Case of Jeffrey Epstein

Case of Jeffrey Epstein
(AKA: Jeffrey Edward Epstein)

Little St. James, VI

St. Thomas, VI

Jeffrey Epstein Philanthropy
Jeffrey Epstein International
Jeffrey Eptein EducationJeffrey Epstein - Virgin, Island
Jeffrey Epstein - New York, NY
Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation

Palm Beach, FL

Santa Fe, NM

Owner - J. Epstein and Company, NY, NY

Investor - Bear Stearns Global Investment Banking, NY, NY

Math Teacher - Dalton School, New York, NY

Brooklyn, NY

Convicted sex offender.  Epstein, pleaded guilty in June 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution after a Palm Beach police investigation revealed that he paid underage girls for sexually charged massages at his El Brillo Way home. He served 13 months of his 18-month sentence at the Palm Beach County Stockade and received liberal work-release privileges while in jail.

Epstein has paid confidential settlements to nearly two dozen young women who filed lawsuits against him. All the lawsuits contained similar allegations: that Epstein recruited underage girls to visit his home and to perform massages and sex acts.

A deal with federal prosecutors revealed that Epstein could have been charged with multiple federal counts of sexual exploitation of minors, resulting in much harsher penalties. But the feds deferred to the two state charges.

Representing two victims through a federal lawsuit, Edwards and attorney Paul Cassell are fighting to make public previously secret correspondence — between Epstein’s attorneys and the government — that could shed light on Epstein’s sentence.

Epstein must register as a lifetime sex offender on the National Sex Offender Public Website.

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Disclaimer: Inclusion in this website does not constitute a recommendation or endorsement. Individuals must decide for themselves if the resources meet their own personal needs.

Table of Contents:

• National Sex Offender Registry - Jeffrey Edward Epstein (02/04/2013)

2002

1. Background Information
2. Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery  (10/28/2002)

2006

1. Letter from the Palm Beach Police Department  (05/01/2006)
2. Billionaire solicited prostitutes 3 times, indictment says  (07/25/2006)
3. After long probe, Palm Beach billionaire faces solicitation charge  (07/26/2006)
4. Billionaire and Bill Clinton Pal Arrested for Solicitation of Underaged Girls  (07/26/2006)
5. Billionaire's lawyer tried to discredit teen girls, police say  (07/29/2006)
6. Billionaire Harvard Donor Arrested For Soliciting Prostitutes (07/31/2006)
7. Ignorance of age not valid defense in sex cases, expert says  (08/04/2006)
8. Epstein camp calls female accusers liars  (08/08/2006)
9. Police chief's reputation helps discredit attacks (08/14/2006)
10. Jeffrey Epstein craved big homes, elite friends - and, investigators say, underage girls  (08/14/2006)
11. Governor to dump cash from billionaire (08/16/2006)

2010

1. Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free (07/20/2010)

2011

1. Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: I’m a sex offender, not a predator (02/25/2011)
2. Convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Would Like To Get A Few Things Straight (02/25/2011)
3. Jeffrey Epstein: Sex Offender, Yes. Billionaire, No.  (02/28/2011)
4. Did Andrew fix Fergie's bailout? Billionaire paid off her debts within days of prince's visit  (03/08/2011)

2013

1. Woody Allen pals around with child-sex creep (09/24/2013)
2. Woody Allen spotted with millionaire convicted child sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein on Upper East Side stroll  (09/24/2013)
3. Newest lawsuit against Epstein expected to include victim testimony (10/20/2013)

Also see:

• Case of Woody Allen

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National Sex Offender Registry - Jeffrey Edward Epstein 
February 4, 2013

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Background Information:

http://www.dealbreaker.com/2006/08/jeffrey_epstein_the_story_so_f.html

• Jeffrey Epstein's early career at Dalton and Bear Stearns.
• His earlier disputes with former business partners and Citigroup.
• Rumors that he left Bear Stearns under an SEC inquiry cloud.
• Also rumored to have been a spook of some sort.
• Mentored by Steven Hoffenberg "now serving a prison term after `bilking investors out of more than $450 million in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.'
• His real estate: private island, huge townhouse in Manhattan, gigantic in new Mexico and a alleged teenage petting zoo mansion in Palm Beach.
• Powerful friends: top scientists, former Harvard president Larry Summers, Daily News publisher Mort Zuckerman and Bill Clinton.
• Thought to have 15 clients but only one is known—the Wexner family, founders of The Limited clothing stores.
• Women.
• Long linked to media mogul Robert Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine Maxwell.
• Said to have also dated a former Miss Sweden and a Romanian model.
• The Case.
• Investigation began after a mother heard her daughter discussing trips to Epstein's place and contacted police.
• Private investigators working for Epstein contacted witnesses during the investigation.
• Disputes arose between prosecutors and police.
• An early plea bargain which would have kept Epstein out of jail fell apart.
• Alan Dershowitz flew to Palm Beach to paint the girls making the allegations against Epstein as lying, thieving, drug and alcohol abusing and unreliable.
• The "Heidi Fleiss" of Palm Beach is alleged to have brought six girls between ages 14 and 18 to Epstein's house for massages
• While admitting that Epstein had girls over to administer massages, Epstein's camp maintains he is innocent of any criminal wrong-doing. One of his lawyers even insists Epstein will emerge from the case with his reputation untarnished.

