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A federal judge approved a $72.5 million settlement Thursday between Bank of America and roughly 60 women who say the bank helped enable Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

Getting into it: The settlement was signed off by Judge Jed Rakoff at an hour-long conference in Manhattan federal court. It applies to any woman Epstein or the people working alongside him victimized between June 2008 and July 2019.

“No amount of money can ever fully compensate Epstein’s victims for the harm they’ve suffered,” Rakoff said. “There are cases, including very much this one, where that hasn’t just been talk, it’s reality. It is thanks to plaintiffs’ counsel that a substantial number of Epstein’s victims are receiving substantial amounts of money and that some at least modest justice is thereby being accommodated.”

The suit, filed last October, alleged the bank sat on “a plethora” of evidence about what Epstein was doing to the girls and young women he targeted and kept him as a client anyway. Law enforcement, by the plaintiffs’ account, should have heard from Bank of America years earlier. The first suspicious activity reports came only after Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial. Senate Finance Committee data released last year puts the flagged sums moving between Epstein and billionaire Leon Black at more than $170 million.

Black left the top job at Apollo Global Management after a firm-ordered review put the total he paid Epstein for estate planning at $158 million. He has called the relationship “a horrible mistake” and has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

In a statement, Bank of America said, “While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs.” The bank had tried to get the case tossed, arguing it was an attempt to “radically expand liability for banks” that provide “routine services to customers who at the time had no known connection to Epstein’s sex trafficking.”

This is the third bank to settle with Epstein’s victims. JPMorgan Chase paid $290 million to at least 100 victims in June 2023, and Deutsche Bank paid $75 million the same year. Neither admitted wrongdoing either.