Jeffrey Edward Epstein (/ˈɛpstiːn/ EP-steen] January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School despite lacking a college degree. After his dismissal from the school, he entered the banking and finance sector, working at Bear Stearns in various roles before starting his own firm. Epstein developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children whom he and his associates sexually abused.
In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating
Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old
daughter. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state
court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He
served almost thirteen months in custody, but with extensive work release. He
was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal;
federal officials had identified thirty-six girls, some as young as
14-years-old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused.
Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal
charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in
his jail cell on August 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled that his death was
a suicide by hanging. Epstein's lawyers have disputed the ruling, and there has
been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death, resulting
in numerous conspiracy theories. Since Epstein's death precluded the
possibility of pursuing criminal charges against him, a judge dismissed all
criminal charges on August 29, 2019. Epstein had a decades-long association
with the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to her 2021 conviction on
U.S. federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure
girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution.
Early life
Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born on January 20, 1953, in the
Brooklyn borough of New York City. His parents Pauline “Paula” Stolofsky (October 5, 1918 – April 1, 2004) and Seymour
George Epstein (December 4, 1916 – December 14, 1991) were Jewish and had
married in 1952 shortly before his birth. Pauline worked as a school aide and
was a homemaker. “Paula was a wonderful
mother and homemaker, despite the fact that she had a full-time job,”
according to a former childhood friend of Epstein’s. Seymour worked for the New
York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener.
Jeffrey was the older of two siblings; he and his brother Mark grew up in the
working-class neighborhood of Sea Gate, a private gated community in Coney
Island, Brooklyn. Epstein was referred to as "Bear" by his parents while Mark was known as "Puggie". Neighbors described
the Epstein family as being, “so gentle,
the most gentle people”.
Epstein attended local public schools, first attending
Public School 188, and then Mark Twain Junior High School nearby and usually
earned money by tutoring classmates. Acquaintances considered Epstein "sweet and generous", although
"quiet and nerdy", and
nicknamed him "Eppy". “He was
just an average boy, very smart in math, slightly overweight, freckles, always
smiling,” a female friend later said. In 1967, Epstein attended the National
Music Camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He began playing the piano
when he was five, and was regarded as a talented musician by friends. He
graduated in 1969 from Lafayette High School at age 16, having skipped two
grades. Later that year, he attended advanced math classes at Cooper Union
until he changed colleges in 1971. From September 1971, he attended the Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University studying mathematical
physiology, but left without receiving a degree in June 1974.
Career
Teaching
Epstein started working in September 1974 as a physics and
mathematics teacher for teens at the Dalton School on the Upper East Side of
Manhattan. Donald Barr, who served as the headmaster until June 1974, was known
to have made several unconventional recruitments at the time, although it is
unclear whether he had a direct role in hiring Epstein. Three months after
Barr's departure, Epstein began to teach at the school, despite his lack of
credentials. Epstein was known for having a charismatic personality and
treating his students more like friends than their teacher.
However, he also allegedly showed inappropriate behavior
toward underage female students at the time, paying them constant attention,
and even showing up at a party where young people were drinking, according to a
former student. Other former students also often saw him flirting with female
students. Eventually, Epstein became acquainted with Alan Greenberg, the chief
executive officer of Bear Stearns, whose son and daughter were attending the
school. Greenberg's daughter, Lynne Koeppel, pointed to a parent-teacher
conference where Epstein influenced another Dalton parent into advocating for
him to Greenberg. In June 1976, after Epstein was dismissed from Dalton for "poor performance", Greenberg
offered him a job at Bear Stearns.
Banking
Epstein joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a low-level junior
assistant to a floor trader. He swiftly moved up to become an options trader,
working in the special products division, and then advised the bank's
wealthiest clients, such as Seagram president Edgar Bronfman, on tax mitigation
strategies. Jimmy Cayne, the bank's later chief executive officer, praised
Epstein's skill with wealthy clients and complex products. In 1980, four years
after joining Bear Stearns, Epstein became a limited partner. In 1981, Epstein
was asked to leave Bear Stearns for, according to his sworn testimony, being
guilty of a "Reg D violation".
Even though Epstein departed abruptly, he remained close to Cayne and Greenberg
and was a client of Bear Stearns until its collapse in 2008.
