Ex-AML Officer Claims Deutsche Fired Her After She Flagged Epstein Transactions

A former compliance officer for Deutsche Securities alleged in an interview with the FBI seven years ago that she was marginalized, then fired, after raising concerns over transactions involving the now-late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago.

According to a 7-page affidavit unsealed Friday along with millions of pages of other records from the U.S. case against Epstein, the former employee, Tammy Hill-McFadden, told federal investigators in Jacksonville, Florida, in July 2019 that "she faced regular pressure to expedite know-your-customer reviews" when managing KYC for Deutsche Securities from 2010 to 2014.

After Deutsche Securities outsourced her position to India in 2014, Hill-McFadden became an anti-money laundering compliance officer, running online searches on clients and examining their accounts if their transactions raised an alert. Upon completing the reviews, she would advise her manager whether to file an "internal SAR [suspicious activity report]" up the chain.

As AML compliance officer, Hill-McFadden said she raised concerns to her manager, Sheri Quigley, over Epstein in 2015, seven years after he admitted soliciting prostitution and procuring a child for prostitution, upon learning that he possibly "sent wires to young women, perhaps in their twenties," and to "a woman in France who owned an art gallery."

"The entire Jacksonville, FL team wanted to terminate the relationship with Epstein," Hill-McFadden told investigators. "Quigley replied [to Hill-McFadden] that Epstein served his time, and the accounts were not closed at that time."

She became an anti-financial crime compliance officer for Deutsche Securities in April 2017, her last role at the company. 

After losing her job at Deutsche Securities, Hill-McFadden, who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against a previous employer, Bank of America, in 2006, submitted complaints with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Securities and Exchange Commission and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

She did not file a lawsuit directly against Deutsche Securities.

Hill-McFadden also told investigators an internal SAR was filed "in or around late 2016" on Epstein's lawyer, Darin McInke, and that she had learned of this development "because the Federal Reserve was in the bank at the time with Quigley."

The affidavit also appears to shed light on transactions linked to President Donald Trump's "old post office portfolio cases," and cryptocurrency-denominated payments involving Real Contrad, a limited liability company owned by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"Since the Deutsche systems did not talk to each other, she was unable to determine a sound origin of the funds [for the Trump-related transactions]," the document reads. "The funds were being pulled from one spot and moved to another for payments."

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