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Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery

By Landon Thomas Jr.

New York Magainze - October 28, 2002

He's pals with a passel of Nobel Prize–winning scientists, CEOs like Leslie Wexner of the Limited, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, even Donald Trump. But it wasn't until he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker to Africa on his private Boeing 727 that the world began to wonder who he is.

He comes with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies -- to say nothing of a relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize–winning scientists across the country -- and for financial markets around the world. Ever since the Post's "Page Six" ran an item about the president's late-September visit to Africa with Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker -- on his new benefactor's customized Boeing 727 -- the question of the day has been: Who in the world is Jeffrey Epstein?

It's a life full of question marks. Epstein is said to run $15 billion for wealthy clients, yet aside from Limited founder Leslie Wexner, his client list is a closely held secret. A former Dalton math teacher, he maintains a peripatetic salon of brilliant scientists yet possesses no bachelor's degree. For more than ten years, he's been linked to Manhattan-London society figure Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the mysteriously deceased media titan Robert Maxwell, yet he lives the life of a bachelor, logging 600 hours a year in his various planes as he scours the world for investment opportunities. He owns what is said to be Manhattan's largest private house yet runs his business from a 100-acre private island in St. Thomas.

Power on Wall Street has generally accrued to those who have made their open bids for it. Soros. Wasserstein. Kravis. Weill. The Sturm und Drang of their successes and failures has been played out in public. Epstein breaks the mold. Most everyone on the Street has heard of him, but nobody seems to know what the hell he is up to. Which is just the way he likes it.

"My belief is that Jeff maintains some sort of money-management firm, though you won't get a straight answer from him," says one well-known investor. "He once told me he had 300 people working for him, and I've also heard that he manages Rockefeller money. But one never knows. It's like looking at the Wizard of Oz -- there may be less there than meets the eye."

Says another prominent Wall Streeter: "He is this mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure. He likes people to think that he is very rich, and he cultivates this air of aloofness. The whole thing is weird."

The wizard that meets the eye is spare and fit; with a long jaw and a carefully coiffed head of silver hair, he looks like a taller, younger Ralph Lauren. A raspy Brooklyn accent betrays his Coney Island origins. He spends an hour and fifteen minutes every day doing advanced yoga with his personal instructor, who travels with him wherever he goes. He is an enthusiastic member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

He dresses casually -- jeans, open-necked shirts, and sneakers -- and is rarely seen in a tie. Indeed, those close to him say the reason he quit his board seat at the Rockefeller Institute was that he hated wearing a suit. "It feels like a dress," he told one friend.

Epstein likes to tell people that he's a loner, a man who's never touched alcohol or drugs, and one whose nightlife is far from energetic. And yet if you talk to Donald Trump, a different Epstein emerges. "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,'' Trump booms from a speakerphone. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it -- Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

But beautiful women are only a part of it. Because here's the thing about Epstein: As some collect butterflies, he collects beautiful minds. "I invest in people -- be it politics or science. It's what I do," he has said to friends. And his latest prize addition is the former president. In his eyes, Clinton as a species represents the highest evolutionary form of the political animal. To be up close to him, as he was during the African journey, is akin to seeing the rarest of beasts on a safari. As he put it to a friend upon his return from Africa, "If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the room. He is the world's greatest politician."

"Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science," Clinton says through a spokesman. "I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS."

Before Clinton, Epstein's rare appearances in the gossip columns tended to be speculation as to the true nature of his relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell. While they are still friends, the English tabloids have postulated that Maxwell has longed for a more permanent pairing and that for undetermined reasons Epstein has not reciprocated in kind. "It's a mysterious relationship that they have," says society journalist David Patrick Columbia. "In one way, they are soul mates, yet they are hardly companions anymore. It's a nice conventional relationship, where they serve each other's purposes."

Friends of the two say that Maxwell, whose social life has always been higher-octane than Epstein's, lent a little pizzazz to the lower-profile Epstein. Indeed, at a party at Maxwell's house, her friends say, one is just as apt to see Russian ladies of the night as one is to see Prince Andrew. The Oxford-educated Maxwell, described by many as a man-eater (she flies her own helicopter and was recently seen dining with Clinton at Nello's on Madison Avenue), lives in her own townhouse a few blocks away. Epstein is frequently seen around town with a bevy of comely young women but there has been no boldfaced name to replace Maxwell. "You may read about Jeffrey in the social columns, but there is much more to him than that," says Jeffrey T. Leeds of the private equity firm Leeds Weld & Co. "He's a talented money manager and an extremely hardworking person with broad interests. Most unusual, though, is that in this media-obsessed age he is not in any sense a self-promoter."

