Tag: banks

“Go Talk To Bill Gates About Me”: How JP Morgan Enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes, Snagged Netanyahu Meeting

On an autumn day in 2011, Jeffrey Epstein stepped into JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters at 270 Park Avenue and rode the elevator to the executive floors where the bank’s leaders, including Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, kept their offices. Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to a sex crime in Florida three years earlier, had a message for the bank’s top lawyer, Stephen Cutler: he had “turned over a new leaf,” he said, and powerful friends could vouch for him. “Go talk to Bill Gates about me.”

Key takeaways:

  • Epstein was connected to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, not just former PM Ehud Barak
  • He wired ‘hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to Russian banks and young Eastern European women‘
  • Accounts for young women were opened without in-person verification (in one case a SSN could not be confirmed)
  • Jes Staley was constantly running interference for Epstein vs. JPM compliance concerns
    • At Jes Staley’s urging, compliance spoke with Epstein’s lawyer Ken Starr, who insisted “no crimes” had been committed. 
  • Epstein had accounts at JPM for at least 134 (!) entities
  • JPMorgan funded/serviced pieces tied to Ghislaine Maxwell (millions, incl. $7.4M for a Sikorsky helicopter) and helped finance MC2, the modeling agency linked to Jean-Luc Brunel.

For more than a decade, JPMorgan Chase processed over $1 billion in transactions for Jeffrey Epstein – including hundreds of millions routed to Russian banks and payments to young Eastern European women, opened at least 134 accounts tied to him and his associates, and even helped move millions to Ghislaine Maxwell – including $7.4 million for a Sikorsky helicopter – while anti–money laundering staff repeatedly flagged large cash withdrawals and wire patterns aligned with known trafficking indicators, according to a new report from the NY Times following a six-year investigation that involved “some 13,000 pages” of legal and financial records. Funny how they sat on this until now – maybe it’s related to this, but do read on. 

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Fentanyl Financiers: Treasury Links Mexican Banks and Chinese Networks to Cartel Money Laundering

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is stepping up its efforts to identify the ways that drug cartels move their funds. Most recently, Treasury officials identified the presence of Chinese money laundering networks that are working with Mexican drug cartels and other criminal entities to move large sums of cash.

In a series of notices from the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, authorities warned financial institutions about the methods that criminal organizations are using to launder money. According to FinCEN, investigators reviewed 137,153 Bank Secrecy Act reports from 2020 to 2024, identifying $312 billion in suspicious transactions tied to Chinese money laundering networks.

Of significant concern to FinCEN is the apparent ties between Mexican drug cartels and Chinese money laundering groups. The report comes just weeks after FinCEN and the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Mexican banks and one brokerage firm that they alleged had been laundering money for various drug cartels and had also been helping funnel money into China to pay for fentanyl precursors, Breitbart Texas reported at the time.

The ties between drug cartels and Chinese groups are fueled in part by currency laws in both Mexico and China, which limit the amount of U.S. dollars that can be deposited and moved in Mexico, as well as China’s control of international currency within its country. Treasury officials claim that money laundering groups from China buy U.S. dollars from drug cartels and then sell them further ahead to Chinese individuals or businesses who are trying to evade China’s cash control laws.

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The Quiet Rebranding Of CBDCs As “Digital-ID”

Let’s call them for what they are: Social Credit systems.

We know that “CBDC” stands for Central Bank Digital Currencies – and we have long held our hypothesis on what those entail (the TL;DR is that they will either launch as, or morph into, China-style social credit systems).

We’ve seen an Executive Order expressly ruling out CBDCs in the US, but as I keep warning readers: we’re seeing components we’d expect to see under a CBDC system appearing – only they aren’t originating at The Fed (who has never really expressed an interest in them, anyway).

Now the US Treasury Department is seeking comments on Digital ID as it relates to DeFi:

“The Department of the Treasury has filed a request for public comments to provide input on the use of “innovative or novel methods to detect and mitigate illicit finance risks involving digital assets” in accordance with the GENIUS Act, as well as in accordance with Donald Trump’s policy to support “the responsible growth and use of digital assets,” as outlined in the President’s Executive Order to strengthen US leadership in digital financial technology.”

