Courtesy of Pam Martens
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Testifying Before Congress
On April 19, 2018, JPMorgan Chase announced it would be opening “up to 70 new branches and hiring up to 700 new employees” in northern Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland.” In the same announcement, the bank said it currently had “5,130 branches in 23 U.S. states and plans to open up to 400 new branches…”
At the time of that announcement, the bank was under a deferred criminal prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department and on probation – a probation which continues to this day.
Being prosecuted multiple times for felonies by the Justice Department does not appear to have clipped the wings of JPMorgan’s expansion plans under the Trump administration. According to current data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, JPMorgan Chase’s domestic bank branches have already grown by 8 branches to a total of 5,138 since the end of 2017.
In October of last year, Bloomberg News reporter Michelle Davis broke the story that JPMorgan Chase had secretly been under a Federal leash that prevented it from expanding. Davis wrote: “…Obama administration regulators prevented the bank from opening branches in new states as punishment for violating banking rules, according to people familiar with the matter. JPMorgan’s ambitious plan to expand nationally, announced earlier this year, was made possible by the Trump administration’s rollback of those restraints….”
Under the unwatchful eye of Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the Wall Street bank has received an unprecedented three felony counts in the past five years, to which it pleaded guilty. That’s three felonies more than the bank pleaded guilty to in its prior 100 years of existence.
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