Former JPMorgan banker Chirayu Rana.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images, Bregal Sagemount
Banking giant JPMorgan has been home to many of Wall Street’s biggest scandals over the past 20 years, which include but are absolutely not limited to: its decision to keep to itself its suspicions about what Bernie Madoff was doing; its “whale”-size $6 billion trading loss; its longtime financial enabling of Jeffrey Epstein; those toxic mortgage-backed securities it sold to investors (hello, $13 billion settlement); its “robo-signing” of foreclosure notices; its precious-metals spoofing scam; and the “Sons and Daughters” hiring program that prosecutors deemed “nothing more than bribery by another name.”
Again, this list is not comprehensive and doesn’t even include the time CEO Jamie Dimon declared during a town hall, “I don’t care how many people sign that fucking petition” for a hybrid working model, later adding, “And don’t give me this shit that work-from-home Friday works. I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.”
Which is all to say the bank is familiar with controversy and unflattering press. Yet JPMorgan has never grappled with a former employee accusing a high-ranking female executive of making him her “sex slave,” a scandal that has provided fodder for viral memes and AI fakes while driving New York Post headlines and the rumor mill at 270 Park Avenue. According to The Wall Street Journal, from the moment the allegations went public, it “seemed like everyone” was talking about 35-year-old banker Chirayu Rana. At the bank’s headquarters, teams “swapped memes and traded stories of working with him,” while colleagues were “shocked to hear” Lorna Hajdini, an executive director on his team, had been the one accused of sexual assault. AI-generated images of Rana and Hajdini on dates and at the office have circulated on social media and presumably been shared in group chats.
Rana claimed in a lawsuit initially filed on April 27 that Hajdini began making advances toward him about two months after he joined the firm and subsequently demanded sex from him, threatened his job, taunted him with sexually explicit and racist comments, and drugged him. (The lawsuit was filed under the pseudonym John Doe; people familiar with the matter have identified the plaintiff as Rana.) According to the suit, Hajdini told Rana, “If you don’t fuck me soon, I’m going to ruin you … Never forget, I fucking own you. If you don’t fuck my brains out tonight, I’m going to sabotage your promotion.” (Rana refiled an amended lawsuit last week.)
Hajdini’s lawyers have said via a JPMorgan spokesman that she “continues to categorically deny the allegations,” adding, “She never dated this individual, never had a sexual or romantic encounter with him of any kind and never gave him any drugs. She maintains that his false claims are entirely fabricated and tarnishing her reputation.” JPMorgan, which is also named in the lawsuit, has said the bank investigated the allegations and believes they “have no merit.”
How this made-for-tabloid saga will ultimately rate within the JPMorgan scandal universe is unclear and probably depends on who is found to be telling the truth. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May 26, but in the meantime, more facts in the ordeal are coming to light. The Journal has produced one of the first deep dives on the accuser, providing fresh details on the unfolding scandal and the man at the center of it.
Former soccer teammates of Rana, who played for Rutgers University–Newark, remember him “as a good, reliable player, but said he could sometimes be aggressive during practice, getting into disagreements with other seniors on the team for excessive tackling or jostling with teammates for control of the ball,” according to the Journal. Others recalled him as “driven and ambitious” with an “intense work ethic.”
After college, Rana worked for a number of financial firms, including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Carlyle Group, and an affiliate of Apollo Global Management. Later, at a consultancy called CrossBoundary, he reportedly “yelled at co-workers after they tried to offer constructive criticism about his performance,” according to people familiar with the matter, after which, per the Journal, he “transitioned out of the company … in part because of his demeanor in the workplace.” (Rana’s attorney told the Journal, “We categorically reject these claims as false and another attempt to smear my client in the press.”) He landed at JPMorgan in March 2024 where, according to people familiar with the situation, Rana “showed a willingness to tell colleagues that they were making mistakes and their work wasn’t up to standard.”
In May 2025, Rana filed an internal complaint alleging sexual assault and harassment based on race (Rana is the son of Nepalese immigrants), asking JPMorgan to settle for some $22 million. He was placed on temporary paid leave and later offered $1 million. In a statement, a spokesman for JPMorgan said of the offer, “We did try to reach an agreement to avoid the time and expense of litigation and to support an employee who was being threatened with the very reputational harm now unfolding. We continue to believe these allegations have no merit, and new information raised as a result of the public filing only reinforces that conclusion.” Rana’s attorney countered, “In my 30-plus-year career as an employment litigator I have never had an employer defendant make such a substantial offer if they truly believed the allegations to ‘have no merit.’”
According to the Journal, Rana stopped coming into the office toward the end of 2024, telling the company his father had died, despite his biological father being alive; Hajdini and the rest of the team reportedly sent flowers. (Rana’s lawyer told the outlet his client had been referring to a “dadlike figure” who had helped raise him, not his actual father.)
It’s 2026, so obviously people are making bets about all this. As of Monday, the likelihood of Rana himself being sued stood at 70 percent with $161,797 in trading volume. A bet of Rana issuing a public apology stood at just 5 percent.