— TheRage.co

The areas covered range from:

“the use of APIs “to help enforce strict access controls, monitor transactions and activities, and bolster security and integrity of financial institutions providing digital asset services”, the use of Artificial Intelligence to “make predictions, recommendations or decisions” to “effectively identify illicit finance patterns, risks, trends, and typologies”, and blockchain monitoring to “evaluate high-risk counterparties and activities, analyze transactions across multiple blockchains,trace or monitor transaction activities, and identify patterns that indicate potential illicit transactions.”

As well as Digital ID (which I think is the catch-phrase we’re going to see a lot of in the future, that will capture a lot of the objectives of CBDCs)

“the treasury is also seeking comments on the introduction of “portable digital identity credentials designed to support various elements of AML/CFT and sanctions compliance, maximize user privacy, and reduce compliance burden on financial institutions” to potentially be used “by decentralized finance (DeFi) services’ smart contracts to automatically check for a credential before executing a user’s transaction.”

Sounds similar to what the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) wants to do in terms of rating individual crypto wallets for AML compliance.

In a white paper titled An approach to anti-money laundering compliance for cryptoassets they propose to:

“leverag[e] the provenance and history of any particular unit or balance of a cryptoasset, including stablecoins”

In order to assign an “AML compliance score”.

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OMG: Donors Funneled Millions of Dollars Through Fidelity, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs to the Vera Institute of Justice to “Tip Illegals Off”

The O’Keefe Media Group on Wednesday released its latest investigation into big financial institutions that have funneled millions of dollars into an organization that monitors federal immigration enforcement and helps illegal aliens evade deportation.

Santiago Mueckay, a Vera Institute Policy Advisor described how the organization “tracks ICE movements” and “pushes that information out” so illegals can evade federal agents.

Meanwhile, Keane Bhatt, a Policy Advisor for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, admitted they secured “injunctions” to “stop deportation flights.”

Per the O’Keefe Media Group:

According to O’Keefe Media Group’s (OMG) latest investigation, major corporations including Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Bank of America, and Universal Music Group have funneled millions of dollars to the Vera Institute of Justice, an organization that monitors federal immigration enforcement and circulates that information to help illegal immigrants evade deportation, according to documents reviewed by OMG and multiple sources familiar with the matter. Goldman Sachs contributed $5 million, Fidelity donated $1.3 million, and Bank of America gave $175,000, and Universal Music Group has contributed $50,000.

These revelations follow undercover footage of Santiago Mueckay, a Vera Institute Policy Advisor, who described how the nonprofit “tracks ICE movements” and “pushes that information out” so individuals can avoid federal agents. Mueckay also named high-profile contributors, saying that “Jeff Bezos” and “Bill Gates” were among Vera’s financial backers.

A review of Vera’s public-facing materials shows the group is not solely focused on immigration. On its website, Vera declares that America is “over-policing” and “over-enforcing” in Black communities, openly aligning with movements like Black Lives Matter and demanded to “defund police and shift power to communities.” The organization has also supported “Know Your Rights” campaigns that instruct immigrants on how to resist enforcement actions, advising them to demand warrants, refuse to open their doors, and rely on local governments to block ICE.

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House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik Demands AG Pam Bondi Launch a Full Investigation into Standard Chartered Bank’s Terrorist Financing and Letitia James’ Role in the Explosive Scandal

House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has called on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to open a full-blown federal investigation into Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and to scrutinize New York Attorney General Letitia James’ complicity in a billion-dollar terrorist financing scandal.

House Republican Chairwoman Elise Stefanik’s urgent letter to Bondi comes on the heels of a bombshell Gateway Pundit report into the Standard Chartered Bank sanctions evasion case, now before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

That case uncovered at least $9.6 billion in illegal payments by the bank to Iranian and Hezbollah entities—payments that directly violate U.S. Treasury sanctions and undermine national security.

These transactions were allegedly concealed from mandatory disclosures under a deferred prosecution agreement overseen by the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C.

Even more disturbing, the case implicates New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Federal Reserve for ignoring these billions in illicit transactions and failing to enforce sanctions already designated by the Treasury Department.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported:

At least $9.6 billion of specifically identified illicit payments were made by SCB from its NYC branch to OFAC and known terrorist names. The $9.6 billion was found in internal trade reports turned over by bank whistleblowers and represents the first batch from SCB Dubai office that cleared through SCB NYC. There are estimated over $100 billion more of illegal payments that are more recent and from SCB China where it has 53 mainland branches that facilitate dollar trade payments for oil and war-making materials.

