Four years after the suspicious in-jail death of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, there are still more questions than answers about his life, what authorities knew about and when, and — most importantly — who his “clients” were.
Now, a new piece of the puzzle has been revealed, but again, it, too, raises more questions.
According to CNBC, federal authorities were aware of more than $1 billion in human trafficking transactions at the time of Epstein’s reported suicide inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, recent court disclosures dating back 16 years show.
Mimi Liu, an attorney representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, made the shocking revelations during a court appearance on Thursday in Manhattan, the outlet reported.
During testimony, she claimed that JP Morgan Chase, the largest of all U.S. banks, notified the Department of the Treasury about the transactions after Epstein died, which adds more intrigue and complexity to a legal battle that was already heated.
“Epstein’s entire business with JPMorgan and JPMorgan’s entire business with Epstein was human trafficking,” she claimed outright, according to the outlet, which added:
The huge bank is being sued by the Virgin Islands government for allegedly facilitating sex trafficking by Epstein of young women when he was a JPMorgan customer from 1998 through 2013.
The attorney, referring to a $9 million block of transfers to women and suspicious withdrawals from Epstein’s accounts at JPMorgan, said it related to “facilitating” more than 20,000 sexual acts, given Epstein’s habit of paying several hundred dollars for each sexual encounter.
“JPMorgan was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” Liu argued during the hearing.
“The only reason that JPMorgan after 16 years reported the $1 billion in suspicious transactions was because he was arrested and then he was dead,” she noted further. “This was a CYA [cover your a–] reporting after 16 years of all of the monies flowing in his JPMorgan accounts after he was dead.”
The Virgin Islands have alleged that the bank persisted in conducting business with Epstein for years, despite multiple internal red flags and his 2008 guilty plea to a sex crime in Florida.
“By 2006, the bank thus had reams of financial information related to Jeffrey Epstein that corroborated his sex crimes involving children,” she argued.
Epstein reportedly hung himself in jail on Aug. 10, 2019, about a month after the financier was arrested on federal charges of child sex trafficking. Besides owning a residence in Manhattan, he also owned a private island where he was accused of sexually abusing young women and minors.
An attorney who claimed that the FBI “utterly failed” to properly investigate the late billionaire financier and convicted underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein asked the Justice Department in late May to find out why.
A letter from the attorney, who is representing several women, was sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, stating that the FBI was aware of allegations against Epstein back in the 1990s but failed to take any significant action, the UK Mirror reported.
“As counsel to many survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking conspiracy, we write regarding the failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to properly, adequately, or timely investigate the sex trafficking of hundreds of girls and young women,” says the letter from lawyer Jennifer Freeman.
“The FBI utterly failed to investigate serious allegations involving Epstein’s, and perhaps others’, child sex abuse materials (CSAM), significant additional criminality which, until recently, has been disregarded, disrespected, and essentially denied,” it added.
“[I]n August of 1996 one of our clients, Maria Farmer, reported to the FBI that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had sexually abused her and that the two of them, together with others, were committing multiple, serious, sexual abuse crimes, including hands-on sexual abuse, against minors and vulnerable young women,” the letter continues.
“In addition, she reported to the FBI that Epstein, and perhaps others, appeared to be engaged in the production, possession, and distribution of sexually suggestive or exploitative images of children that could constitute CSAM,” the letter noted further.