It’s been quite a month for JPMorgan Chase. The bank is still embroiled in a deeply damaging court case over its close ties to underage-sex-trafficker-for-the-ultrarich Jeffrey Epstein, with its CEO Jamie Dimon now confirmed to have to face questioning over its turning a blind eye to Epstein’s crimes.

At the same time, in brighter news for the mega-bank, Chase also swooped into the second-largest bank failure in US history and bought the collapsing First Republic Bank, growing its slate of ultrawealthy clientele and expanding its footprint into Silicon Valley in the process. As Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell later said, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) — which held the “highly competitive bidding process” for First Republic — is bound by law to take the option that would result in the most minimal payout from its Deposit Insurance Fund — something JPMorgan, by virtue of its immensity, was best placed to offer. Bigness begets bigness.

The deal has been sold as a grand victory for Dimon and the bank, not just for business reasons, but also because it’s allowed Dimon to burnish his reputation as the savior of the US banking industry, first shored up when JPMorgan swooped in to a different financial collapse to buy up failing competitors in 2008. But JPMorgan’s bargain purchase gain here may well mean some serious pain for the rest of us in the long run.