Born in 1953 and raised in Coney Island, Epstein went to Lafayette High School. According to his bio, he took some classes in physics at Cooper Union from 1969 to 1971. He left Cooper Union in 1971 and attended NYU's Courant Institute, where he took courses in mathematical physiology of the heart, leaving that school, too, without a degree. Between 1973 and 1975, Epstein taught calculus and physics at the Dalton School.

By most accounts, he was something of a Robin Williams–in–Dead Poets Society type of figure, wowing his high-school classes with passionate mathematical riffs. So impressed was one Wall Street father of a student that he said to Epstein point-blank: "What are you doing teaching math at Dalton? You should be working on Wall Street -- why don't you give my friend Ace Greenberg a call."

Epstein was in many respects the perfect candidate for Greenberg's consideration. Greenberg, a senior partner at Bear Stearns at the time and a legendary trader in his own right, has long made it clear that it's the hungry, brilliant guys lacking the fancy degrees that he favors at Bear. They even have an acronym: PSDs -- poor, smart, and a deep desire to be rich. It was a description that fit Epstein to a T. He was a Brooklyn guy with a motor for a brain, and while he did love teaching, this close-up view of the rarefied Upper East Side life of his students' gave him a taste for the big time.

So in 1976, he dropped everything and reported to work at Bear Stearns, where he started off as a junior assistant to a floor trader at the American Stock Exchange. His ascent was rapid.

At the time, options trading was an arcane and dimly understood field, just beginning to take off. To trade options, one had to value them, and to value them, one needed to be able to master such abstruse mathematical confections as the Black-Scholes option-pricing model. For Epstein, breaking down such models was pure sport, and within just a few years he had his own stable of clients. "He was not your conventional broker saying 'Buy IBM' or 'Sell Xerox,' " says Bear Stearns CEO Jimmy Cayne. "Given his mathematical background, we put him in our special-products division, where he would advise our wealthier clients on the tax implications of their portfolios. He would recommend certain tax-advantageous transactions. He is a very smart guy and has become a very important client for the firm as well."

In 1980, Epstein made partner, but he had left the firm by 1981. Working in a bureaucracy was not for him; what's more, in rubbing up against ever greater sums of money during his time at Bear, he began to feel the need to grab his own piece of the action.

In 1982, according to those who know Epstein, he set up his own shop, J. Epstein and Co., which remains his core business today. The premise behind it was simple: Epstein would manage the individual and family fortunes of clients with $1 billion or more. Which is where the mystery deepens. Because according to the lore, Epstein, in 1982, immediately began collecting clients. There were no road shows, no whiz-bang marketing demos -- just this: Jeff Epstein was open for business for those with $1 billion–plus.

His firm would be different, too. He was not here just to offer investment advice; he saw himself as the financial architect of every aspect of his client's wealth -- from investments to philanthropy to tax planning to security to assuaging the guilt and burdens that large sums of inherited wealth can bring on. "I want people to understand the power, the responsibility, and the burden of their money," he said to a colleague at the time.

As a teacher at Dalton, he had witnessed firsthand the troubled attitudes of some of the poor little rich kids under his charge; at Bear, he had come to the realization that, counterintuitively, the more money you had, the more anxious you became. For a middle-class kid from Brooklyn, it just didn't make sense.

From the get-go, his business was successful. But the conditions for investing with Epstein were steep: He would take total control of the billion dollars, charge a flat fee, and assume power of attorney to do whatever he thought was necessary to advance his client's financial cause. And he remained true to the $1 billion entry fee. According to people who know him, if you were worth $700 million and felt the need for the services of Epstein and Co., you would receive a not-so-polite no-thank-you from Epstein.

It's nice work if you can get it. Epstein runs a lean operation, and those close to him say that his actual staff -- based here in Manhattan at the Villard House (home to Le Cirque); New Albany, Ohio; and St. Thomas, where he reincorporated his company seven years ago (now called Financial Trust Co.) -- numbers around 150 and is purely administrative. When it comes to putting these billions to work in the markets, it is Epstein himself making all the investment calls -- there are no analysts or portfolio managers, just twenty accountants to keep the wheels greased and a bevy of assistants -- many of them conspicuously attractive young women -- to organize his hectic life. So assuming, conservatively, a fee of .5 percent (he takes no commissions or percentages) on $15 billion, that makes for a management fee of $75 million a year straight into Jeff Epstein's pocket. Nice work indeed.

