Claims of Bank of America’s “reckless disregard” of information on Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking met the bar for an alleged victim’s lawsuit to move forward, a federal judge said Wednesday.  

The opinion and order detail U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff’s Jan. 29 dismissal of four claims against BofA and all claims against BNY made by Jane Doe.  

Rakoff, however, allowed two claims against Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America to proceed: accusations the bank was a “knowing beneficiary” in a sex trafficking venture and that it obstructed the federal government’s enforcement of trafficking laws. 

His Wednesday opinion, which didn’t determine the merit of the two remaining claims against BofA, said an amended complaint “plausibly asserts that the bank turned a blind eye to these repeated, detailed allegations, some emanating from police reports widely circulated in the press, by utterly failing to engage in due diligence about them.”

A Bank of America spokesperson reiterated Thursday that “it’s important to understand the underlying facts have not been reviewed at this stage of the litigation. We look forward to a full review of the facts.”

The proposed class-action lawsuits, filed in October by Doe, an alleged victim of the late financier and convicted sex offender, accused both banks of participating in and benefiting from Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise. 

The banks sought to dismiss the lawsuits – filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York – calling the allegations “threadbare” and “razor-thin.” Doe amended her complaints in December after Rakoff expressed skepticism about the suits, saying they failed to demonstrate the banks’ wrongdoing.

Doe claimed BofA, between 2001 and 2019, provided “non-routine services that facilitated” Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, of which the bank had “actual and constructive knowledge.”

Doe also alleged the lender provided banking services to MC2, a fake modeling agency set up by Epstein and his associate, Jean-Luc Brunel, to lure and exploit young women.

Doe was living in Russia when she met Epstein in 2011; from then until 2019, Epstein sexually abused her “on at least a hundred occasions” and transported her around the U.S. for her to engage in commercial sex acts, Doe said. 

Bank of America, Doe alleged, opened an account in her name in 2013 at the direction of Epstein’s associates. Doe was treated as a “preferred customer” and provided premier services at the bank despite having no prior income or wealth and no ability to earn legitimate income in the U.S., she said.

Epstein and his associates wired tens of thousands of dollars into Doe’s account at the bank, which they used to make transfers unrelated to her “and contrary to what the Bank knew would be typical transfers,” she alleged. 

Doe also contends that the bank failed to apply proper scrutiny to suspicious transactions connected to Epstein’s own accounts, such as former Apollo Global Management CEO Leon Black at one point transferring some $170 million to Epstein without a known or apparent business reason.

The lender “very belatedly reported numerous suspicious transactions,” including more than 65 wire transactions totaling $208,000 between Epstein and Doe over a period of years, she alleged. 

Bank of America, she claimed, knowingly benefited from the services provided to Epstein, through “fees, referrals, and the development and preservation of relationships” with clients and potential clients, such as billionaire Black.

In explaining his decision to allow the two counts to proceed, Rakoff said the lender “had every reason to know” that Doe had no ability to earn legitimate income in the U.S. and Epstein had previously been convicted of sex crimes involving underage girls.

And that large transfers passed in and out of an account allegedly owned by a young woman with little to no money “was surely enough to arouse suspicions and require inquiries, none of which Bank of America undertook,” the judge wrote. 

The same could be said, he added, for the payments Black made to Epstein victims, suspicious transactions in MC2’s account and the tens of millions of dollars Black transferred to Epstein.

Additionally, Doe plausibly alleged that a bank employee – who had been a banker for Epstein at JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank – had “direct personal knowledge” of Epstein’s sex trafficking venture, the judge wrote. 

In 2023, JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by alleged sex trafficking victims. The same year, Deutsche Bank paid $75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by alleged victims. 

Doe’s amended complaint also plausibly alleges that Bank of America intentionally obstructed or attempted to obstruct the 2019 investigation into Epstein once it became public, as it accuses the bank of “deliberately” failing to timely file SARs in and after 2019, Rakoff said.

A trial has been scheduled for May 11.