Financial consulting
In August 1981, Epstein founded his own consulting firm,
Intercontinental Assets Group Inc. (IAG), which assisted clients in recovering
stolen money from fraudulent brokers and lawyers. Epstein described his work at
this time as being a high-level bounty hunter. He told friends that he worked
sometimes as a consultant for governments and the very wealthy to recover
embezzled funds, while at other times he worked for clients who had embezzled
funds. Spanish actress and heiress Ana Obregón was one such wealthy client,
whom Epstein helped in 1982 to recover her father's millions in lost
investments, which had disappeared when Drysdale Government Securities collapsed
because of fraud.
Epstein also stated to some people at the time that he was
an intelligence agent. During the 1980s, Epstein possessed an Austrian passport
that had his photo, but with a false name. The passport showed his place of
residence in Saudi Arabia. In 2017 "a
former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta,
the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled
Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to Trump transition interviewers,
that "I was told Epstein 'belonged
to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".
During this period, one of Epstein's clients was the Saudi
Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi, who was the middleman in transferring
American weapons from Israel to Iran, as part of the Iran–Contra affair in the
1980s. Khashoggi was one of several defense contractors that he knew. In the
mid-1980s, Epstein traveled multiple times between the United States, Europe,
and Southwest Asia. While in London, Epstein met Steven Hoffenberg. They had
been introduced through Douglas Leese, a defense contractor, and John Mitchell,
the former U.S. Attorney General.
Towers Financial
Corporation
Steven Hoffenberg hired Epstein in 1987 as a consultant for
Towers Financial Corporation (unaffiliated with the company of the same name
founded in 1998, and acquired by Old National Bancorp in 2014), a collection
agency that bought debts people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies.
Hoffenberg set Epstein up in offices in the "Villard
Houses" in Manhattan and paid him US$25,000 per month for his
consulting work (equivalent to $64,000 in 2022).
Hoffenberg and Epstein then refashioned themselves as
corporate raiders using Towers Financial as their raiding vessel. One of Epstein's
first assignments for Hoffenberg was to implement what turned out to be an
unsuccessful bid to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987. A similar
unsuccessful bid in 1988 was made to take over Emery Air Freight Corp. During
this period, Hoffenberg and Epstein worked closely together and traveled
everywhere on Hoffenberg's private jet.
In 1993, Towers Financial Corporation imploded when it was
exposed as one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, losing over
US$450 million of its investors' money (equivalent to $911,610,000 in 2022). In
court documents, Hoffenberg claimed that Epstein was intimately involved in the
scheme. Epstein left the company by 1989 and was never charged for involvement
in the massive investor fraud committed. It is unknown if Epstein acquired any
stolen funds from the Towers Ponzi scheme.
Financial management
firm
In 1988, while Epstein was still consulting for Hoffenberg,
he founded his financial management firm, J. Epstein & Company. The company
was said by Epstein to have been formed to manage the assets of clients with
more than US$1 billion in net worth, although others have expressed skepticism
that he was restrictive of the clients that he took.
The only publicly known billionaire client of Epstein was
Leslie Wexner, chairman and CEO of L Brands (formerly The Limited, Inc.) and
Victoria's Secret. In 1986, Epstein met Wexner through their mutual
acquaintances, insurance executive Robert Meister and his wife, in Palm Beach,
Florida. A year later, Epstein became Wexner's financial adviser and served as
his right-hand man. Within the year, Epstein had sorted out Wexner's entangled
finances. In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney over his
affairs. The power of attorney allowed Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy
and sell properties, borrow money, and do anything else of a legally binding
nature on Wexner's behalf. Epstein managed Wexner's wealth and various projects
such as the building of his yacht, the Limitless.
By 1995, Epstein was a director of the Wexner Foundation and
Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was also the president of Wexner's Property,
which developed part of the town of New Albany outside Columbus, Ohio, where
Wexner lived. Epstein made millions in fees by managing Wexner's financial
affairs. Although never employed by L Brands, he frequently corresponded with
the company executives. Epstein often attended Victoria's Secret fashion shows,
and hosted the models at his New York City home, as well as helping aspiring
models get work with the company.
In 1996, Epstein changed the name of his firm to the
Financial Trust Company and, for tax advantages, based it on the island of St.
Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. By relocating to the U.S. Virgin Islands,
Epstein was able to reduce federal income taxes by 90 percent. The U.S. Virgin
Islands acted as an offshore tax haven, while at the same time offering the
advantages of being part of the United States banking system.