It has been rumored that Linda Wachner and David Rockefeller have been clients, too, but both parties deny any such relationship. What's more, who ever heard of a financial adviser turning down $500 million accounts? All the speculation and mystery has proved fertile ground for some alternative Jeffrey Epstein stories -- the most bizarre of which has him playing the piano (he is classically trained) for high rollers in a Manhattan piano bar in the mid-eighties.

Another focus of curiosity is the relationship that Epstein has with his patron and mentor Leslie Wexner, founder and chairman of the Columbus, Ohio–based Limited chain of women's-clothing stores. Wexner, who is said to be worth more than $2.5 billion by Forbes, became an Epstein client in 1987. "It's a weird relationship," says another Wall Streeter who knows Epstein. "It's just not typical for someone of such enormous wealth to all of a sudden give his money to some guy most people have never heard of." The Wexner-Epstein relationship is indeed a multifaceted one.

Given the secrecy that envelops Epstein's client list, some have speculated that Wexner is the primary source of Epstein's lavish life -- but friends leap to his defense. "Let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein has other clients besides Wexner. I know because some of them are my clients," says noted m&a lawyer Dennis Block of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. "I sent him a $500 million client a few years ago and he wouldn't take him. Said the account was too small. Both the client and I were amazed. But that's Jeffrey."

Epstein' s current residence in Manhattan -- a 45,000-square-foot eight-story mansion on East 71st Street -- was originally bought by Wexner for $13 million in 1989. Wexner poured many millions into a full gut renovation, then turned it over to Epstein in 1995 after he got married. One story has Epstein paying only a dollar for it, though others say he paid full market price, which would have been in the neighborhood of $20 million. Epstein then undertook his own $10 million gut renovation (special features: closed-circuit TV and a heated sidewalk in front of the house for melting snow), saying to friends: "I don't want to live in another person's house."

There are other houses as well, including a sweeping villa in Palm Beach and a custom-built 51,000-square-foot castle in Santa Fe. Said to be the largest house in the state, the latter sits atop a hill on a 45,000-acre ranch. He had it built because of the month or so he found himself spending there, talking elementary particle physics with his friend Murray Gell-Man, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and co-chair of the science board at the Santa Fe Institute.

Epstein also owned a grand house (he has since sold it) near Wexner's opulent manse at the center of the Limited magnate's high-end housing development in New Albany, Ohio. New Albany was a lush sprawl of farmland on the outskirts of Columbus that Wexner, starting in 1988, turned into a rich village of multimillion-dollar Georgian homes surrounding a Jack Nicklaus–designed golf course. It was a massive development project, financed largely by Wexner himself. Epstein was a general partner in the real-estate holding company, called New Albany Property, despite putting only a few million dollars of capital into the project.

"Before Epstein came along in 1988, the financial preparations and groundwork for the New Albany development were a total mess," says Bob Fitrakis, a Columbus-based investigative journalist who has written extensively on Wexner and his finances. "Epstein cleaned everything up, as well as serving Wexner in other capacities -- such as facilitating visits to Wexner's home of the crew from Cats and organizing a Tony Randall song-and-dance show put on in Columbus." Wexner declines to talk about his relationship with Epstein, but it is clearly one that continues to this day. Not that it helped Epstein in any way to land Clinton. Wexner is a staunch Republican donor, and Epstein, aside from a small contribution to the president's legal-defense fund, has given more to the likes of former senator Al D'Amato.

What attracted Clinton to Epstein was quite simple: He had a plane (he has a couple, in fact -- the Boeing 727, in which he took Clinton to Africa, and, for shorter jaunts, a black Gulfstream, a Cessna 421, and a helicopter to ferry him from his island to St. Thomas). Clinton had organized a weeklong tour of South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique to do what Clinton does. So when the president's advance man Doug Band pitched the idea to Epstein, he said sure. As an added bonus, Kevin Spacey, a close friend of Clinton's, and actor Chris Tucker came along for the ride.

While Epstein got an intellectual kick out of engaging African finance ministers in theoretical chitchat about economic development, the real payoff for him was observing Clinton in his métier: talking HIV/aids policy with African leaders and soaking up the love from Cape Town to Lagos.

Epstein brings a trophy-hunter's zeal to his collection of scientists and politicians. But the real charge for him is in seeing these guys work it. Like former Democratic Senate leader George Mitchell, for example. In Epstein's mind, Mitchell is the world's greatest negotiator, based on his work in Ireland and the Middle East. So he wrote the senator a bunch of checks. Says Mitchell: "He has supported some philanthropic projects of mine and organized a fund-raiser for me once. I would certainly call him a friend and a supporter."