These payments were hidden by SCB from required disclosure in its ongoing Deferred Prosecution Agreement now under the jurisdiction of DCUSA Pirro and SDNY Clayton where both were briefed on SCB after their appointments. There are career blockers at each jurisdiction.

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Central Banks Do Not Prevent Financial Crises Or Control Inflation

Central banks have become the dominating force in financial markets.

Easing and tightening decisions move all assets from bonds to private equity. Their role is supposed to be to control inflation, provide price stability, and ensure normal market functions. However, there is little evidence of any success in achieving their goals. The era of central bank dominance has been characterised by boom-and-bust cycles, financial crises, policy incentives to increase government spending and debt, and persistent inflation. Recently developed economies’ central banks have taken an increasingly interventionist role.

The creation and proliferation of central banks over the past century promised greater financial stability. Nevertheless, as history and current events continually show, central banks have not prevented financial crises. The frequency and severity of these crises have fluctuated but have not declined since central banks became the leading figure in financial market regulation and monetary interventions. Instead, central banking has introduced new fragilities and changed the nature, but not the recurrence, of financial turmoil.

Empirical evidence dispels the myth that central banks ended the era of frequent financial crises. Regardless of central bank oversight, a credit boom preceded one in three banking crises. Who created those credit booms? Central banks, through the manipulation of interest rates. According to Laeven and Valencia’s comprehensive database, there were 147 banking crises between 1970 and 2011 alone, in an era of near-universal central bank dominance. Financial crises remain a persistent global phenomenon, occurring in cycles that coincide with episodes of credit expansion. Central banks have often prolonged boom periods with low rates and elevated asset purchases and created abrupt bust moments after making mistakes about inflation and credit risks.

According to Reinhart and Rogoff’s work, the rate of crises has not dramatically changed with central banking. Instead, the forms of crises evolved. Twin crises (banking and currency) remain common, and the severity, measured in output loss or fiscal costs, has often increased, especially as financial institutions and governments grew intertwined with monetary authorities.

The Great Financial Crisis of 2008, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and the 2021–2022 inflationary burst rank among the events with the highest costs in history, contradicting the view that central banks have neutralised the risk or costliness of crises.

Central banks act as “lenders of last resort” and regulators. However, with each subsequent crisis, the solution is always the same: larger and more aggressive asset purchase programmes and negative real rates. This means that central banks have gradually moved from lenders of last resort to lenders of first resort, a role that has amplified vulnerabilities. Due to the globalisation of modern central banking and financial innovations, crises tend to be larger in scale and more complex, impacting most nations. The profound involvement of central banks in markets means their policies, such as emergency liquidity or asset purchases, mask systemic risks, leading to delayed but more dramatic failures.

In many advanced economies, recent waves of crises were triggered by debt accumulation and market distortions engineered by central banks, often under the guise of maintaining stability. The IMF and World Bank both note that about half of debt accumulation episodes in emerging markets since 1970 involved financial crises, and episodes associated with crises are marked by higher debt growth, weaker economic outcomes, and depleted reserves—regardless of central banking.

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Intel Whistleblower Implicates Hillary Clinton’s Alfa Bank Hoax In Election ‘Hack’

A whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign efforts to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them.

According to the report, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who investigated alleged Russian attempts to breach state voting systems during the 2016 election suspected the breaches may have been “related to activities” of the computer contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax, who were accused of manipulating Internet traffic data.

In that well-publicized case, a Clinton campaign lawyer worked with federal computer contractors and the FBI to create suspicions that Russia was communicating with Donald Trump through a secret server shared by Alfa Bank of Russia and Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The anonymous whistleblower – who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2020 – told Special Counsel John Durham he stumbled onto “enigmatic” data while leading the investigation of alleged Russian cyber activity for the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He said that his discovery took place in December 2016 when President Obama ordered the ICA.

After examining state-reported breaches of election networks, the whistleblower said, “It seemed only brief interaction was occurring – in some cases, no unauthorized access, or even attempted access, was detected on ‘victim’ systems.” Though the suspicious activity initially was attributed to Russian actors, further analysis raised doubts.

