The most well-known banker in America, John Pierpont Morgan, detested publicity so much that he would strike street photographers with his umbrella.
Therefore, it is hardly worth considering what the esteemed Edwardian financier would think of the current crisis involving the financial behemoth bearing his name.
The largest bank in America, JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), which has been around for more than 200 years, has been rocked by a shocking lawsuit alleging that a female executive at its New York headquarters used a male employee as a “sex slave.”
The petition accuses 37-year-old Lorna Hajdini, an executive director in JPMC’s Leveraged Finance branch, of forcing a junior banker into “non-consensual and humiliating sex acts” over a period of months in spite of his requests that she cease.
According to her accuser, she acknowledged that she had routinely given him Viagra and the date rape drug Rohypnol, and that she had once reprimanded him when he sobbed while she forced him to perform a sex act on him.
In the court documents, he said that Ms Hajdini, who he says also subjected him to racist comments, threatened to destroy his career if he turned down her advances, which once included showing up at his flat and demanding sex.
Because he and his family had received threats, the plaintiff filed the action anonymously. However, multiple bank sources and the New York Post have now identified him as 35-year-old Chirayu Rana, who was employed at a New York private equity firm until last month.
Rana’s lawsuit, which is 46 pages long and contains obscene language, filthy conversation, and graphic depictions of sex acts he claims he was subjected to, reads like a screenplay.
Executive director Lorna Hajdini of JPMorgan Chase’s leveraged finance division is charged with forcing a junior banker to engage in “non-consensual and humiliating sex acts.”
It has a strong resemblance to the sensual BBC/HBO series Industry, which is set in a contemporary London investment bank and where completing multibillion-pound deals is just as much a part of the job description as engaging in highly charged sexual trysts.
And this could help to explain why the JPMorgan scandal—glamorous and wealthy high-flying executives reportedly engaging in bad behavior—has captivated the public’s attention on social media and gone viral with startling speed.
Daniel Kaiser, Rana’s attorney, claims that Rana has been diagnosed with PTSD. In addition to punitive penalties and modifications to the bank’s procedures, he is requesting compensation for lost wages, mental suffering, and reputational damage.
The Daily Mail revealed the story on Wednesday. The complaint was first filed in the New York State Supreme Court on Monday. Over 60 million people have read the original report on X since then.
Ms Hajdini has strongly rejected any misconduct in a statement released through her attorneys.
According to her attorney, “she never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with this individual of any kind and has never even visited the location where the alleged sexual assault supposedly took place.”
Additionally, JPMC is accused in the lawsuit of permitting the alleged abuse and taking revenge on the banker for reporting it.
In his case, Rana alleges that although Ms. Hajdini and others went unpunished, the bank put him on involuntary leave, damaged his reputation, and continued to threaten him. JPMC vehemently disputes every allegation made against them.
In May 2025, Rana filed an internal complaint, claiming that he had been subjected to racial and gender-based harassment and power abuse. He also claimed that he had attempted to negotiate a “million-dollar” payout to quit the company.
Rana’s accusations have come under increasing scrutiny in the days after the discovery, especially after his complaint was returned late last Wednesday.
His attorneys claim that the court clerk ordered this due to a procedural problem with the submission. But after the media frenzy, there were rumours that Rana might have made the decision to back down. When he refiled, that turned out not to be the case.
Chirayu Rana claims that Ms. Hajdini reprimanded him when he sobbed while she forced him to perform a sex act.
Although Ms. Hajdini was senior to Rana in the organisational hierarchy, it has also been asserted by purported bank insiders that they were merely coworkers on the same team rather than Ms. Hajdini’s boss as claimed in the complaint.
This runs counter to one of the particular allegations in the initial case, which stated that if he didn’t comply with her sexual demands, she would prevent his promotion and yearly bonus.
“We don’t believe there’s any merit to these claims,” a bank representative told the Daily Mail after an internal review turned up no evidence to back up Rana’s assertions in the complaint.
“The complainant refused to participate and has declined to provide facts that would be central to supporting his allegations, despite the fact that many employees cooperated with the investigation.”
A number of coworkers have jumped to Ms. Hajdini’s support.
One person stated, “He has tarnished her with a complete fabrication.”
Others claim that the case reads like a work of fiction because it is, in fact, a fantasy in the vein of Fifty Shades of Grey.
But the purported victim is unwavering. Rana’s attorney maintains that his client was subjected to “horrific sexual abuse,” and as such, he has the right to make anonymous charges.
“I look forward to discovery and, in particular, her deposition regarding Ms. Hajdini’s predictable denials,” Kaiser stated. “We will demonstrate that the abuse took place.”
He informed the Daily Mail that the case was returned to his office for amendment last Thursday after being withdrawn from court records due to improper submission.