But it is his covey of scientists that inspires Epstein's true rapture. Epstein spends $20 million a year on them -- encouraging them to engage in whatever kind of cutting-edge research might attract their fancy. They are, of course, quite lavish in their praise in return. Gerald Edelman won the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine in 1972 and now presides over the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. "Jeff is extraordinary in his ability to pick up on quantitative relations," says Edelman. "He came to see us recently. He is concerned with this basic question: Is it true that the brain is not a computer? He is very quick."

Then there is Stephen Kosslyn, a psychologist at Harvard. Epstein flew up to Kosslyn's laboratory in Cambridge this year to witness an experiment that Kosslyn was conducting and Epstein was funding. Namely: Is it true that certain Tibetan monks are capable of holding a distinct mental image in their minds for twenty minutes straight? "We disproved the thesis," says Kosslyn. "Jeff was on his cell phone most of the time -- he actually wanted to short the Tibetan market, because he thought the monk was so stupid. He is amazing. Like a honeybee -- he talks to all these different people and cross-pollinates. Just two months ago, I was talking to him about a new alternative to evolutionary psychology. He got excited and sent me a check."

Epstein has a particularly close relationship with Martin Nowak, an Austrian biology and mathematics professor who heads the theoretical-biology program at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Nowak is examining how game theory can be used to answer some of the basic evolutionary questions -- e.g., why, in our Darwinian society, does altruistic behavior exist? Epstein talks to Nowak about once a week and flies him around the country to his various homes to deliver impromptu lectures. Over the past three years, he has written $500,000 worth of checks to fund Nowak's research. This past February, Epstein had Nowak over for dinner at the 71st Street townhouse. It was just the two of them (not including the wait staff), and Nowak, making use of a blackboard in the formal dining room, delivered a two-hour highly mathematical description of how language works.

After dinner, Epstein asked if Nowak wanted to meet up with his new friend President Clinton, and off they went to a nearby deli, where Clinton regaled the starstruck former Oxford professor with tales from his own Oxford days. "Jeffrey has the mind of a physicist. It's like talking to a colleague in your field," says Nowak. "Sometimes he applies what we talk about to his investments. Sometimes it's for his own curiosity. He has changed my life. Because of his support, I feel I can do anything I want."

Danny Hillis, an MIT-educated computer scientist whose company, Thinking Machines, was at the forefront of the supercomputing world in the eighties, and who used to run R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, thinks Epstein is actually using scientific knowledge to beat the markets. "We talk about currency trading -- the euro, the real, the yen," he says. "He has something a physicist would call physical intuition. He knows when to use the math and when to throw it away. If I had acted upon all the investment advice he has been giving me over the years, I'd be calling you from my Gulfstream right now."

On the 727 these days, he has been reading a book by E. O. Wilson, the eminent scientist and originator of the field of sociobiology, called Consilience, which makes the case that the boundaries between scientific disciplines are in the process of breaking down. It's a view Epstein himself holds. He wrote recently to a scientist friend of his: "The behavior of termites, together with ants and bees, is a precursor to trust because they have an extraordinary ability to form relationships and sophisticated social structures based on mutual altruism even though individually they are fundamentally dumb. Money itself is a derivative of trust. If we can figure out how termites come together, then we may be able to better understand the underlying principles of market behavior -- and make big money."

So how do termite grouping patterns fare as an investment strategy? Again, facts are hard to come by. A working day for Epstein starts at 5 a.m., when he gets up and scours the world markets on his Bloomberg screen -- each of his houses, in New York, St. Thomas, Palm Beach, and New Mexico, as well as the 727, is equipped with the necessary hardware for him to wake up, roll out of bed, and start trading. He will put some calls in to his private banker at JPMorgan to get a reading as to how wealthy investors -- the best gauge of market sentiment, he believes -- are reacting to the market's movements. Then he will call currency traders in Europe. On a given day, he will spend ten hours or so on the phone -- after all, he is running $15 billion essentially by himself.

Strangely enough, given his scientific obsessions, he is a computer-phobe and does not use e-mail. "I like to hear voices and see faces when I interact," he has said. Given the huge sums he has to invest, he focuses on assets with extremely high liquidity, like currencies -- though he dabbles in commodities and real estate as well. Those who know him say he is an impulsive, quick-to-change-his-mind trader, still governed by Ace Greenberg's trader's maxim: If the stock is down 10 percent, sell it. He has been on the short side of the Brazilian real, and those close to him say bets there have paid off in spades. He recently took a long position on the euro before its rebound on the basis that Europeans were too proud to see their currency sink any lower against the dollar. His next targets: an across-the-board short of the German stock exchange and a possible attack on the Hong Kong dollar peg in light of the recent disclosure of North Korea's nuclear-weapons program.

None of this is investment rocket science, but getting the direction and the timing right, no matter how conventional the investment idea, can spin large money for an investor. Before taking a big position, Epstein will usually fly to the country in question. He recently spent a week in Germany meeting with various government officials and financial types, and he has a trip to Brazil coming up in the next few weeks. On all of these trips, he flies alone in his commercial-jet-size 727.

