Madoff Trustee Demands $19 Billion in Damages From JPMorgan in New Lawsuit

Bloomberg reports:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. should pay a minimum of $19 billion in damages for its role in Bernard Madoff’s fraud, Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating the con man’s firm, said in a revised lawsuit.
The sum represents Picard’s latest estimate of principal lost by all Madoff investors by the time the Ponzi scheme collapsed in December 2008, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. JPMorgan, Madoff’s primary banker, could have stopped the fraud if it had passed on its suspicions to regulators, he said in his suit.
Picard previously sought $5.4 billion in damages, plus $1 billion in transfers and fees from the second-biggest U.S. bank.
JPMorgan “was an active enabler of the Madoff Ponzi scheme,” Picard’s lawyer, David Sheehan, said in a statement. JPMorgan “not only should have known that a fraud was being perpetrated, they did know,” he said.

Couldn't happen to a nicer TARP institution.