Wyden presses regulators to probe banks over Epstein-linked accounts

The Senate Finance Committee posted Wyden’s report, Looking the Other Way: How Wall Street Banks enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking, as Sen. Ron Wyden pressed federal regulators to investigate Wall Street banks over accounts tied to Jeffrey Epstein, turning a long-running compliance dispute back into a test of federal enforcement. The report capped a four-year investigation into banks ignoring hundreds of millions of dollars in suspicious transfers.

The report put anti-money-laundering controls and suspicious activity reporting at the center of the case. Federal law requires timely reporting of suspicious financial transactions, and JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank were among the institutions drawn into the inquiry. The question Wyden raised was not only whether the banks missed warning signs, but whether regulators allowed Epstein-linked activity to continue without the kind of scrutiny the law demands.

Bank of America drew particular attention in the report. The bank failed to properly screen and report payments from Leon Black to Epstein, and Black was overwhelmingly the largest source of funding for Epstein’s sex trafficking. Earlier scrutiny included two suspicious activity reports Bank of America filed in 2020 regarding payments from Black to Epstein, documented in a December 13, 2024 report.

The Senate’s review also pointed to Bank of New York Mellon. A Senate Finance Committee release dated January 15, 2026 put Epstein’s movement at nearly $400 million in and out of accounts at the bank through 270 wire transfers, and the bank waited years to flag those transactions with the Treasury Department. Wyden had already told Congress in July 2025 that a “big” file of Epstein-related banking data was sitting in a Treasury Department drawer, underscoring how long the case has lingered inside government files.