TRASHED

JPMorgan ‘Accidentally’ Deleted 47 Million Records, Including Subpoenaed Docs: SEC

The bank will pay a $4 million fine after the permanent mass deletion, which will have an “unknowable” impact on a dozen separate investigations.

JPMorgan Chase will pay a $4 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations its broker-dealer unit mistakenly deleted roughly 47 million communications, including emails and text messages sought by regulators in a dozen separate investigations. The cache of electronic records were dated from January 2018 to April 2018, and were permanently deleted in June 2019 by an outside vendor contracted to help manage the bank’s email backlog by its corporate compliance technology department, according to the SEC. Many of the emails were “business records required to be retained” by law, the agency said in a settlement order, and some of them were being sought by subpoena. “Because the deleted records are unrecoverable, it is unknown–and unknowable–how the lost records may have affected the regulatory investigations,” the order read. JPMorgan did not admit or deny wrongdoing in the civil settlement.