A U.S. and JPMorgan flag fly in front of the headquarters of JPMorgan Chase & Co bank in New York, March 15, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By David Henry and Emily Flitter

(Reuters) - It's $1 billion in payouts that JPMorgan Chase & Co most likely wants to forget.

In agreements with regulators totaling $1 billion and made public on Thursday, the nation's biggest bank settled four civil investigations into its "London Whale" trading scandal and two more into the wrongful billing of credit-card customers.

The deals, which involve five authorities from the United States and one from the UK, are a milestone in the company's push to clean up its legal affairs but leave JPMorgan exposed to additional costs and embarrassment.

The bank still faces criminal probes into the trading scandal, its conduct during an energy trading investigation, sales of mortgage securities in the United States and possible bribery in China. Investigators are also looking into its role in setting benchmark interest rates known as LIBOR.

The settlements include $920 million of penalties for JPMorgan's London Whale trading scandal, which Chief Executive Jamie Dimon at first dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" and ultimately resulted in $6.2 billion in losses. The deals included an admission of wrongdoing, which has been rare in past settlements made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A second set of settlements includes $80 million of payments for billing of credit-card customers for identity-theft protection services that they did not receive. The deals, made with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, come after the company issued $309 million of refunds to customers.

The Comptroller of the Currency also on Thursday ordered JPMorgan to improve its consumer debt-collection practices. That order did not include financial penalties and involved allegations made public more than two years ago.

The London Whale deals, reached with the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and the U.S. Federal Reserve, SEC and Comptroller of the Currency, resolve the biggest civil probes into the trading debacle. The deals include citations against JPMorgan for poor risk controls and failure to inform regulators about deficiencies in risk management identified by bank management.

The scandal took on the London Whale nickname that hedge funds had given to Bruno Iksil, a trader at JPMorgan's Chief Investment Office in London, for the enormous size of the positions he took for the company.

ADMITTING THE FACTS

By coordinating the announcements, the regulators delivered a round $1 billion punishment in a single day. Regulators have been criticized by lawmakers and the public for not bringing more cases or sending Wall Street executives to jail for financial crisis-era misdeeds.

The deal follows a decision by the SEC to allow fewer firms to settle without admitting or denying the facts of cases. In August, the SEC reached a settlement with hedge fund manager Philip Falcone, its first big case to include an admission of wrongdoing.

But George Canellos, co-director of the SEC's enforcement division, cautioned in a statement that officials will not demand admissions in all future settlements.

Dimon and other JPMorgan executives had already admitted mistakes in the Whale debacle. Starting the day Dimon disclosed in May 2012 that the Whale trades were losing billions of dollars, he has apologized for the "tempest in a teapot" remark. He also testified before Congress that bank was "stupid" in handling the trades at its Chief Investment Office.

The enforcement actions left some people dissatisfied because they did not blame any individuals specifically for wrongdoing.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, issued a statement pointing out that his panel had found that "senior bank executives made a series of inaccurate statements." He said there is still time for other civil and criminal investigations to hold people accountable.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Clarke Silverglate in Miami, said, "Somebody else has to answer for this conduct rather than just paying money."

Dimon has said that JPMorgan executives did not intend to mislead anyone about the Whale losses, which the bank concluded were initially understated by its traders. Two traders have been indicted on conspiracy and fraud charges and Iksil has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

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