in Russia and was later coerced into performing sex acts more than 100 times between 2011 and 2019. She claims Epstein’s accountant, Richard Kahn, instructed her to open a Bank of America account in 2013, which he used to transfer rent and other payments. In 2015, Kahn’s assistant allegedly informed her that Epstein had placed her on the payroll of a sham company. Her attorneys argue that these transactions should have triggered Suspicious Activity Reports under U.S. banking regulations.

The lawsuit also accuses BNY Mellon of granting a line of credit to MC2, a modeling agency linked to Epstein and French scout Jean-Luc Brunel, through which victims were trafficked. BNY is alleged to have processed over $378 million in payments tied to Epstein’s operations. Brunel, arrested in 2020, died in custody in 2022.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress is reopening investigations into Epstein’s case, amid renewed public scrutiny over why his vast trafficking network went undetected for decades. Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.