Bank of America agreed to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit on Monday brought by Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers, who alleged the bank helped facilitate the late financier’s sex-trafficking operation, according to court records filed this week.
Lawyers for the bank and a group of Epstein victims told the federal judge overseeing the case that they had “reached a settlement in principle,” according to a docket entry filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The terms of the agreement were not immediately disclosed.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton who is presiding over the case in Manhattan, ordered the parties to submit public documents detailing the settlement by March 27. He also scheduled an April 2 hearing to determine whether the deal should receive final court approval.
The bank has previously denied wrongdoing in public statements and court filings. Bank of America declined to comment to the Washington Examiner.
The lawsuit was filed in October by a plaintiff identified as Jane Doe and sought class-action status on behalf of Epstein victims. Unlike earlier lawsuits targeting financial institutions that directly held Epstein’s personal bank accounts, the claims against Bank of America focused primarily on accounts connected to Epstein’s associates and alleged victims rather than Epstein himself.
The plaintiffs alleged Bank of America enabled Epstein’s trafficking operation by failing to scrutinize accounts linked to Epstein’s associates and transactions that funded the abuse.
“The women entrapped and abused by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell started a monumental reckoning with their brave voices and fearlessness,” said Sigrid McCawley, an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner who represents the plaintiffs. “The road to justice for these women has been long and trying. Today’s resolution of the case against Bank of America is one more step on the road to much-deserved justice.”
The settlement is poised to cancel a planned March 26 deposition for Leon Black, the billionaire and former chief executive of Apollo Global Management, who was expected to sit for eight hours of closed-door testimony. According to the lawsuit, Black transferred more than $150 million to Epstein through accounts at Bank of America, which plaintiffs alleged helped finance Epstein’s trafficking scheme.
Black has said the payments were for financial and estate-planning services and has denied wrongdoing. He was not named as a defendant in the case.
Meanwhile, Black has separately been called to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform about his past ties to Epstein. The committee, which has led numerous depositions of former U.S. attorneys general, associates of Epstein, as well as former President Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is next interviewing former Epstein lawyer Darren Indyke on Thursday.
The lawsuit also alleged that Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate who was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, used Bank of America accounts tied to the alleged network.
After the suit was filed in October, the case moved unusually quickly. Rakoff placed it on an expedited schedule with a possible May trial date, a rapid timeline for complex civil litigation.
In February, the judge agreed to dismiss four of the lawsuit’s six claims but allowed two to proceed: allegations that Bank of America knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture and that it obstructed enforcement of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act.
Rakoff previously said he had hoped to see the case go to a trial, saying he would be “extraordinarily disappointed because I will be deprived of two fantastic trials by excellent lawyers.”
The case is the latest in a series of legal battles targeting major banks over their connections to Epstein’s finances. In 2023, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $290 million to settle similar claims brought by Epstein victims, while Deutsche Bank reached a $75 million settlement earlier that year. Rakoff also presided over those lawsuits.
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The Bank of America case contrasted with the pair of previous settlements, which were centered on institutions that had served as Epstein’s primary bankers and maintained his personal accounts that plaintiffs alleged were used to move money tied to his trafficking operation.
Rakoff previously dismissed a related lawsuit against Bank of New York Mellon, finding the complaint did not sufficiently allege the bank knew about Epstein’s activities, though he allowed the pair of key claims against Bank of America to proceed.