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JPMorgan To Pay $1.7 Billion To Madoff Fraud Victims

Big Bank Settles Madoff Fraud Charges
Reuters
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Bernard Madoff exits Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, March 10, 2009, in New York. Madoff will plead guilty Thursday to 11 criminal counts including money laundering, perjury and securities, mail and wire fraud and will do so without a plea deal, knowing it carries a potential prison term of 150 years, lawyers said Tuesday in court. (AP Photo/David Karp)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co will pay a $1.7 billion penalty to settle charges by U.S. federal authorities that the bank failed to report suspicious activity relating to Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

The bank had violated laws requiring that it monitor customer activity for money laundering in the Madoff case, authorities said on Tuesday.

The deal includes a two-year deferred prosecution agreement and settles outstanding probes by two bank regulators into failures in JPMorgan's anti-money laundering policies. The bank also agreed to improve its controls.

As part of the deal, the bank agreed not to apply for a tax deduction or tax credit for the $1.7 billion payment. The funds will go to the victims of Madoff's fraud, according to Tuesday's announcement.

JPMorgan is admitting it had failed to raise the alarm about Madoff's activities to a bank regulator, even though bankers in more than one area of its operations had identified inconsistencies in Madoff's behavior and his fund's returns.

Madoff, through his hedge fund operation, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was revealed in December 2008 to be the operator of a massive Ponzi scheme. Convicted in 2009 of defrauding thousands of investors, he is serving a 150-year prison sentence.

(Reporting by Emily Flitter; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bernadette Baum)

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Before You Go

10 Bankers Behind Bars
Bernie Madoff(01 of10)
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In what is now considered to be one of the biggest and most famous Ponzi schemes in history, Madoff laundered about $65 billion, Forbes reports. Madoff defrauded thousands of investors, all of whom can be found on a 163-page list. (credit:AP)
Rajat Gupta(02 of10)
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Ex-Goldman Rajat Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison for participating in one of the largest insider trading schemes in history. (credit:Getty Images)
Jerome Kerviel(03 of10)
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Kerviel was found guilty of one of the world's most colosal trading frauds in 2010. He cost France's Société Générale bank 4.9 billion Euros. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail and was also sentenced to paying a $7 billion fine, The Guardian reports. (credit:AP)
Steven Goldberg, Peter Grimm and Dominick Carollo(04 of10)
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Goldberg, Grimm and Carollo were found guilty of conning the I.R.S. and cities in a "bid-rigging scheme" during their time at General Electric, Businessweek reports.Goldberg was sentenced to four years in prison. Grimm and Carollo were each sentenced to three years. (credit:AP)
Raj Rajaratnam(05 of10)
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Raj Rajaratnam, the former head of Galleon Management, was sentenced to 11 years in jail in October 2011, the longest prison term for insider trading to date, The Washington Post reports. (credit:AP)
Nick Leeson(06 of10)
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During Nick Lesson's time at Bristain's Barings Bank, he lost 862 million pounds and even managed to level the 233-year-old bank itself, according to The Telegraph. He served four years in a Singapore jail before he was released early with life-threatening cancer. (credit:Getty Images)
Allen Stanford(07 of10)
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Currently serving 110 years in prison, Allen Stanford was, at one time, one of the richest men in America, according to CNBC. He conned about 20,000 investors out of their money in a Ponzi scheme. (credit:AP)
Garth Peterson(08 of10)
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Garth Peterson, the former head of Morgan Stanley's Chinese real-estate investments unit, was sentenced to 9 months in jail last August for bribery, according to The Wall Street Journal. (credit:AP)
Bradley Birkenfeld(09 of10)
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Bradley Birkenfeld spent more than 2 years in jail for assisting in income tax evasion while working at UBS. He then volunteered inside information on Swiss banking to the I.R.S., and was rewarded with $104 million for being a whistle-blower, according to The New York Times. (credit:AP)
Don Of Thieves(10 of10)
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Dennis Levine, Martin Siegel, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken defrauded Wall Street investors in the 1980's. In a scandalous series of events, Levine stole confidential documents from Lazard Freres investment bank, and the crew made use of inside information, according to The Daily Beast. (credit:Getty Images)
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