Judge Rakoff Approves Bank of America’s $72.5 Million Settlement With Jeffrey Epstein Survivors After the Bank Fought a Jury Trial

Jed Rakoff spent the first weeks of 2026 telling Bank of America it would have to face a jury theory that it profited from Jeffrey Epstein’s pipeline. On August 27 he spent a hearing telling the same bank that a $72.5 million check was enough to end that theory. He called the payout substantial. He called it justice, even if partial. Three accusers said the release was too wide because it made them give up related claims against the bank and other potential defendants without extra pay. He overruled them. Final judgment followed. The bank still says it did not facilitate trafficking. The class still says the wire room watched about $170 million move from Leon Black to Epstein and failed to file the suspicious-activity reports that statute requires.

That is the entire arc of the case in two seasons. A motion to dismiss failed. Discovery pointed at a trial. The number appeared in March. Preliminary approval came in the spring. Final approval came at the end of August. No banker was charged. No executive had to say the word «enabled» on the record. Survivors get a claims process. The AEGIS Alliance treats that process as real money and as a lid.

How a too-big-to-name client stayed in the system

The suit, filed by women proceeding as Jane Doe and a class of others abused or trafficked by Epstein or people around him after his 2008 Florida conviction, argued that Bank of America kept accounts and processed transfers that should have tripped alerts. Epstein was a registered sex offender. Banks are required to treat that fact as a risk signal, not as trivia. The complaint said the bank saw the Black transfers, described in a Senate report as payments labeled for tax and estate work, and did not do the filing that would have put a regulator in the room.

Rakoff’s January and February rulings left the core claims alive. He found that alleged reckless disregard could support the trafficking-benefiting theory. That sentence is why the bank settled. A Manhattan jury looking at a convicted trafficker’s wires is not a room a general counsel wants. By late March the parties had a number: $72.5 million. Reuters and other desks reported the agreement on March 27. The bank settled while denying the facts. That is the standard paragraph in every institutional Epstein case. It means the check is cheaper than the testimony.

Lawyers told the Associated Press that as many as 75 women abused since 2008 could benefit. Other write-ups put the class nearer 60. A later Law360 account of the final order said the fee award was 30 percent of the fund. Those figures will move again when the administrator finishes the claim-by-claim work. They will not move the bank’s public line. Bank of America continues to say it did not facilitate the crimes. Facilitation, in this genre, is a word reserved for the complaint and forbidden in the settlement.

The price list of looking away

JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle a similar survivors case. Deutsche Bank paid $75 million. Bank of America comes in third on that list and still sits in the same moral neighborhood. The AEGIS Alliance recorded the March number in the preliminary agreement piece and the confirmed figure in the $72.5 million announcement. Three banks. Three denials. Three funds. Zero executive prosecutions tied to the wires.

Leon Black’s name is in the Senate math and in the discovery calendar. A lawyer for Black asked Rakoff to delay a deposition in March because the parties were close to settling. The delay was granted. The settlement arrived. That sequence is how a deposition that would have put a billionaire under oath about payments to a trafficker becomes a line in a status report. Readers who want the island side of the same network can start with the Virgin Islands trafficking case against the estate and the later boarding-school instruction pulled from the files.

The banks are not the only institutions that took the money and the silence. UBS wired nearly $8 million toward the New Hampshire estate where Ghislaine Maxwell hid before her arrest. Maxwell is in federal prison. The bankers who touched adjacent flows are in earnings calls. That disparity is the actual holding of these cases.

What the August order does and does not do

The final approval puts a claims administrator between the fund and the class. It releases Bank of America from the claims covered by the deal. It does not charge a compliance officer. It does not force a public admission. It does not reopen the 2008 non-prosecution agreement that let Epstein plead to state charges and keep a private jet. Partial justice is Rakoff’s phrase. It is also a description of a legal system that prices a pipeline instead of jailing the people who kept the pipe open.

Three objectors told the court the release was overbroad. They were not arguing that $72.5 million is a large number. They were arguing that a class member should not have to surrender claims against other potential defendants as the cost of taking a share. Rakoff disagreed. Class-action law often disagrees with holdouts. The holdouts were describing a real design feature. Settlements of this size buy peace for the institution and a haircut for anyone who wanted a narrower release and a trial story.

Related files on this desk include the Epstein Files Act dump, the Phang injunction against the department’s stall, and the SDNY letter on flights that outnumbered the official count. The bank case is the money chapter. The files fight is the names chapter. They are the same book.

Why a settlement this size still underpays the story

Seventy-two and a half million dollars is a rounding error in Bank of America’s quarterly print and a life-changing figure for a woman who was a teenager when the wires moved. Both facts can be true. The second fact is why the objectors lost on optics even when they had a point on scope. People who were trafficked need cash now. Institutions know that. The timing of the March deal, coming as Black’s deposition came due and as the files dump kept feeding headlines, was not an accident of the calendar.

Suspicious-activity reports exist so that a bank cannot say it did not notice $170 million walking toward a man who had already been convicted of procuring a child. If the Senate figure is right, the notice was available. If the bank’s denial is right, the statute is decoration. Rakoff did not resolve that contradiction. He priced it. The AEGIS Alliance will keep the contradiction on the page because the next institution in this chain will try the same purchase.

For the running record, see the site’s crime news and business files. The check cleared the courtroom. It did not clear the pipeline.