Judge Rakoff’s Order Says Bank of America Already Paid $72.5 Million Into the Epstein Survivors Fund

El número que el público oyó en marzo fue un titular. El número que importa es el que un empleado estampado en agosto. On August 28, 2026, United States District Judge Jed S. Rakoff firmó el fallo definitivo en Doe v. Bank of America, caso 1:25-cv-08520 en el Distrito Sur de Nueva York. La orden dice que el banco ya ha cumplido su obligación de dinero con una estipulación del 27 de marzo: 72.500.000 dólares pagados en un fondo de liquidación cualificado. No se lo prometí. Pagado. Un banco que todavía dice que no facilitó el tráfico sexual escribió un cheque lo suficientemente grande para hacer desaparecer un juicio de mayo, luego financió la olla antes de que los abogados de los sobrevivientes terminaran discutiendo sobre la liberación.

Rakoff had told the courtroom the day before, August 27, that he would approve the deal. He called it fair, reasonable, and adequate. He said it would give many victims «substantial» compensation and «justice, even if partial.» He also said the sentence polite coverage keeps skipping: no amount of money repairs what was done to them. He rejected three accusers who argued the release was too wide, because it forced them to give up related claims against the bank and against other potential defendants without a separate check. Reuters had the hearing. Courthouse News had the line about partial justice. The written order the next day made the payment a fact on the docket, not a press-release tense.

Who the class is, and who gets cut first

La clase llega a las mujeres abusadas sexualmente o traficadas por Jeffrey Epstein, o por una persona conectada a él o a su empresa de tráfico, entre el 30 de junio de 2008 y el 6 de julio de 2019. Esa ventana es la señal. Epstein's 2008 Florida plea, la que le dejó dormir en una cama de liberación de trabajo de la cárcel, debería haber iluminado cada dashboard de cumplimiento en la banca americana. La demanda dice que Bank of America siguió moviendo el dinero de todos modos. Early filings dijo que los abogados conocían al menos 60 mujeres en la ventana. Para cuando American Banker covered final approval, the pool being described was about 90. The class definition is wider than any list of names the public will see.

Thirty percent of $72.5 million is $21.75 million, and Rakoff approved that cut for class counsel led by David Boies and Bradley Edwards. He praised the lawyers for producing something he called actual justice rather than talk. The praise does not change the arithmetic. Nearly a third of the fund leaves before a survivor sees a wire. What remains, split across dozens of women, is not a life restored. It is a structured admission that the bank would rather pay than put its alert logs, relationship-manager notes, and «we didn’t know» emails in front of a jury. The mediator on the deal, Simone Lelchuk, had already run the Deutsche Bank settlement in front of the same judge. The machinery of these cases is now a repeatable product.

El demandante principal, una mujer de Florida que se dirigía como Jane Doe, dijo que vivía en Rusia cuando conoció a Epstein y que la abusó sexualmente al menos 100 veces entre 2011 y 2011 2019. La queja dice que su equipo le ordenó que mantuviera cuentas en Bank of America, y que la actividad en esas cuentas era lo suficientemente errática que un banco que prestaba atención tendría presentó informes de actividad sospechosa. Los demandantes dicen que el banco no presentó los informes requeridos a tiempo, y que algunos de los informes llegaron sólo después de que Epstein estuviera muerto en una celda federal en agosto de 2019. La teoría nunca fue que un cajero reservó un masaje. Fue que un sistema construido para detectar la financiación del tráfico trató este círculo de clientes como fricción rentable.

Leon Black’s wires and the third logo on the ledger

The transaction every complaint recites is large enough to make «we didn’t notice» sound like a joke. Leon Black, then a central figure at Apollo Global Management, moved about $170 million to Epstein through Bank of America accounts, a figure that also sits in Senate reporting on the relationship. The suit’s point is not that Black’s name appears in a PDF. It is that nine-figure transfers to a registered sex offender, alongside accounts tied to Ghislaine Maxwell and to women in the trafficking, are exactly what the Bank Secrecy Act is supposed to catch. Rakoff had already ruled in January 2026 that the bank had to face a jury on the claim that it knowingly benefited from a trafficking venture and that it obstructed enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The March stipulation was how both sides avoided that jury. The August judgment is how the avoidance became final.

Put the checks in a row. JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million to Epstein accusers and a separate sum to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Deutsche Bank paid $75 million. Bank of America comes in at $72.5 million and still spends more than many court systems see in a year to keep its name off a verdict form. None of the checks includes an admission. All of them include the same implicit sentence. The discovery was worse than the settlement. Bank spokesman Bill Halldin’s line, repeated from March through the approval, was that the bank stood by its filings, did not facilitate sex-trafficking crimes, and wanted the matter behind it so plaintiffs could have «further closure.» Closure is a word institutions use when the transcript is the thing they bought.

A vendor, not a bystander

Epstein’s operation did not run on cash in a suitcase. It ran on accounts, wires, houses, and men who could move eight and nine figures without a compliance officer calling the FBI. Black sitting in that stream is the demonstration that «know your customer» dies when the customer arrives with a family office. Maxwell’s later hideout picked up its own bank story when UBS money reached the Bradford, New Hampshire, estate where she waited before her arrest. Different logo. Same lesson. The financial system around this network was not fooled by a clever disguise. It was a vendor.

The AEGIS Alliance covered the road from Rakoff’s winter ruling to this judgment in the companion file on the case the bank first tried to kill, and the week the dollar figure became public in the $72.5 million reveal. While the bank was settling, the government that is supposed to prosecute the rest of the network was still fighting over PDFs. The report that the Justice Department had released less than one percent de los archivos prometidos es la mitad política del mismo libro mayor. Los sobrevivientes pueden ser adeudados un proceso de reclamos y todavía ver los nombres permanecer redacted. El muelle de Manhattan y el muelle de Washington son dos maneras de gestionar una lista de clientes.

Qué financiada

Un acuerdo no es un hallazgo que Bank of America ejecutó un anillo de tráfico. Es un hallazgo que el banco prefirió $72,5 millones, ya sentado en un fondo de liquidación, a un mes de pruebas. Esas exhibiciones habrían incluido las fechas que alguien dentro del edificio sabía que Epstein no era un dolor de cabeza común de hombre rico. El público no recibe esas páginas. La clase tiene un administrador. El banco recibe una sentencia sobre el cierre y un juicio que dice que el dinero se movió.

Readers who want the wider money file can stay on this desk’s noticias y negocios stacks, including the Copperfield residency that ended after the same document wave and the older record of Maxwell’s arrestEl patrón es consistente. Las instituciones paganas cuando la alternativa es una transcripción. Ellos niegan cuando el cheque se aclara. Rakoff llamó al resultado parcial. Las tres mujeres que se opusieron ya sabían que la liberación fue construida para hacerlo así. La orden del 28 de agosto no discutió con ellos. Los pagó, y todos los demás en la clase, de un fondo que el banco ya había llenado.