Friends of Epstein say he is horrified at the recent swell of media attention around him (Vanity Fair is preparing a megaprofile, and the Villard House office has had a barrage of calls from other media outlets). He has never granted a formal interview, and did not offer one to this magazine, nor has his picture appeared in any publication. Yet for one so obsessive about his privacy, one wonders -- didn't he realize that flying Clinton and Spacey around Africa was going to blow his cover? As he said to a friend: "If my ultimate goal was to stay private, traveling with Clinton was a bad move on the chessboard. I recognize that now. But you know what? Even Kasparov makes them. You move on."

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Letter from the Palm Beach Police Department
Michael S. Reiter (Chief of Police) - May 1, 2006

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Billionaire solicited prostitutes 3 times, indictment says
By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post - Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Billionaire money manager and Palm Beach part-time resident Jeffrey Epstein solicited or procured prostitutes three or more times between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31 of last year, according to an indictment charging him with felony solicitation of prostitution.

Epstein, 53, was booked at the Palm Beach County jail at 1:45 a.m. Sunday. He was released on $3,000 bond.

Epstein's case is unusual in that suspected prostitution johns are usually charged with a misdemeanor, and even a felony charge is typically made in a criminal information — an alternative to an indictment charging a person with the commission of a crime.

His attorney, Jack Goldberger, declined to discuss the charge.

State attorney's office spokesman Mike Edmondson also had little to say.

"Generally speaking, there is a case that has a number of different aspects to it," Edmondson said of a prostitution-related charge being submitted to a grand jury. "We first became aware of the case months ago by Palm Beach police."

Prosecutors and police worked together to bring the case to the grand jury, he said.

Palm Beach police confirmed that and said the department will release a report today regarding its investigation.

Epstein has owned a five-bedroom, 7 1/2 -bath, 7,234-square-foot home with a pool and a boat dock on the Intracoastal Waterway since 1990, according to property records. A man answering the door there Monday said that Epstein wasn't home. A Cadillac Escalade registered to him was parked in the driveway, which is flanked by two massive gargoyles.

Epstein sued Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits in 2001, contending that the assessment of his home exceeded its fair market value. He dismissed his lawsuit in December 2002.

A profile of Epstein in Vanity Fair magazine said he owns what are believed to be the largest private homes in Manhattan — 51,000 square feet — and in New Mexico — a 7,500-acre ranch. Those are in addition to his 70-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands and fleet of aircraft.

Epstein's friends and admirers, according to the magazine, include prominent businessmen, academics and scientists and famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

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After long probe, Palm Beach billionaire faces solicitation charges

By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post Staff - Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein paid to have underage girls and young women brought to his home, where he received massages and sometimes sex, according to an investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department.

Palm Beach police spent months sifting through Epstein's trash and watching his waterfront home and Palm Beach International Airport to keep tabs on his private jet. An indictment charging Epstein, 53, was unsealed Monday, charging him with one count of felony solicitation of prostitution.

Palm Beach police thought there was probable cause to charge Epstein with unlawful sex acts with a minor and lewd and lascivious molestation.

Police Chief Michael Reiter was so angry with State Attorney Barry Krischer's handling of the case that he wrote a memo suggesting the county's top prosecutor disqualify himself.

"I must urge you to examine the unusual course that your office's handling of this matter has taken and consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification from the prosecution of these cases," Reiter wrote in a May 1 memo to Krischer.

While not commenting specifically on the Epstein case, Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the state attorney, said his office presents cases other than murders to a grand jury when there are questions about witnesses' credibility and their ability to testify.

By the nature of their jobs, police officers look at evidence from a "one-sided perspective," Edmondson said. "A prosecutor has to look at it in a much broader fashion," weighing the veracity of witnesses and how they may fare under defense attorneys' questioning, he said.

Epstein's attorney, Jack Goldberger, said his client committed no crimes.

"The reports and statements in question refer to false accusations that were not charged because the Palm Beach County state attorney questioned the credibility of the witnesses," Goldberger said. A county grand jury "found the allegations wholly unsubstantiated and not credible," and that's why his client was not charged with sexual activity with minors, he said.

Goldberger said Epstein passed a lie detector test administered by a reputable polygraph examiner in which he said he did not know the girls were minors. Also, a search warrant served on Epstein's home found no evidence to corroborate the girls' allegations, Goldberger said.

According to police documents:

• A Palm Beach Community College student said she gave Epstein a massage in the nude, then brought him six girls, ages 14 to 16, for massage and sex-tinged sessions at his home.

