Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s firm, said he filed a revised lawsuit yesterday against JPMorgan Chase, demanding a minimum of $19 billion in damages.
Picard had sought $5.4 billion in damages previously, in addition to $1 billion in transfers and claims. The filing couldn’t immediately be confirmed in court records.
JPMorgan “was an active enabler of the Madoff Ponzi scheme,” Picard’s lawyer David Sheehan said in a statement. JPMorgan “not only should have known that a fraud was being perpetrated, they did know,” he said.
Picard, who has filed 1,000 suits claiming $90 billion for Madoff investors, first sued JPMorgan in bankruptcy court in December, alleg ing it ignored signs of fraud as billions of dollars flowed from Madoff’s ac count at the bank to in vestors. JPMorgan was Madoff’s primary banker.
The lawsuit sought $1 billion in fees and transfers and $5.4 billion in damages, alleging that JPMorgan defrauded federal regulators and violated banking law.
JPMorgan’s bankers “could see that money customers deposited into BLMIS’s main account was not used to buy or sell securities,” said Deborah Renner, another of Picard’s lawyers, referring to Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Madoff, 73, is serving a 150-year sentence in a North Carolina federal prison.