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The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

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Bigun:
The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking

By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.

"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"

Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing.

Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations.

Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview."

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

Much much more at : http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-9-billion-witness-20141106

Bigun:
A VERY long read but well worth the time invested! It is an excellent primer on WHY big money is invested in politics!

"The ordinary citizen who is the target of a government investigation cannot pick up the phone, call the prosecutor and have his case dropped. But Dimon did just that."

xfreeper:
American citizens: Hey AG, why haven't people been charged with securities fraud in this massive crime?

AG to American citizens: Kiss my ass

Bigun:

--- Quote from: xfreeper on November 08, 2014, 05:45:06 pm ---American citizens: Hey AG, why haven't people been charged with securities fraud in this massive crime?

AG to American citizens: Kiss my ass

--- End quote ---

This story needs to be spread across this land as widely as possible by every means at our disposal!

truth_seeker:
What was GOP Chris Cox, Chairman of the SEC doing, from 2005 to 2009?

Letting the crooks issue worthless securities, that's what.

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