Bank of America, BNY sued over alleged financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein

By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) -A woman who says she was abused by the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sued Bank of America and the Bank of New York Mellon on Wednesday, alleging the banks knowingly provided financial services that enabled his sex trafficking operation for years.  Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank, declined to comment. BNY did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  The woman, referred to in court papers as Jane Doe, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages from both banks. She is represented by law firms Boies Schiller and Edwards Henderson, who previously secured settlements of $75 million and $290 million with Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan , respectively, over their alleged financial ties to Epstein.  Neither Deutsche nor JPMorgan admitted wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.  CONGRESS PROBES EPSTEIN CASE  Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The circumstances of his death, as well as his social relationships with wealthy and powerful individuals, fueled theories that others were involved in his crimes.  His case has become a political headache for President Donald Trump's administration. After pledging during the 2024 campaign to release files from the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein, the administration reversed course this year, prompting an outcry from Trump's conservative base and members of Congress.  The House Oversight Committee is now investigating the Epstein case.  In both lawsuits, Jane Doe said she met Epstein in 2011 while she was living in Russia. She said she became financially dependent on Epstein, who raped her, forcibly touched her, and forced her to engage in sex acts with other women at least 100 times between 2011 and 2019.  "As Congress works toward unraveling how Jeffrey Epstein was able to orchestrate his criminal sex trafficking enterprise for decades without detection, we are taking another important step forward toward justice for survivors," Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer for Jane Doe, said in a statement.  DOE SAYS EPSTEIN PAID HER RENT   Jane Doe said she opened a Bank of America account in 2013 at the direction of Richard Kahn, Epstein's former accountant, and that Kahn regularly sent her money for rent through the account.  Lawyers for Kahn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  Doe said in 2015, Kahn's assistant told her that Epstein was adding her to the payroll for a "sham company" and that she would receive funds through her Bank of America account. She said she did not know the purpose of those payments.  Her lawyers wrote that those transactions should have raised red flags for Bank of America. Epstein had pleaded guilty to state-level prostitution charges in Florida in 2008 as part of an arrangement that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution.  The lawsuit against BNY said the bank gave a line of credit to MC2, a modeling agency that the lawsuit said Epstein and French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel used to traffic victims. In total, BNY processed $378 million in payments to women trafficked by Epstein, the lawsuit said.  Brunel was arrested in December 2020 and was found dead in jail in 2022, according to Parisian prosecutors.  Both lawsuits said the banks should have filed Suspicious Activity Reports with the U.S. Treasury Department. The lawsuits said such reports could have helped law enforcement stop Epstein sooner.   (Reporting by Luc Cohen and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Chris Reese, Rod Nickel)

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