Lawsuit Claims JPMorgan Aided Madoff Scheme
April 25, 2009 by Stephen Kersey
Filed under Business
A lawsuit was filed late on Thursday in the federal court in Manhattan accusing Bernard L. Madoff’s bank, JPMorgan Chase of aiding his crime. Victims of the Ponzi scheme claim that JPMorgan Chase continued to handle his checking accounts and trading, even after realizing that Madoff was running the massive fraud.
The complaint claims that the bank should have acted on its knowledge of the operation and frozen his bank accounts back in September. It was then that JPMorgan Chase pulled their own money ($250 million) from the Sentry funds, one of Madoff’s largest feeder funds. The lawsuit claims that if they would have done that, then the plaintiffs wouldn’t have lost $12.8 million in the final weeks of the fraud scheme.
Madoff was arrested back in December. In early March, he pleaded guilty to securities fraud, perjury and money laundering. Currently, Madoff is jailed while awaiting his sentence, which is scheduled in June.
Source: Boston Globe / Image: Flickr