Media activities
In 2003, Epstein bid to acquire New York magazine. Other
bidders included advertising executive Donny Deutsch, investor Nelson Peltz,
media mogul and New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, and film
producer Harvey Weinstein. The ultimate buyer was Bruce Wasserstein, a longtime
Wall Street investment banker, who paid US$55 million.
In 2004, Epstein and Zuckerman committed up to US$25 million
to finance Radar, a celebrity and pop culture magazine founded by Maer Roshan.
Epstein and Zuckerman were equal partners in the venture. Roshan, as its editor-in-chief,
retained a small ownership stake. It folded after three issues as a print
publication and became exclusively an online one.
Liquid Funding Ltd.
Epstein was the president of the company Liquid Funding Ltd.
between 2000 and 2007. The company was an early pioneer in expanding the kind
of debt that could be accepted on repurchase, or the repo market, which
involves a lender giving money to a borrower in exchange for securities that
the borrower then agrees to buy back at an agreed-upon later time and price.
The innovation of Liquid Funding, and other early companies, was that instead
of having stocks and bonds as the underlying securities, it had commercial
mortgages and investment-grade residential mortgages bundled into complex
securities as the underlying security.
Liquid Funding was initially 40 percent owned by Bear
Stearns. Through the help of the credit rating agencies – Standard &
Poor's, Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service – the new bundled
securities were able to be created for companies so that they got a gold-plated
AAA rating. The implosion of such complex securities, because of their
inaccurate ratings, led to the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008 and set
in motion the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the subsequent Great Recession.
If Liquid Funding were left holding large amounts of such securities as
collateral, it could have lost large amounts of money.
Investments
Hedge funds
Between 2002 and 2005, Epstein invested $80 million in the
D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, a hedge fund that invested in illiquid
debt securities. In November 2006, Epstein attempted to redeem his investment
after he was informed of accounting irregularities in the fund. By this time,
his investment had grown to $140 million. The D.B. Zwirn fund refused to redeem
the investment. Hedge funds that invest in illiquid securities typically have
years-long "lockups" on
their capital for all investors and require redemption requests to be made in
writing 60 to 90 days in advance. The fund was closed in 2008, and its
remaining assets of approximately $2 billion, including Epstein's investment,
were transferred to Fortress Investment Group when that firm bought the assets
in 2009. Epstein later went to arbitration with Fortress over his redemption
attempt. The outcome of that arbitration is not publicly known.
The U.S. government began negotiation with Epstein for a
plea agreement in mid-2007, as the Bear Stearns hedge fund began to collapse.
In August 2006, Epstein, a month after the federal
investigation of him began, invested $57 million in the Bear Stearns High-Grade
Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage hedge fund. This fund was highly
leveraged in mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).
On April 18, 2007, an investor in the fund, who had $57
million invested, discussed redeeming his investment. At this time, the fund
had a leverage ratio of 17:1, which meant for every dollar invested there were
seventeen dollars of borrowed funds; therefore, the redemption of this
investment would have been equivalent to removing $1 billion from the thinly
traded CDO market. The selling of CDO assets to meet the redemptions that month
began a repricing process and general freeze in the CDO market. The repricing
of the CDO assets caused the collapse of the fund three months later in July,
and the eventual collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008. It is likely Epstein
lost most of this investment, but it is not known how much was his.
By the time that the Bear Stearns fund began to fail in May
2007, Epstein had begun to negotiate a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's
Office concerning imminent charges for sex with minors. In August 2007, a month
after the fund collapsed, the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, entered
into direct discussions about the plea agreement. Acosta brokered a lenient
deal, according to him, because he had been ordered by higher government
officials, who told him that Epstein was an individual of importance to the
government. As part of the negotiations, according to the Miami Herald, Epstein
provided "unspecified
information" to the Florida federal prosecutors for a more lenient
sentence and was supposedly an unnamed key witness for the New York federal
prosecutors in their unsuccessful June 2008 criminal case against the two
managers of the failed Bear Stearns hedge fund. Alan Dershowitz, one of
Epstein's Florida attorneys on the case, told Fox Business Network "We would have been touting that if he
had [cooperated]. The idea that Epstein helped in any prosecution is news to
me."