But when he brought his findings to his boss, ODNI’s national intelligence officer for cyber issues, he was ordered to stop investigating and not include his findings in the final ICA draft.

“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyber activity for the ICA, I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the whistleblower analyst said.

He added that his boss, whose name was blacked out in the whistleblower statement, “directed me to abandon analysis of these events, stating reports of Russia-attributed cyber activity were ‘something else.’”

While the names of the whistleblower and his boss are blacked out in the report, a RealClearInvestigations search of federal records shows Vinh Nguyen was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues at the time. The whistleblower would have been Nguyen’s deputy.

Nguyen did not respond to RCI’s request for comment.

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Former D.C. Diplomat Charged with Sexually Abusing His Children’s Playmates

A World Bank consultant, former Australian diplomat, and father of three is being held without bond and charged with sexually abusing three of his children’s playmates who lived in his Northwest Washington, DC, neighborhood.

Thomas Mahony, 42, was arrested in July and accused of sexually abusing two 7-year-old girls and one 8-year-old boy.

“Mahony, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffed,” appeared in D.C. Superior Court Thursday where he failed to get bond as he was considered a “significant flight risk,” according to Washington Post coverage of the case.

According to the Post:

The arrest has shocked the D.C. youth swimming community, where he was known as a proud father who regularly volunteered to time races or take team photos. Two of the swim teams Mahony had volunteered with, All Star Aquatics and MVP Dolphins, sent emails to families asking them to contact police with additional information.

Court records cited by the newspaper revealed that police wanted to arrest Mahoney as far back as November 2023 when he allegedly assaulted one of the girls while she on a playdate with his children.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to prosecute due to “consideration of the government’s burden of beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to the Post’s examination of the records.

Now prosecutors have charged Mahony with two counts of first-degree child sexual abuse and one count of second-degree child sexual abuse stemming from incidents from February 2023 to July 13, 2025.

Under D.C. law, first-degree abuse involves a sexual act while second-degree abuse involves sexual contact that can occur over or under clothing.

All three minors reportedly told authorities that they had been at Mahony’s house having fun with his children doing typical activities like “watching a movie, playing video games, or pretending to run a Target store” when the abuse occurred.

In a court filing this week, prosecutors revealed that more charges could be on the way.

The mother of two of the children told the Post she once considered Mahony “the hero of the community.” Her family first got to know him “in 2023 as the involved father and volunteer photographer at events hosted by their children’s elementary school.”

“The only thing you can do is just cry,” she said. “I feel like I failed as a mother by trusting this person.”

Prosecutors worked to keep Mahony jailed ahead of his Thursday hearing. They expressed concern that the Australian national would flee the United States, citing his relationship with the Australian Embassy. Even if he surrendered his passport, he could obtain another there, they argued.

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Trump Order Targets Political Debanking but Spares Visa, Mastercard, Payment Processor Monopolies

The White House has decided that banks shouldn’t play political bouncer, at least the banks that answer to federal regulators.

In a flourish of pen and podium, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that supposedly halts “politically motivated debanking.” That’s the practice where someone loses their bank account, not because they bounced checks or defaulted, but because someone behind a desk didn’t like their politics, religion, or choice of lawful business.

The order’s language is strong. Trump, who has a personal score to settle in this arena, told CNBC’s Squawk Box, “The banks discriminated against me very badly. They totally discriminate against – I think me, maybe even more, but they discriminate against many conservatives.”

While the press release version sounds like a broad defense of free financial access, the actual order is more of a neighborhood watch than a citywide ban. It applies only to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other outfits directly supervised by federal banking regulators or the SBA.

That means Visa and Mastercard, the twin tollbooth operators of the global payments highway, are untouched. Same with PayPal, Stripe, and other tech-driven platforms that have spent years quietly freezing out lawful but unpopular actors with all the due process that in the real world wouldn’t even get you a parking ticket.

These companies have been the muscle in modern financial blacklisting, but they will not get so much as a warning letter under this policy.

For the institutions it does cover, the order tells regulators to rip out any guidance that allows “reputation risk” to be used as an excuse for cutting customers loose over political or religious reasons. SBA-partner banks are instructed to reinstate clients who were politically deplatformed. Federal watchdogs are told to fine, sanction, or otherwise make life difficult for any bank caught doing it again. Cases that appear to involve religion must be sent to the Attorney General for potential civil action.

