JPMorgan Chase

Reasons to avoid

1. JPMorgan Chase has committed over $430 billion to fossil fuel companies since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, making it the single largest financier of oil, gas, and coal on the planet. In 2024 alone the bank channeled another $53.5 billion into fossil fuel expansion.bankingonclimatechaos.org2025-05-01
2. JPMorgan Chase affiliates J.P. Morgan Securities and J.P. Morgan Investment Management were charged by the SEC in five separate enforcement actions covering misleading investor disclosures, breaches of fiduciary duty, and failures to recommend products in customers' best interest rather than the bank's own. The affiliates agreed to pay more than $151 million in combined civil penalties and voluntary payments to resolve the actions without admitting or denying wrongdoing.sec.gov2024-10-31
3. JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million to settle claims brought by more than 100 of Jeffrey Epstein's sex-trafficking victims, who alleged the bank provided crucial financial infrastructure for his abuse. A federal judge found that JPMorgan knowingly kept Epstein as a client for over 15 years despite receiving documented evidence of his crimes during that time.npr.org2023-06-12
4. A ProPublica investigation revealed that JPMorgan Chase wrongly charged overdraft fees to roughly 170,000 customers because of a software glitch, billing people who had ended the day with a positive balance. Federal regulators looked into it and chose not to penalize the bank, sending only a private letter rather than taking any public enforcement action.propublica.org2020-12-14
5. JPMorgan Chase's precious metals trading desk carried out a decade-long scheme in which traders placed and then quickly canceled fake orders in gold, silver, and other commodity markets tens of thousands of times in order to manipulate prices. The bank entered a deferred prosecution agreement and paid $920 million in fines to resolve the case with the DOJ and CFTC.cftc.gov2020-09-29
6. JPMorgan Chase paid $55 million to settle a Department of Justice lawsuit finding that Black and Hispanic mortgage borrowers were charged on average $1,000 more in fees than comparable white borrowers over a three-year period. The discriminatory pricing affected roughly 50,000 minority customers and was carried out by loan officers who were given financial incentives tied to the fees they collected.justice.gov2017-01-18
7. JPMorgan Chase paid a record $13 billion settlement after the Department of Justice found the bank had knowingly packaged and sold toxic mortgage-backed securities to investors in the years before the 2008 financial crisis. The misrepresentation caused massive losses for pension funds and ordinary investors who had no idea the underlying loans were that risky.justice.gov2014-02-04
8. JPMorgan Chase admitted to violating the Bank Secrecy Act and paid $461 million to FinCEN after it failed to report its own suspicions about Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to U.S. authorities, even after tipping off British regulators. Before reporting anything, the bank quietly pulled $275 million of its own money out of Madoff feeder funds, protecting itself while leaving ordinary investors exposed.fincen.gov2014-01-07