Israeli startup
In 2015, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Epstein
invested in the startup Reporty Homeland Security (rebranded as Carbyne in
2018). The startup was connected with Israel's defense industry. It was headed
by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was also at one time the
defense minister, and chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The
CEO of the company is Amir Elihai, a Special Forces officer, and Pinchas
Bukhris, a director of the company and former defense ministry director general
and commander of IDF cyber unit 8200. Epstein and Barak, the head of Carbyne,
were close, and Epstein often offered him lodging at one of his apartment units
at 301 East 66th Street in Manhattan. Epstein had past experience with Israel's
research and military sector. In April 2008, he went to Israel and met with a
number of research scientists and visited different Israeli military bases.
Video recordings
Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places on
his properties to allegedly record sexual activity with underage girls by
prominent people for criminal purposes such as blackmail. Ghislaine Maxwell,
Epstein's long-term girlfriend and companion, told a friend that Epstein's
private island in the Virgin Islands was completely wired for video and the
friend believed that Maxwell and Epstein were videotaping everyone on the island
as an insurance policy. When police raided his Palm Beach residence in 2006,
two hidden cameras were discovered in his home. It was also reported that
Epstein's mansion in New York was wired extensively with a video surveillance
system.
Maria Farmer, an artist who worked for Epstein in 1996,
noted that Epstein showed her a media room in the New York mansion where there
were individuals monitoring the pinhole cameras throughout the house. The media
room was accessed through a hidden door. She stated that in the media room "there were men sitting here. And I
looked on the cameras, and I saw toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed." She
added that "It was very obvious that
they were, like, monitoring private moments."
Epstein allegedly "lent"
girls to powerful people to ingratiate himself with them and also to gain
possible blackmail information. According to the Department of Justice, he kept
compact discs locked in his safe in his New York mansion with handwritten
labels that included the description: "young
[name] + [name]". Epstein implied that he had blackmail material when
he told a New York Times reporter in 2018, off the record, that he had dirt on
powerful people, including information about their sexual proclivities and
recreational drug use.
Legal proceedings
First criminal case
Initial developments
(2005–2006)
Epstein in 2006
In March 2005, a woman contacted Florida's Palm Beach Police
Department and alleged that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been taken to
Epstein's mansion by an older girl. While there, she was allegedly paid $300
(equivalent to $450 in 2022) to strip and massage Epstein. She had allegedly
undressed, but left the encounter wearing her underwear. Palm Beach Police
began a thirteen month undercover investigation of Epstein, including a search
of his home. During the investigation, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter
publicly accused the Palm Beach County state prosecutor, Barry Krischer, of
being too lenient and called for help from the FBI.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) then became
involved. Subsequently, the police alleged that Epstein had paid several girls
to perform sexual acts with him. Interviews with five alleged victims and
seventeen witnesses under oath, a high-school transcript and other items found
in Epstein's trash and home allegedly showed that some of the girls involved
were under 18, the youngest being 14, with many under 16. The police search of
Epstein's home found two hidden cameras and large numbers of photos of girls
throughout the house, some of whom the police had interviewed in the course of
their investigation. Adriana Ross, a former model from Poland who became an
Epstein assistant, reportedly removed computer drives and other electronic
equipment from the financier's Florida mansion before Palm Beach Police
searched the home as part of their investigation. The court documents record
that a search of Epstein's residence by Palm Beach Police detective Joseph
Recarey in 2005 uncovered an incriminating Amazon receipt containing books on
S&M. The books he ordered are titled: SM 101: A Realistic Introduction,
SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude – Principles, Skills and Tools and
Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners.
A former employee told the police that Epstein would receive
massages three times a day. Eventually the FBI compiled reports on "34 confirmed minors" eligible
for restitution (increased to forty in the non-prosecution agreement) whose
allegations of sexual abuse by Epstein included corroborating details. Julie
Brown's 2018 exposés in the Miami Herald identified eighty victims and located
about sixty of them. She quotes the then police chief Reiter as saying "This was 50-something 'shes' and one
'he'—and the 'shes' all basically told the same story." Details
from the investigation included allegations that 12-year-old triplets were
flown in from France for Epstein's birthday, and flown back the following day
after being sexually abused by the financier. It was alleged that young girls
were recruited from Brazil and other South American countries, former Soviet
countries, and Europe, and that Jean-Luc Brunel's "MC2" modeling agency was also supplying girls to
Epstein.
