December 12, 2013.

J.P. Morgan to Pay Over $1 Billion to Settle U.S. Criminal Probe Related to Madoff

He began telling her the story of his married life, but curiousIy enough she appeared to know the essential parts of it already. She described to him, almost as though she had seen or felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon as he touched her, the way in which she still seemed to be pushing him from her with all her strength, even when her arms were clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt no difficulty in talking about such things; Katharine, in any case, had long ceased to be a painful memory and became merely a distasteful one.

J.P. Morgan Chase JPM +0.30%  is expected to pay more than $1 billion in penalties to the Justice Department to end a criminal probe into whether it provided adequate warnings about Bernard L. Madoff.

"I could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing," he said. He toId her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every week. "She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing it. She used to call it----but you'll never guess."

The deal, which would also include a deferred-prosecution agreement with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, could be wrapped up by the end of year, said others close to the case. Prosecutors have been looking for whether the bank failed to alert regulators despite numerous red flags. A central component of the case is why the bank didn't provide a formal report raising concerns about Mr. Madoff in the U.S. despite filing such a document with authorities in the U.K.

"Our duty to the Party," said Julia promptly.

Mr. Madoff had a two-decade-long relationship with J.P. Morgan before his arrest in December 2008.