Banker Deaths: JPMorgan Tech Workers Have New Conspiracy Theories; Former Intern Allegedly Commits Suicide
(Left) JPMorgan’s European Headquarters at 25 Bank Street, London Where Technology Executive Gabriel Magee Died on January 27 or January 28, 2014
Since December 2013 there have been a rash of unusual deaths among workers at JPMorgan Chase, including alleged leaps from buildings and two separate alleged murder-suicides in New Jersey. A noteworthy number of the deaths have been among technology workers. With the exception of Julian Knott, who was a high level technology expert for JPMorgan in both London and later at the firm’s high tech Global Network Operations Center in Whippany, New Jersey, all of the individuals were under 40. (See names and incidents below.)
Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas Hughes allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street. According to Hughes’ resume at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), he had previously interned at JPMorgan Chase, as well as held jobs at Citigroup and UBS after graduation from Northwestern University. Hughes was employed at investment bank, Moelis & Company LLC, at the time of his death. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and UBS pleaded guilty to criminal felony charges for conspiring to rig markets the week prior to Hughes’ alleged leap from the building.
The fact that JPMorgan Chase holds an estimated $179 billion in life insurance on its workers, and in some cases, prior workers, whose death benefit pays to the bank not the family of the employee, has raised concerns of more than just trading conspiracies at JPMorgan Chase.
Now, according to Sarah Butcher at EFinancialCareers, at least two executives at JPMorgan have forbidden their technology workers from explaining exactly what they do at the bank on their LinkedIn profiles. One tech worker imagines that it’s a plot to restrict their ability to market their skills to prospective competitors as JPMorgan moves tech workers from the glitter of London to cheaper corporate digs in Bournemouth, England or Glasgow, Scotland. Says one worker, according to Butcher, “We’ve been joking that the plan is to make us technologists invisible in the market and then forcing us to move to Bournemouth or Glasgow.”
JPMorgan Chase could have other reasons for restricting information as to just what its tech workers are up to. There are ongoing lawsuits and investigations across Wall Street into the use of computerized trading to rig markets.
In his annual shareholders’ letter in 2014, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said the firm had “nearly 30,000 programmers, application developers and information technology employees who keep our 7,200 applications, 32 data centers, 58,000 servers, 300,000 desk-tops and global network operating smoothly for all our clients.”
According to Anish Bhimani, Chief Information Risk Officer at JPMorgan Chase, in an interview published at the Information Networking Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon, JPMorgan has “more software developers than Google, and more technologists than Microsoft…we get to build things at scale that have never been done before.”