In May 2006, Palm Beach police filed a probable cause
affidavit saying that Epstein should be charged with four counts of unlawful
sex with minors and one count of sexual abuse. On July 27, 2006, Epstein was
arrested by the Palm Beach Police Department on state felony charges of
procuring a minor for prostitution and solicitation of a prostitute. He was
booked at the Palm Beach County jail and later released on a $3,000 bond. State
prosecutor Krischer later convened a Palm Beach County grand jury, which was
usually only done in capital cases. Presented evidence from only two victims,
the grand jury returned a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution,
to which Epstein pleaded not guilty in August 2006. Epstein's defense lawyers
included Roy Black, Gerald Lefcourt, Harvard Law School professor Alan
Dershowitz, and former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr. Linguist Steven Pinker
also assisted.
Non-prosecution
agreement (NPA) (2006–2008)
In July 2006, the FBI began its own investigation of
Epstein, nicknamed "Operation Leap
Year". It resulted in a fifty-three page indictment in June 2007.
Alexander Acosta, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida,
agreed to a plea deal, which Alan Dershowitz helped to negotiate, to grant
immunity from all federal criminal charges to Epstein, along with four named
co-conspirators and any unnamed "potential
co-conspirators". According to the Miami Herald, the non-prosecution
agreement "essentially shut down an
ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful
people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes". At the time, this
halted the investigation and sealed the indictment. The Miami Herald said: "Acosta agreed, despite a federal law
to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims."
Acosta later said he offered a lenient plea deal because he
was told that Epstein "belonged to
intelligence", was "above his pay grade" and to "leave it alone". Epstein
agreed to plead guilty in Florida state court to two felony prostitution
charges, serve eighteen months in prison, register as a sex offender, and pay
restitution to three dozen victims identified by the FBI. The plea deal was
later described as a "sweetheart
deal".
A federal judge later found that the prosecutors had
violated victims' rights by concealing the agreement from the victims and
instead urging them to have "patience".
According to an internal review conducted by the Department of Justice's Office
of Professional Responsibility, released in November 2020, Acosta showed "poor judgment" in granting
Epstein a non-prosecution agreement and failing to notify Epstein's alleged victims
about the agreement.
Conviction and
sentencing (2008–2011)
On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state
charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18, he was sentenced to
eighteen months in prison. While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are
sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm
Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff's office, was, after 3+1⁄2
months, allowed to leave the jail on "work
release" for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week. This
contravened the sheriff's own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence
of ten months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was
allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours.
Epstein's cell door was left unlocked, and he had access to
the attorney room where a television was installed for him, before he was moved
to the Stockade's previously unstaffed infirmary. He worked at the office of a
foundation he had created shortly before reporting to jail; he dissolved it
after he had served his time. The Sheriff's Office received $128,000 from
Epstein's non-profit to pay for the costs of extra services being provided
during his work release. His office was monitored by "permit
deputies" whose overtime was paid by Epstein. They were required to wear
suits, and checked in "welcomed
guests" at the "front
desk". Later the Sheriff's Office said these guest logs were destroyed
per the department's "records
retention" rules, although the Stockade visitor logs were not. Epstein
was allowed to use his own driver to drive him between jail and his office and
other appointments.
"Epstein in 2013"
Epstein served almost thirteen months before being released
on July 22, 2009, for a year of probation on house arrest until August 2010.
While on probation, he was allowed numerous trips on his corporate jet to his
residences in Manhattan and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was allowed long
shopping trips and walks around Palm Beach "for
exercise". After a contested hearing in January 2011, and an appeal,
he stayed registered in New York State as a "level
three" (high risk of repeat offense) sex offender, a lifelong
designation. At that hearing, the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr.,
argued unsuccessfully that the level should be reduced to a low-risk "level one" and was chided by
the judge. Despite opposition from Epstein's lawyer that he had a "main" home in the U.S. Virgin
Islands, the judge confirmed he personally must check in with the New York
Police Department every ninety days. Though Epstein had been a level-three
registered sex offender in New York since 2010, the New York Police Department
never enforced the ninety day regulation, though non-compliance is a felony.
Reactions
The immunity agreement and Epstein's lenient treatment was
the subject of ongoing public dispute. The Palm Beach police chief accused the
state of giving him preferential treatment, and the Miami Herald said U.S.
Attorney Acosta gave Epstein "the
deal of a lifetime". Following Epstein's arrest in July 2019, on sex
trafficking charges, Acosta resigned as Secretary of Labor effective July 19,
2019.
