Business

Madoff trustee Picard sues JP Morgan Chase

Irving Picard, the trustee for the liquidation for Bernard Madoff Investment Securities LLC, said Thursday he is suing Madoff’s primary banker JP Morgan Chase & Co. for “enabling massive fraud.”

Picard is seeking to recover about $1 billion in fees and profits and an additional $5.4 billion in damages from JP Morgan Chase.

“JP Morgan was willfully blind to the fraud, even after learning about numerous red flags surrounding Madoff,” David Sheehan, a lawyer for the trustee, said in a statement.

JP Morgan Chase Bank, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities Ltd. have also been named in the suit. The lawsuit alleges that JP Morgan Chase had suspicions about Madoff’s operations but instead of acting on its concerns, “it simply continued to collect fees and profit from the fraud.”

In a statement, JP Morgan Chase said the accusations were “utterly baseless and demonstrably false.”

To read more, go to MarketWatch.com.