• A 27-year-old woman who worked as Epstein's personal assistant also facilitated the liaisons, phoning the PBCC student to arrange for girls when Epstein was coming to town. And she escorted the girls upstairs when they arrived, putting fresh sheets on a massage table and placing massage oils nearby.

• Police took sworn statements from five alleged victims and 17 witnesses. They contend that on three occasions, Epstein had sex with the girls.

A money manager for the ultra-rich, Epstein was named one of New York's most eligible bachelors in 2003 by The New York Post. He reportedly hobnobs with the likes of former President Clinton, former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers and Donald Trump, and has lavish homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.

He has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party candidates and organizations, including Sen. John Kerry's presidential bid, and the Senate campaigns of Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Charles Schumer.

Goldberger is one of five attorneys Epstein has retained since he became the subject of an investigation, Edmondson said. Among the others: Alan Dershowitz, the well-known Harvard law professor and author, who is a friend of Epstein. Dershowitz could not be reached for comment.

Police said the woman who enlisted young girls for Epstein was Haley Robson, 20, of Royal Palm Beach. Robson has worked at an Olive Garden restaurant in Wellington and said she was a journalism major at Palm Beach Community College when she was questioned by police last October. She has an unlisted phone number and could not be reached for comment.

Robson said she met Epstein when, at age 17, a friend asked her if she would like to make money giving him a massage. She said she was driven to his five-bedroom, 7 1/2 -bath home on the Intracoastal Waterway, then escorted upstairs to a bedroom with a massage table and oils. Epstein and Robson were both naked during the massage, she said, but when he grabbed her buttocks, she said she didn't want to be touched.

Epstein said he'd pay her to bring him more girls — the younger the better, Robson told police. When she tried once to bring a 23-year-old woman to him, Epstein said she was too old, Robson said.

Robson, who has not been charged in the case, said she eventually brought six girls to Epstein who were paid $200 each time, Robson said. "I'm like a Heidi Fleiss," police quoted her as saying. The girls knew what to expect when they were taken to Epstein's home, Robson said. Give a massage — maybe naked — and allow some touching.

One 14-year-old girl Robson took to meet Epstein led police to start the investigation of him in March 2005. A relative of the girl called to say she thought the child had recently engaged in sex with a Palm Beach man. The girl then got into a fight with a classmate who accused her of being a prostitute, and she couldn't explain why she had $300 in her purse.

The girl gave police this account of her meeting with Epstein:

She accompanied Robson and a second girl to Epstein's house on a Sunday in February 2005. Once there, a woman she thought was Epstein's assistant told the girl to follow her upstairs to a room featuring a mural of a naked woman, several photographs of naked women on a shelf, a hot pink and green sofa and a massage table.

She stripped to her bra and panties and gave him a massage.

Epstein gave the 14-year-old $300 and she and the other girls left, she said. She said Robson told her that Epstein paid her $200 that day.

Other girls told similar stories. In most accounts, Epstein's personal assistant at the time, Sarah Kellen, now 27, escorted the girls to Epstein's bedroom.

Kellen, whose most recent known address is in North Carolina, has not been charged in the case.

Palm Beach police often conducted surveillance of Epstein's home, and at Palm Beach International Airport to see if his private jet was there, so they would know when he was in town. Police also arranged repeatedly to receive his trash from Palm Beach sanitation workers, collecting papers with names and phone numbers, sex toys and female hygiene products.

One note stated that a female could not come over at 7 p.m. because of soccer. Another said a girl had to work Sunday — "Monday after school?" And still another note contained the work hours of a girl, saying she leaves school at 11:30 a.m. and would come over the next day at 10:30 a.m.

Only three months before the police department probe began, Epstein donated $90,000 to the department for the purchase of a firearms simulator, said Jane Struder, town finance director. The purchase was never made. The money was returned to Epstein on Monday, she said.

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Billionaire and Bill Clinton Pal Arrested for Solicitation of Underaged Girls

By Jim Kouri

AXcess News - July 26, 2006

(AXcess News) New York - Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by police on charges of solicitation after detectives from the Palm Beach, Florida Police Department conducted what they termed "an in-depth investigation."

The police report alleges that Epstein was paying underaged girls and young adult women to massage and have sex with him. On Monday, the court records were unsealed, which revealed that he faces the charge of felony solicitation for prostitution.

The Palm Beach police chief and his officers, including detectives assigned to the case, were outraged that Epstein wasn't charged with more crimes. Cops, both on and off the record, said they were furious with the county prosecutor and the State Attorney's office for the way in which this case was handled.

Police Chief Michael Reiter was so angry that he wrote a letter to the state attorney complaining about the case and requesting that the prosecutor be taken off the case and replaced with one who would move to obtain a superseding indictment with addition charges.

The state attorney's office claims that the police department looks at the evidence from a different perspective (i.e., from the courtroom's standpoint).