After the accusations against Epstein became public, several
persons and institutions returned donations that they had received from him,
including Eliot Spitzer, Bill Richardson, and the Palm Beach Police Department.
Harvard University announced it would not return any money. Various charitable
donations that Epstein had made to finance children's education were also
questioned.
On June 18, 2010, Epstein's former house manager, Alfredo
Rodriguez, was sentenced to eighteen months' incarceration after being
convicted on an obstruction charge for failing to turn over to police, and
subsequently trying to sell, a journal in which he had recorded Epstein's
activities. FBI Special Agent Christina Pryor reviewed the material and agreed
it was information "that would have
been extremely useful in investigating and prosecuting the case, including
names and contact information of material witnesses and additional
victims".
Civil cases
Jane Does v. Epstein
(2008)
On February 6, 2008, an anonymous Virginia woman, known as
Jane Doe No. 2, filed a $50-million civil lawsuit in federal court against
Epstein, saying that when she was a 16-year-old minor in 2004 and 2005, she was
"recruited to give Epstein a
massage". She claims she was taken to his mansion, where he exposed
himself and had sexual intercourse with her, and paid her $200 immediately
afterward. A similar $50-million suit was filed in March 2008 by a different
woman, who was represented by the same lawyer. These and several similar
lawsuits were dismissed. All other lawsuits had been settled by Epstein out of
court; Epstein made many out-of-court settlements with alleged victims.
Victims' rights: Jane Does v. United States (2014)
A December 30, 2014, federal civil suit was filed in Florida
by Jane Doe 1 (Courtney Wild) and Jane Doe 2 against the United States for
violations of the Crime Victims' Rights Act by the U.S. Department of Justice's
NPA with Epstein and his limited 2008 state plea. There was a later,
unsuccessful effort to add Virginia Roberts (Jane Doe 3) and another woman
(Jane Doe 4) as plaintiffs to that case. The addition accused Alan Dershowitz
of sexually abusing a minor, Jane Doe 3, provided by Epstein. The allegations
against Dershowitz were stricken by the judge and eliminated from the case
because he said they were outside the intent of the suit to re-open the plea
agreement. A document filed in court alleges that Epstein ran a "sexual abuse ring", and lent
underage girls to "prominent
American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a
well-known prime minister, and other world leaders".
This long-running lawsuit is pending in federal court, aimed
at vacating the federal plea agreement on the grounds that it violated victims'
rights. On April 7, 2015, Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that the allegations made
by alleged victim Virginia Roberts against Prince Andrew had no bearing on the
lawsuit by alleged victims seeking to reopen Epstein's non-prosecution plea
agreement with the federal government; the judge ordered that allegation to be
struck from the record. Judge Marra made no ruling as to whether claims by
Roberts are true or false. Though he did not allow Jane Does 3 and 4 to join
the suit, Marra specifically said that Roberts may later give evidence when the
case comes to court.
On February 21, 2019, in the case of Two Jane Does v. United
States, Senior Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
Florida Kenneth Marra said federal prosecutors violated the law by failing to
notify victims before they allowed him to plead guilty to only the two Florida
offenses. The judge left open what the possible remedy could be.
Virginia Giuffre v. Epstein (2015)
In a December 2014 Florida court filing by Bradley Edwards
and Paul G. Cassell meant for inclusion in the Crime Victims’ Rights Act
lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre (then known as Virginia Roberts), alleged in a sworn
affidavit that at age 17, she had been sexually trafficked by Epstein and
Ghislaine Maxwell for their own use and for use by several others, including
Prince Andrew and retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz. Giuffre also
claimed that Epstein, Maxwell and others had physically and sexually abused
her. She alleged that the FBI may have been involved in a cover-up. She said
she had served as Epstein's sex slave from 1999 to 2002, and had recruited
other underage girls. Prince Andrew, Epstein, and Dershowitz all denied having
had sex with Giuffre. Dershowitz took legal action over the allegations.
Giuffre filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz, claiming
he purposefully made "false and
malicious defamatory statements" about her. A diary purported to belong to Giuffre was
published online. Epstein entered an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre, as
he had done in several other lawsuits. In 2019, Giuffre was interviewed by the
BBC's Panorama where she continued to attest that Epstein had trafficked her to
Prince Andrew. She appealed directly to the public by stating: "I implore the people in the UK to
stand up beside me, to help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being
ok." These accusations had not been tested in any court of law.
