Bank of America has agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of abetting their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed Friday.
Lawyers for the bank and the woman told Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff this month that they had reached a “settlement in principle,” but the terms of the settlement were not disclosed at the time.
“While we stand by our previous statements made in filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter to rest and provides additional closure for the plaintiffs,” a Bank of America spokesperson said in a statement.
In a joint court filing, David Boies and Bradley Edwards, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said the settlement represents the best option for their clients “given that many members of the class suffered injury many years ago and are now in need of financial relief.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs can seek up to 30% of the settlement, or about $21.8 million, in legal fees, according to court records.
The settlement requires Rakoff’s approval. A judge has scheduled a court hearing for Thursday to consider approving the deal.
A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe accused the second-largest U.S. bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions linked to Epstein despite an “overwhelming” amount of information about his crimes, putting profit over protecting victims.
Bank of America said that Doe only claimed to have provided routine services to people who had no known ties to Epstein at the time, and that any suggestion that she was more deeply involved was “convoluted and unsubstantiated.”
Rakoff ruled in January that Bank of America must face Doe’s claims that it knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex trafficking and obstructed enforcement of a federal law protecting victims of human trafficking. Among the transactions Doe flagged were payments to Epstein from billionaire Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black.
Black resigned as CEO of Apollo in 2021 after an outside law firm discovered he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning.
Black has denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal conduct.
Doe’s lawyers also sued Epstein’s other alleged sex-trafficking agents, reaching settlements of $290 million with JPMorgan Chase and $75 million with Deutsche Bank in 2023 on behalf of his accusers.
The lawyers are also appealing Rakoff’s dismissal in January in a similar lawsuit they filed against Bank of New York Mellon.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The New York Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide.