It was refiled with two sworn witness testimonies on Monday. Although the witnesses’ names have been disclosed to the parties involved in the case, Rana claims that they have been censored for their personal safety.
In their statement, one putative witness said that they were staying at a flat with Rana in September 2024 when a woman who was “clearly intoxicated and speaking loudly” woke them up in the middle of the night. According to the statement, Rana subsequently recognised the woman as Ms. Hajdini.
Mr. Rana, who is seen with his parents, filed the complaint anonymously, claiming that he and his family had received threats. However, the New York Post and several bank sources have since named him.
The witness wrote, “A short while later, Ms. Hajdini, who was completely naked, awakened me.” Ms. Hajdini lighted a cigarette while seated on the couch. Then she invited me to “join them” in the bedroom. No, I told her. “Come join, come join,” she exclaimed. I told her no once more.
According to the witness, Ms. Hajdini then remarked, “You know, I own [Rana], so you’d better come join.”
The complaint states that after they refused once more, Ms. Hajdini went back to the bedroom and shut the door.
The witness claimed to have heard arguments from within, with Rana “loudly pleading” with Ms. Hajdini “to stop, and to leave.”
It fell silent. Subsequently, [Ms. Hajdini] emerged from the bedroom and departed the flat,” the witness stated in the document.
According to the second purported witness, Rana told him in the middle of 2024 that a woman in the workplace was “making his life hell.” Later, he witnessed Ms. Hajdini squeezing and kissing Rana’s neck, and he seemed uneasy.
Additional additional evidence include a letter from his counsellor attesting to his PTSD treatment and an affidavit in which Rana claims he was diagnosed with PTSD in October 2025, which he connects to the alleged attacks.
Ms. Hajdini’s lawyers have not replied to the Daily Mail’s approach, and JPMC declined to comment on the most recent filings.
Ms. Hajdini is of Albanian descent and is from White Plains, a wealthy Westchester County neighbourhood of New York. She attended Harvard Business School’s Private Equity and Venture Capital program after graduating from the esteemed Stern School of Business in New York.
The banker currently resides in a high-rise apartment complex in Midtown Manhattan. He is single and doesn’t seem to have kids. She volunteers for the nonprofit organization Minds Matter, which assists impoverished students in attending college, and she is a wine enthusiast.
Rana, a standout football player in high school, was raised in Vienna, Virginia, a rich suburb of Washington, DC. He received his education and played basketball at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He was once married, though it’s unknown if he is still married. He has a flat in the Midtown Manhattan area of Kips Bay.
In New York, JPMorgan Chase vehemently disputes every allegation made against it. Rana said that his team had a racist and anti-Asian culture.
His attorney, Kaiser, told the Daily Mail that he was not permitted to talk about his client’s private life and that the alleged abuse he claims to have experienced at JPMC has “destroyed” him both personally and professionally.
Prior to joining the bank in 2024, Rana worked for a number of Wall Street’s most prominent financial firms, such as Houlihan Lokey, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and The Carlyle Group, but she rarely stayed for more than two years.
He joined Bregal Sagemount, a company that manages billions of dollars, after leaving JPMC in late 2025. However, he quit in April, three weeks prior to bringing the case against Ms. Hajdini.
His motives for leaving were not immediately apparent. According to a Sagemount representative, Rana began working there in October of last year, but as of April 2, she was “no longer an employee.”
His employment status and present location are unknown. Last Friday, The Daily Mail paid a visit to his family’s $1.75 million (£1.29 million) Virginia house. Rana doesn’t reside there and doesn’t often return, according to a member of his family who opened the door.
The Daily Mail was informed by Rana’s former coworkers at JPMorgan that they were taken aback by the accusations he made against Ms. Hajdini, who is supposedly well-liked at the bank.
One employee compared Rana’s claims to “fan fiction” and said they were made up after a breakdown in working relationships.
Due to the public scrutiny Ms. Hajdini has been under and the possible harm to her reputation, two other individuals questioned the lawsuit’s allegations and offered sympathy for her.
In the late spring and early summer of 2025, Rana’s time at JPMorgan seemed to be coming to an end.
According to his lawsuit, he submitted an internal complaint of harassment and discrimination in May of last year, accusing Ms. Hajdini of gender-based and racial discrimination as well as a pattern of severe sexual assault.
According to his lawsuit, Rana, who identifies as Asian, described a racist and anti-Asian culture on his JPMorgan team.
According to his lawsuit, he was reprimanded by a superior in June of last year for giving feedback to a less experienced female employee (not Ms. Hajdini) about her “failure to meet an important deadline and expressed his expectation for equitable treatment regardless of his ethnicity.”
According to his lawsuit, he was put on involuntary administrative leave the next day and left the firm more than three months later.
Due to the public scrutiny Ms. Hajdini has been subjected to and the possible harm to her reputation, sources have questioned the lawsuit’s allegations and voiced sympathy for her.