Virginia Giuffre v. Ghislaine Maxwell (2015)
As a result of Giuffre's allegations and Maxwell's comments
about them, Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation in September 2015. After much legal
confrontation, the case was settled under seal in May 2017. The Miami Herald,
other media, and Alan Dershowitz filed to have the documents about the
settlement unsealed. After the judge dismissed their request, the matter was
appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
On March 11, 2019, in the appeal of the district judge's
refusal to unseal the documents relating to the 2017 defamation settlement of
Giuffre v. Maxwell, the Second Circuit Court gave parties one week to provide
good cause as to why they should remain under seal, without which they would be
unsealed on March 19, 2019. Later the Court ordered these documents to be
unsealed after having them redacted to protect innocent parties.
In Giuffre's testimony, she claims that she was
"directed" by Maxwell to give erotic massages and engage in sexual
activities with Prince Andrew; Jean-Luc Brunel; Glenn Dubin; Marvin Minsky;
Governor Bill Richardson; another unnamed prince; an unnamed foreign president;
"a well-known Prime Minister"; and
an unnamed hotel chain owner from France, among others. The deposition does not
claim that any of these men in fact engaged with Giuffre, and none of these men
have been indicted or sued for related sex crimes. Giuffre testified: "my whole life revolved around just
pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy. Their whole entire
lives revolved around sex."
On August 9, less than twenty-four hours before Epstein's
death, 2,000 pages of previously sealed documents from the case were released.
Two sets of additional sealed documents will be analyzed by a federal judge to
determine whether they should also be made public. A "John Doe" asked the judge on September 3 to permanently
keep the documents secret, claiming "unproven
allegations of impropriety" could damage his reputation, and though he
had no evidence his name was included.
Jane Doe v. Epstein and Trump (2016)
A federal lawsuit filed in California in April 2016, against
Epstein and Donald Trump by a California woman alleged that the two men
sexually assaulted her at a series of parties at Epstein's Manhattan residence
in 1994, when she was 13-years-old. The suit was dismissed by a federal judge
in May 2016 because it did not raise valid claims under federal law. The woman
filed another federal suit in New York in June 2016, but it was withdrawn three
months later, apparently without being served on the defendants. A third
federal suit was filed in New York in September 2016.
The two latter suits included affidavits by an anonymous witness
who attested to the accusations in the suits, asserting Epstein employed her to
procure underage girls for him, and an anonymous person who declared the
plaintiff had told him/her about the assaults at the time they occurred. The
plaintiff, who had filed anonymously as Jane Doe, was scheduled to appear in a
Los Angeles press conference six days before the 2016 election, but abruptly
canceled the event; her lawyer Lisa Bloom asserted that the woman had received
threats. The suit was dropped on November 4, 2016. Trump attorney Alan Garten
denied the allegations, while Epstein declined to comment.
Sarah Ransome v. Epstein and Maxwell (2017)
In 2017, Sarah Ransome filed a suit against Epstein and
Maxwell, alleging that Maxwell had hired her to give massages to Epstein and
later threatened to physically harm her or destroy her career prospects if she
did not comply with their sexual demands at his mansion in New York City and on
his private Caribbean island, Little Saint James. The suit was settled in 2018 under
undisclosed terms.
Bradley Edwards' defamation v. Epstein (2018)
A state civil lawsuit in Florida filed by attorney Bradley
Edwards against Epstein was scheduled for trial in December 2018. The trial was
expected to provide victims with their first opportunity to make their
accusations in public. However, the case was settled on the first day of the
trial, with Epstein publicly apologizing to Edwards; other terms of the settlement
were confidential.
Maria Farmer v. Epstein and Maxwell (2019)
On April 16, 2019, Maria Farmer went public and filed a
sworn affidavit in federal court in New York, alleging that she and her
15-year-old sister, Annie, had been sexually assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell
in separate locations in 1996. Farmer met Epstein and Maxwell at her graduate
art gallery reception at the New York Academy of Art in 1995. The following
year, in the summer of 1996, they hired her to work on an art project in Leslie
Wexner's Ohio mansion, where she was then sexually assaulted. Farmer reported
the incident to the New York City Police Department and the FBI. Farmer's
affidavit also stated that during the same summer, Epstein flew her
then-15-year-old sister to his New Mexico property where he and Maxwell
sexually abused her on a massage table.
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