It’s a tidy list of marching orders that leaves one wondering why the most aggressive financial censors, the ones that dominate online commerce, get to keep their scissors. The order takes a few swings at the branches while leaving the trunk standing.

If the point was to stop political discrimination in finance, it’s an odd choice to leave out the players who can cut you off from selling so much as a baseball card online.

President Trump has long argued that regulators wield excessive control over banks. In June, he told reporters, “The regulators control the banks” and that when an administration pushes regulators to target certain institutions, “they really control it.”

The move takes aim at a framework built during the Obama years, when the Justice Department advised regulators to treat “negative public opinion” as a legitimate risk factor. That phrase became a free pass for banks to exit relationships with any client who might attract headlines or activist campaigns. It was sold as prudence. It quickly turned into a permission slip for politically driven account closures.

The personal angle is never far from the story. First Lady Melania Trump wrote in her memoir that her own account was abruptly closed after years with the same bank. She added that Barron Trump was refused an account entirely after January 6, 2021. It was not just political activists or small-business owners on the wrong side of the ideological fence getting hit.

But while the order is a strong start, its scope makes sense only if you believe banks are the ultimate choke point. They are not. There are thousands of banks and credit unions in the United States, and if one decides to cut you off, you can usually find another willing to take your business. Even for niche or controversial industries, a determined customer can work the phones long enough to land an account somewhere. The process may be frustrating, but it is rarely terminal.

Payment processors are a different animal entirely. Visa and Mastercard are more than dominant; they are the rails on which nearly all card-based transactions run. Lose access to them, and it does not matter how many banks are technically willing to serve you; none can process your payments without going through those networks.

By leaving them outside the reach of the order, the administration has left the real monopolies in place, fully empowered to decide who gets to participate in the economy.

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The Payment Giant That Wants to Be Your Digital ID

As European authorities accelerate efforts to introduce centralized digital identity frameworks, Mastercard is working aggressively to insert itself into the core of this transformation.

The payments giant presents its involvement in the EU’s digital ID agenda as a natural extension of its expertise in secure transactions. Under the branding of “convenience” and “trust” is a much deeper issue: a private corporation with a history of controlling access to commerce is helping to shape how individuals will prove their identity across both public and private life.

Michele Centemero, Mastercard’s Executive Vice President for Services in Europe, has publicly endorsed the European Commission’s ambition to roll out the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet to as many as 80 percent of EU citizens by 2030. “By 2030, the European Commission expects up to 80% of EU citizens could use it for everyday tasks like renting a car, signing a lease or verifying age online,” he said. “At Mastercard, we are working to support this evolution.”

According to Centemero, identity verification should feel as seamless as tapping a card. That framing serves Mastercard well, since it also helps justify why a payment processor should be involved in identity infrastructure at all.

The company’s involvement isn’t superficial. Mastercard holds a central role in two major EU-funded pilot programs: the NOBID project and the WE BUILD Consortium.

Both are focused on testing real-world scenarios where identity verification is built directly into the act of making a payment.

Mastercard’s goal is to link verified attributes such as age, student status, or residency to its transaction systems. The result is a system where every purchase can also double as a form of ID verification.

While Mastercard calls this innovation, it also has been accused of tightening its grip on how people access services. The company has already been accused of a willingness to restrict purchases or services based on opaque internal policies. Giving it a hand in identity verification extends that influence into areas that go well beyond finance.

If your access to goods or services depends not just on having the money to pay, but also on Mastercard’s approval of your identity data, the line between public service and corporate control becomes dangerously hard to find.

Online identity verification is already a source of friction for many users. Mastercard points to the fact that over 40 percent of online fraud in Europe involves identity theft and claims that its participation in digital ID development will reduce both risk and inconvenience. But the promise of greater efficiency often masks the loss of autonomy that comes with centralized, corporate-managed identity systems.

The company is also leveraging its role in shaping international standards. Mastercard is a participant in organizations like the FIDO Alliance and EMVCo and is a founding member of the OpenWallet Foundation.

These bodies influence how identity attributes are secured, shared, and verified globally. Mastercard is not only helping define the technical framework; it is working to ensure that its own infrastructure is embedded within it.

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