The court-appointed trustee for Bernie Madoff’s estate has sued banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. for around $6.4 billion for its alleged role in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the largest fraud in history. According to a statement by Irving Picard, Madoff’s trustee, “The complaint seeks to recover nearly $1 billion in fees and profits and an additional $5.4 billion in damages for [Morgan’s] decades-long role as [Madoff’s] primary banker, aiding and abetting Madoff’s fraud.” Late last month the trustee also sued Swiss bank UBS AG in a similar fashion for around $2 billion. “JP Morgan was willfully blind to the fraud, even after learning about numerous red flags surrounding Madoff,” said David J. Sheehan, counsel for the trustee and a partner at Baker & Hostetler LLP, the court-appointed counsel for the trustee. “While many financial institutions enabled Madoff's fraud, JPMC was at the very center of that fraud, and thoroughly complicit in it.”