In order to resolve his abuse and discrimination claims, Kaiser told the Daily Mail that his client spent months negotiating an out-of-court deal with the bank, but the latter “repeatedly postponed and prolonged settlement and mediation discussions.”
After “a great deal of emotional and personal perseverance,” he decided to initiate the lawsuit against Ms. Hajdini and JMPC, according to his attorney. Meanwhile, a JPMC spokesperson stated that a comprehensive internal inquiry found no proof of harassment or abuse by Ms. Hajdini or any other employee mentioned in his initial complaint.
A ten-month-old post on the legal advice website Ask A Lawyer has subsequently surfaced online. It purports to show Chirayu Rana asking an AI chatbot for assistance on how to file a lawsuit against a Morgan Stanley supervisor.
Numerous similar accusations made by Rana against Ms. Hajdini and JPMC seem to be detailed in the post.
The post’s author claims that they were “retaliated against for seeking to move groups internally at the firm” after making the accusations.
They go on: “HR carried out a “investigation,” but in the end, they forced me to sign a Separation Agreement,” noting that they did so under “duress.”
It’s unclear if the Chirayu Rana on the list is the same one who has accused Ms. Hajdini of abuse. A request for comment on the situation has not been answered by his attorney.
The lawsuit claims that Ms. Hajdini’s alleged abuse began nearly immediately after the two started working together in the spring of 2024.
According to the lawsuit, Rana joined the team in March as a Senior Vice President/Director, and the following month, Ms. Hajdini was assigned to a senior capacity, serving as his “supervisor.”
According to Rana’s complaint, the harassment began in May 2024 when Ms. Hajdini dropped her pen on the floor beside his desk and squeezed his calf and rubbed his leg while kneeling to pick it up.
Then, he says, she said, “Oh, you did play basketball in college?” She allegedly made an offensive comment regarding how basketball players affected her after saying, “I love basketball players.”
She allegedly continued to threaten to ruin his career if he didn’t cooperate, and the alleged sexual approaches became more frequent and explicit. He claims in his lawsuit that he occasionally tried to comply but was physically unable to do so, which led to additional insults from his abuser.
Rana says he turned down Ms. Hajdini’s invitation to get out for drinks later in May. She allegedly replied, “If you don’t f*** me soon, I’m going to ruin you. Never forget, I f****** own you.”
He claims that Ms. Hajdini approached him twice for oral sex in the workplace, once asking, “Birthday BJ for the brown boy? My young brown boy.
According to his claim, she threatened to make sure he was never promoted to executive director if he rejected her advances.
She allegedly told him, “You’re going to have to earn it, my little Arab boy toy,” during a social gathering for bank employees where she is accused of touching him beneath a table.
Many observers have undoubtedly questioned the lawsuit’s legitimacy. First of all, despite having a large number of direct quotes, none of them are found in any of the emails or texts that are frequently used in these situations as proof of the allegations. Rather, the evidence is dependent on the plaintiff’s recollections.
Then there is the language, which is so nasty and sexual that, as some have conjectured online, it reads more like the work of an AI chatbot than a 37-year-old female banker. This includes both the sex talk and the racial slurs. Or maybe like a man who’s seen too many adult films, according to some internet commentators.
Would a senior finance executive at one of the most prominent institutions in the world remark anything like, “I bet your little Asian, fish head, wife doesn’t have these cannons,” as she flashed her breasts?
Many internet users obviously found that assertion unexpected, despite the lawsuit’s insistence that she did and many more vile remarks, frequently concerning oral sex.
In his case, Rana also alleges that he experienced racial discrimination at the bank and harsh racist abuse from white guys on his team.
Additionally, he is suing his former company for defaming him by telling other finance organisations that were considering hiring him that he was “lazy,” “incompetent,” “introvert,” unfaithful to his “domestic partner,” and a frequent drinker. He claims in his lawsuit that the bank said he had been “fired,” which was once more untrue.
It’s possible that Rana suffered a terrible injustice at the hands of a vicious and predatory boss, as he describes in such great detail. The court will make this decision.
The system of “litigation privilege,” which permits plaintiffs to make almost any claims in a lawsuit and is legally shielded from being countersued for defamation and other claims for statements in the filings, is another horrible injustice that some people wonder if there is an alternative explanation.
Sexual harassment attorney Megan Thomas of the United States told the Daily Mail: “A lawsuit becomes part of the public record when it is filed publicly.” This implies that the statements themselves may still be available even if they turn out to be untrue.
“For individuals named in a lawsuit, the permanent public record can have lasting and dire consequences for their reputation and future employment,” she continued.
“Everyone I know believes there’s no way this is true,” a JPMorgan source told the Daily Mail this week. I only hope that [Ms. Hajdini] can recover from this and that it won’t have any further negative effects on her life or career.
