Bank of America Settles With Epstein Survivors. Leon Black Never Had to Answer a Single Question.

On March 16, 2026, Bank of America agreed in principle to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation. The settlement, whose terms have not been disclosed, effectively ended any chance that Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black would sit for a deposition about the $170 million he transferred to Epstein through BofA accounts between 2012 and 2017.

Black's deposition had been scheduled for eight hours. His lawyer, Michael Carlinsky, persuaded the presiding judge on March 11 that settlement talks were imminent, and the deposition was pushed back. Five days later, the bank announced it had reached a deal. Black never had to answer a single question under oath.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is overseeing the case. A formal agreement is expected to be filed by March 27, with a hearing set for April 2.

Three Banks, One Pattern

Bank of America is the third major financial institution to settle with Epstein survivors. JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million in 2023. Deutsche Bank paid $75 million the same year. Together, the three settlements represent at least $365 million in payouts, and that figure will grow once BofA's number is made public.

Each bank followed the same arc. Each maintained Epstein as a client after his 2008 conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution in Florida. Each processed large, unusual transactions that their own compliance teams flagged or should have flagged. And each settled only after survivors' attorneys got close to deposing individuals whose testimony might have revealed exactly how much the banks knew and when they knew it.

The BofA lawsuit was filed in October 2025 by a lead plaintiff identified as Jane Doe, a woman living in Russia when she met Epstein in 2011. According to the complaint, Epstein sexually abused her on at least 100 occasions through 2019, the year he died in a federal jail cell in Manhattan.

The $170 Million Question

The central figure in the BofA case was not the bank itself but Leon Black, a client whose financial relationship with Epstein dwarfs that of any other known associate.

Between 2012 and 2017, Black transferred approximately $170 million to two Epstein-controlled entities in the U.S. Virgin Islands: Southern Trust Company and Financial Trust Company. The payments averaged roughly $8 million per wire transfer and were described as compensation for "tax and estate planning advice."

That $170 million figure was identified by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee in March 2025, exceeding the $158 million found by an earlier review that Apollo's board had commissioned from the law firm Dechert LLP. The Dechert review concluded that Epstein's advice generated more than $1 billion in value for Black, but it did not examine whether the payments constituted taxable gifts rather than deductible business expenses. The IRS has not publicly commented on the matter.

Black stepped down as Apollo's chairman in 2021 after the firm's internal review was released. He remains a significant shareholder. In 2023, Black settled with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $62.5 million in exchange for immunity from further civil claims by the territory.

Across the Epstein Exposed database, Black appears in 13,677 documents released by the Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act of 2025. Those documents include direct email correspondence with Epstein about personal finances, references to Black in Harvard fundraising chains, and financial records tracing the wire transfers through BofA and onward to Epstein's shell companies.

One email chain shows Joi Ito, the former MIT Media Lab director who resigned over his own Epstein ties, referencing "Leon Black money" in connection with a $25,000 foundation gift that was bounced between MIT and Arizona State University. Another document shows Epstein forwarding a New York Daily News article to Black about Donald Trump. These are not the communications of a man who kept his financial advisor at arm's length.

What the Lawsuit Alleged

The complaint against Bank of America accused the institution of ignoring "numerous red flags" in Epstein's financial activity. Specifically, it alleged that the bank assisted Epstein in setting up the financial architecture that allowed his trafficking operation to function, by processing payments that should have triggered enhanced scrutiny under federal anti-money-laundering rules.

The suit drew a direct line between the $170 million in transfers from Black and the bank's failure to investigate their purpose or destination. Attorneys for the survivors, led by Sigrid McCawley, argued that BofA had both the information and the obligation to intervene and chose not to.

McCawley has been involved in Epstein litigation since the earliest civil cases. She represented Virginia Giuffre and has been a persistent voice in pushing for institutional accountability beyond the individual perpetrators.

The Deposition That Didn't Happen

What makes this settlement notable is not just the money. It is the timing.

Leon Black was designated a "critical witness" in the case. His attorneys did not dispute that description. The question was not whether he knew Epstein. The question was what he knew about Epstein's activities, and when, and whether the scale of his payments suggested something beyond financial advice.

Black has consistently denied any knowledge of or participation in Epstein's crimes. He told the Dechert investigators that his relationship with Epstein was strictly professional. But that claim has never been tested under oath in a proceeding where survivors' attorneys controlled the questioning.

It nearly was. The deposition was set. The questions were ready. And then the bank settled.

In a 2023 lawsuit, Black testified briefly in connection with the JPMorgan case, but that deposition was narrow in scope and did not address the full breadth of his financial relationship with Epstein. The BofA case would have been the first time he faced comprehensive questioning about the $170 million, the purpose of the shell companies that received it, and whether he ever witnessed or was told about Epstein's conduct.

That opportunity is now gone.

The Cost of Compliance Failures

The banking industry's collective bill for enabling Epstein now exceeds $365 million, with BofA's share yet to be revealed. But the financial penalties are secondary to what the litigation has exposed about how major institutions operate when a wealthy client presents risk.

Internal documents from the JPMorgan case showed that bank employees raised concerns about Epstein as early as 2006. Those concerns were overruled. At Deutsche Bank, compliance officers flagged suspicious transactions, and those flags were cleared without adequate investigation. The BofA case alleged a similar pattern.

What emerged across all three cases was not a story of rogue employees or isolated failures. It was a systemic pattern in which compliance departments identified problems and senior decision-makers chose not to act on them. The banks weighed the revenue from a wealthy client against the reputational and legal risk of dropping him, and the revenue won.

Epstein died on August 10, 2019, in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. His death ended any possibility of a criminal trial. The civil suits against the banks became one of the few remaining mechanisms for survivors to obtain both accountability and financial compensation.

What Comes Next

The BofA settlement is likely the last major bank case. No other financial institution of comparable size has been publicly identified as maintaining a direct banking relationship with Epstein during the years he was actively trafficking women and girls.

But the $170 million paid by Leon Black continues to cast a long shadow. The Senate Finance Committee's investigation remains open. The documents released by the DOJ contain financial records that researchers and journalists have only begun to examine. And Black himself, despite settling with the U.S. Virgin Islands, has never been deposed in a proceeding designed to ask the hardest questions about what his money was paying for.

A Pattern of Protection

The architecture of Epstein's financial life depended on institutions that chose not to look too closely. JPMorgan maintained his accounts for years after internal warnings. Deutsche Bank onboarded him as a client in 2013, four years after his conviction, and processed transactions that its own compliance team found suspicious. Bank of America processed $170 million in transfers to opaque shell companies in the U.S. Virgin Islands and, according to the lawsuit, asked no meaningful questions about where the money was going or why.

Each bank eventually faced litigation. Each settled. And in each case, the settlement arrived at the moment when the discovery process threatened to expose not just the bank's failures, but the broader network of individuals and institutions that enabled Epstein to operate as a sex trafficker while maintaining the infrastructure of a legitimate financial life.

The survivors in the BofA case came forward knowing that no amount of money would undo what was done to them. What they wanted, as their attorneys said repeatedly in court filings, was answers. They wanted Leon Black under oath. They wanted Bank of America's internal compliance records. They wanted to know who knew what, and when, and what they chose to do about it.

Instead, they got a settlement. The bank paid. The questions went unasked. And the man who sent $170 million to a convicted sex offender through that bank's wires walked away without ever having to explain why.

The survivors asked those questions. The bank paid to make sure they were never answered.