Too big to jail

Foreclosure fraud, investor fraud, cheating customers, market manipulation, LIBOR … and now, a $2 billion fine for closing its eyes and covering up as Bernie Madoff literally bilked widows and orphans, along with a lot of other families and charities. Even after highly suspicious facts came to light about the Madoff operation, JPMorgan Chase continued to package and sell Madoff-fed funds to its customers. It failed to report him to the authorities even after concluding that he was engaged in massive fraud.
No wonder JPM tried to block investigators from probing its handling of the Madoff account. According to Newsweek, the Justice Department even shielded the bank from obstruction charges.

“Deferred prosecution agreement” for criminal behavior in this latest settlement, which basically means they won’t be prosecuted as long as they honor the agreement and keep admitting to their own wrongdoing. As the New York Times notes, this kind of arrangement is “nearly unheard-of for a giant American bank,” is “typically employed only when misconduct is extreme,” and “underscores the magnitude of the case against JPMorgan.”

All in all, JPMorgan Chase has paid $20 billion in fines in the last year alone. But none of these fines were personally charged to the executives who committed the crimes. Instead, they were paid by shareholders. What’s more, most of these fines are tax-deductible.

A few weeks ago JPM paid $13 billion to settle well-documented charges of massive and widespread foreclosure fraud. Although that was the largest fine paid by a corporation in American history, there’s a compelling argument that it should have been larger – as much as 22 times larger.

JPM paid $296.9 million for lying to investors about the payment status – and hence, the investment quality – of its mortgage-backed securities.

JPM paid more than a third of a billion dollars to settle charges that it bilked customers by charging them for credit monitoring services it never provided.

JPM agreed to pay between $1.8 billion and $4.5 billion, depending on how you tally the cost, for illegally foreclosing on American families and throwing them out of their homes.

JPM paid another $56 million for cheating active-duty service members and their families, and for illegally foreclosing on them as well.

JPM paid $228 million for rigging the bidding for 93 municipal bond transactions in 31 states. (You know those cities that supposedly can’t honor their pension agreements with retired workers? That’s the kind of client they cheated here.)

JPM paid $410 million to settle charges related to its rigging of electricity prices, which is what Enron did.

JPM has paid multiple fines and settlements over the “London whale” case, in which traders sought to manipulate market prices, engaged in unlawful “reckless conduct” (while CEO Dimon bragged about the bank’s risk management and “fortress balance sheet”), then unlawfully concealed their behavior. There is no evidence that any investigation sought to determine how high the cover-up went. We do know that Dimon told investors the case was “a tempest in a teapot” after privately being told that losses were running in the billions.

JPM paid $1.2 billion for colluding with credit card companies and other institutions to rig merchants’ credit prices.

JPM has paid two major fines for illegally investing with customers’ money.

Taken from here