JPMorgan and Tricolor: warehouse agent, underwriter and creditor

analysisAccording to the November 2025 news investigation, JPMorgan entered two years after Tricolor's 2018 Credit Suisse facility, agreeing to provide up to $100 million of warehouse financing and taking the lead in arranging Tricolor's asset-backed bond sales, helping to arrange more than three-quarters of some $2.7 billion of them. The SPV 4 credit agreement of November 13, 2020 made JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. the administrative agent, with a commitment of $100,000,000 in the lender schedule funded through an account of Chariot Funding LLC; Tricolor Funding SPV 4 LLC, the borrower, is not itself a debtor. The noteholders allege that JPMorgan and Barclays ultimately agreed to provide $777 million through SPV 4, with JPMorgan as agent and both banks as lenders, active until September 2025, and that the facility grew from $379 million to $693 million in the months before February 2024; those figures are allegations, and the indictment's "about $770 million" SPV4 facility names no lenders. ^{1 2 3 4 5}

analysisAs agent, JPMorgan says the SPV 4 lenders hold a first-priority lien on the auto loans SPV 4 bought, the financed vehicles, the files, all customer payments and the collection accounts, and under the credit agreement it also holds a lien on Tricolor Auto Acceptance's master collection account at Wells Fargo. In an October 2025 filing it described Tricolor's three categories of financing to the bankruptcy court, citing the September 18, 2025 hearing, and said that it now appeared that many of the auto loans sold to the SPVs, including SPV 4, might be double-pledged or even fictitious, although the extent remained to be determined. ^{3 4}

analysisAccording to the noteholders' complaint, which quotes the offering memoranda, J.P. Morgan was bookrunner and structuring agent for TAST 2022-1, 2023-1, 2024-2, 2024-3 and 2025-1 and joint bookrunner for 2024-1 and 2025-2, with Barclays and Fifth Third Securities in the other bank roles; the memoranda themselves are not retained, and the complaint's appendix lists Fifth Third Securities as co-manager of 2023-1, 2024-2, 2024-3, 2025-1 and 2025-2. For TAST 2023-1, Deloitte & Touche performed agreed-upon procedures on the sponsor's statistical file with J.P. Morgan Securities LLC as the other specified party, checking whether sampled title certificates showed the security interest of a Tricolor originator and making no representation as to the receivables' actual existence or ownership; such procedures are not an audit and do not test whether loans were pledged elsewhere. ^{1 2}

analysisThe noteholders also alleged that around the time of the February 2024 audits Tricolor hired JPMorgan to help with an initial public offering, that JPMorgan's equity capital markets team found the same accounting irregularities and Kollar's earlier association with an accounting fraud, and that JPMorgan pushed Chu to replace Kollar and abandoned the IPO. These allegations were in the complaint dismissed in July 2026; the complaint does not name the earlier matter, no retained record shows Kollar charged in it, and his 2025 guilty plea concerns Tricolor. ^{1 3}

analysisThe noteholders' complaint describes a collateral review of SPV 4 by CBIZ MHM, engaged by JPMorgan in or around September 2023, which it says found payments diverted to an account not belonging to SPV 4, a gap of nearly 65% between reported collections and cash delivered, and long-overdue accounts listed as current; the CBIZ reports are not retained, and in dismissing the case Judge Rakoff found that the CBIZ report was not an audit. The complaint alleges that the banks, as warehouse lenders, were repaid from securitisation proceeds, so that each deal they underwrote moved their own risk to investors, and that after the February 2024 audit JPMorgan sought mezzanine capital for Tricolor to avoid losses on its own line, allegations the court dismissed in July 2026 on finding that the banks, themselves victims of the fraud, were not shown to be worse than negligent. The complaint says that in August 2025 an analyst at an unnamed investment fund noticed $63 million of loans backing the JPMorgan facility listed as performing although unpaid for over six months, and that JPMorgan then called in FTI Consulting, which within days concluded that about $800 million of the collateral was bogus; FTI's work is not retained. ¹

analysisHolders of TAST notes sued JPMorgan Chase Bank, Barclays Bank PLC, Fifth Third Bank and their securities affiliates on February 26, 2026 (case 1:26-cv-01622). On July 16, 2026 Judge Jed S. Rakoff reconfirmed his order granting the banks' motion to dismiss, holding that the pleadings failed to show that the defendants, "themselves victims of Tricolor's fraud", were any worse than negligent; he dismissed the federal claims with prejudice and the state-law claims for lack of jurisdiction, and found that the 2024 CBIZ report was explicitly not an audit and did not conclude that Tricolor was engaged in fraud or double-pledging. The case was terminated on July 20, 2026. ^{1 2 3}

analysisThe November 2025 news investigation, based on interviews with people who mostly asked not to be identified, reports that a JPMorgan banker called Chu in Italy about red flags in the collateral, that Chu flew to New York to meet the bank, and that JPMorgan pulled its warehouse line; the SEC describes the first detection as made by an unnamed "Financial Institution E", which this dossier does not identify. On September 5, 2025, according to the SPV 4 agent, Tricolor Auto Acceptance's role as servicer of the facility was terminated and Vervent became successor servicer. A banking trade publication reported on October 14, 2025 that JPMorgan Chase recorded a $170 million charge-off in the third quarter connected to Tricolor, its chief executive Jamie Dimon saying "It is not our finest moment" and its chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum attributing slightly elevated wholesale charge-offs to "a couple of instances of apparent fraud in certain secure lending facilities"; the bank's own filings on the charge are not retained. ^{1 2 3 4 5 6}

analysisJPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as administrative agent, entered an appearance as a creditor on the day of the filing, according to a commercial docket aggregator's case page whose underlying court papers are not retained. From July 2026 the trustee sought Rule 2004 examinations and documents from the institutions that financed Tricolor's facilities and trusts, and an agreed order for JPMorgan was entered on July 10, 2026; JPMorgan and TBK Bank also filed agreed motions to examine each other. Rule 2004 examinations are investigative, and the docket does not say what claims, if any, the trustee will bring. ^{7 8 9 10 11}