[JURIST] A judge for the
US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] approved a deal on Wednesday between the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York [official website] and JPMorgan Chase [corporate website] to settle the criminal charges of failure to report suspicions about Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The prosecution entered [JURIST report] a deferred prosecution agreement [text, PDF] on Tuesday in exchange for the bank paying $1.7 billion, the largest amount paid by a US bank for a Bank Secrecy Act [US Department of Treasury backgrounder] violation, to the US government. Judge Kevin Castel said [AP report] there was nothing about the agreement that would “require judicial intervention to protect the integrity of the process.” Castel set a date in January 2016 for the government to report to the court on JP Morgan’s compliance with the agreement.

Legal action continues from the fallout of the 2008 Madoff Ponzi scheme [JURIST news archive], which defrauded investors of approximately $65 billion. Madoff held the majority of his firm’s assets in accounts at JP Morgan and it is unlikely the deferred prosecution agreement will mark the end of the the bank’s legal involvement in the case. The US Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a conference [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] on Friday to discuss a pending petition brought from Irving Picard, the court appointed trustee in charge of the Madoff Recovery Initiative [trustee website], against JPMorgan. In September a judge for the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York ruled [JURIST report] that victims can only recover the principal amount invested without accounting for inflation over the past five years and excluding interest. Last April a judge for the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected a suit [JURIST report] by victims against the US Securities and Exchange Commission.