Ex-JPMorgan banker Chirayu Rana pretended his dad was dead to get bereavement leave — but he’s alive and spoke to The Post this weekend
By James Franey
Published May 4, 2026, 3:11 p.m. ET
The ex-JPMorgan Chase banker
who accused a glamorous female colleague of forcing him to become her “sex slave” lied to the bank about his father dying so he could collect nearly three months of paid leave — and apparently used the time off to prepare the bombshell lawsuit against Lorna Hajdini and his employer, The Post has learned.
Sources said that Chirayu Rana, 35, informed supervisors in mid-December 2024 about the supposed death of his father, Chaitanya, and that he needed to take time off from work to be with his family — stringing together various forms of paid leave in addition to five days of bereavement, sources said.
But the elder Rana is alive and well. The Post reached him on Sunday at the family’s $1.75 million home in Vienna, Virginia, where he
claimed he knew nothing of the highly contested legal dispute.
Chirayu Rana pictured with his mother Baruna and father Chaitanya in a 2014 photo. Facebook/Baruna Rana
“I don’t know anything about it. He didn’t talk with us or anything,” Chaitanya Rana told The Post. “He’s my son. He’s a good guy.”
The now-unemployed money man, who The Post exclusively unmasked as the John Doe behind the eye-popping claims against the 37-year-old Hajdini, was allowed to work remotely from the fall of 2024 when he had first flagged to the bank’s top brass that his father was seriously ill, sources said.
He then exhausted a string of leave allowances between early March and the end of May last year, when an initial draft complaint was sent to the bank’s legal team, the people familiar with the matter said.
One source with direct knowledge of its contents said it read: “In or around November 2024, the plaintiff’s father passed away, and he went to his parents’ home in Virginia.”
“The company thought he was working through something,” said one source. “You can tell that he was trying to play the system.”
Attorney Greg Chiarello prepared the May 2024 document, which also claimed Rana’s mother, Baruna, was sick.
Rana finally filed his complaint nearly a year later on April 28 in New York County Supreme Court under the pseudonym “John Doe,” accusing executive director Lorna Hajdini, 37, of drugging him with Rohypnol and Viagra, coercing him into degrading sex acts, and threatening his career if he refused.
Last week, however, The Post revealed that Rana never reported to Hajdini during his short stint with JPMorgan and that the pair were under two different managing directors.
A JPMorgan internal organization chart, obtained and reviewed by The Post on Monday, shows that Hajdini has no direct reports in her role on the bank’s leveraged finance team.
“I don’t know anything about it. He didn’t talk with us or anything,” Chaitanya Rana (pictured) told The Post. “He’s my son. He’s a good guy.” Facebook/Chaitanya Rana
A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment beyond the bank’s statement issued last week.
A spokesman told The Post on Thursday that JPMorgan’s internal investigation reviewed emails, phone records, and witness statements and found no evidence supporting the claims, adding that ‘John Doe’ refused to cooperate.
Rana’s suit was yanked from the docket on Wednesday evening after the Daily Mail broke the news of the complaint, with his legal team saying court officials had asked for procedural corrections to be made.
The document spelled out in lurid detail the claims that the 35-year-old had made against his former colleague.
Hajdini’s lawyers referred The Post back to their blanket denial issued on Friday.
Lorna Hajdini vigorously denied the allegations. Linkedin
“Lorna categorically denies the allegations,” they said. “She never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with this individual of any kind and has never even been to the location where the alleged sexual assault supposedly took place.”
The Post also revealed that Rana left his job at private equity firm Bregal Sagemount on April 2, just over three weeks before filing the suit. His biography is still on the firm’s website.
Screenshots widely shared online showed Rana seemingly consulting a legal chatbot as early as July 2024, nearly a year before the filing, as reported by The Post.
In that exchange, he described nearly identical allegations — including being raped and drugged by a boss — but attributed them to “Morgan Stanley” and referred to the abuser as “he.”
The Post also revealed that Rana left his job at private equity firm Bregal Sagemount on April 2, just over three weeks before filing the suit. TikTok/@dudesinsuitsnyc
The Rutgers alum and one-time student basketball player did not join JPMorgan’s leveraged-finance team until spring 2024.
His journeyman career in finance has included stints at Houlihan Lokey, Credit Suisse, TCG Capital Markets, Morgan Stanley, and the Carlyle Group.
Rana also briefly worked at MidCap Financial, an affiliate of Marc Rowan’s Apollo Global Management, where he was “managed out” after six months over performance issues, insiders said.
Hajdini is a 15-year JPMorgan veteran and NYU Stern School of Business graduate who studies for sommelier exams in her spare time and volunteers with a nonprofit that helps low-income students attend college. Colleagues described her as “a top performer” when contacted by The Post last week.
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