The Palm Beach County prosecutor's office was embroiled in controversy for three years when they pursued a far-reaching drug investigation of conservative talk show icon Rush Limbaugh. There were accusations that the county prosecutor, a Democrat, leaked information to the news media regarding the Limbaugh case.

Epstein is pals with former President Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and is known to contribute tens of thousands of dollars to the Democrat Party.

Epstein's attorney stated that his client did not commit any crimes. His attorney also stated that his client passed a lie detector test stating the he was not aware that the girls were minors. Lie detector tests are not admissible in a criminal court.

However, police officers counter Epstein's lawyers claims by saying they have irrefutable evidence including sworn affidavits from five alleged victims -- some who were underaged when they allegedly had sex with Epstein -- and 17 witnesses.

Jeffrey Epstein was called an international mystery money man who appeared on the news media's radar when he jetted to African on his private Boeing with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Chris Rock. New York Magazine in 2003 stated that he was a man known to love the ladies and was very secretive about his financial endeavors. The article claims no one really knows how he makes his billions of dollars.

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Billionaire's lawyer tried to discredit teen girls, police say

By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post - July 29, 2006

Famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz met with the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office and provided damaging information about teenage girls who say they gave his client, Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, sexually charged massages, according to police reports.

The reports also state that another Epstein attorney agreed to a plea bargain that would have allowed Epstein to have no criminal record. His current attorney denies this happened.

And the documents also reveal that the father of at least one girl complained that private investigators aggressively followed his car, photographed his home and chased off visitors.

Police also talked to somebody who said she was offered money if she refused to cooperate with the Palm Beach Police Department probe of Epstein.

The state attorney's office said it presented the Epstein case to a county grand jury this month rather than directly charging Epstein because of concerns about the girls' credibility. The grand jury indicted Epstein, 53, on a single count of felony solicitation of prostitution, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Police believed there was probable cause to charge Epstein with the more serious crimes of unlawful sex acts with a minor and lewd and lascivious molestation. Police Chief Michael Reiter was so angry that he wrote State Attorney Barry Krischer a memo in May suggesting he disqualify himself from the case.

The case originally was going to be presented to the grand jury in February, but was postponed after Dershowitz produced information gleaned from the Web site myspace.com showing some of the alleged victims commenting on alcohol and marijuana use, according to the police report prepared by Detective Joseph Recarey.

Haley Robson, a 20-year-old Royal Palm Beach woman who told police she recruited girls for Epstein, also is profiled on myspace.com. Her page includes photos of her and her friends, including one using the name "Pimpin' Made EZ." Robson, who was not charged in the case, is a potential prosecution witness.

According to Recarey, prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek offered Epstein attorneys Dershowitz and Guy Fronstin a plea deal in April. Fronstin, after speaking with Epstein, accepted the deal, in which Epstein would plead guilty to one count of aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony, be placed on five years' probation and have no criminal record. The deal also called for Epstein to submit to a psychiatric and sexual evaluation and have no unsupervised visits with minors, according to Recarey's report. The plea bargain was made in connection with only one of the five alleged victims, the report states.

Fronstin — who declined to comment on the case — was subsequently fired and veteran defense attorney Jack Goldberger was hired. He denies there was any agreement by any of Epstein's attorneys to a plea deal.

"We absolutely did not agree to a plea in this case," he said. Neither Belohlavek nor a state attorney's spokesman could be reached for comment.

The parent or parents of alleged victims who complained of being harassed by private investigators provided license tag numbers of two of the men. Police found the vehicles were registered to a private eye in West Palm Beach and another in Jupiter, according to Recarey's report.

"I have no knowledge of it," defense attorney Goldberger said.

The report also says a woman connected to the Epstein case was contacted by somebody who was still in touch with Epstein. That person told her she would be compensated if she didn't cooperate with police, Recarey's report says. Those who did talk "will be dealt with," the woman said she was told. Phone records show the woman talked with the person who allegedly intimidated her around the time she said, Recarey reported.

Phone records also show that the person said to have made the threat then placed a call to Epstein's personal assistant, who in turn called a New York corporation affiliated with Epstein, the report states.

The issue in the Epstein case is not whether females came to his waterfront home, but whether he knew their ages.

"He's never denied girls came to the house," Goldberger said. But when Epstein was given a polygraph test, "he passed on knowledge of age," the attorney said.

After the indictment against Epstein was unsealed this week, Police Chief Reiter referred the matter to the FBI. "We've received the referral, and we're reviewing it," said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela in Miami.

The chief himself has come under attack from Epstein's lawyers and friends in New York, where he has a home. The New York Post quoted Epstein's prominent New York lawyer, Gerald Lefcourt, as saying his client was indicted only "because of the craziness of the police chief."

Reiter has declined to comment on the case.

Prosecutors have not presented a sex-related case like Epstein's to a grand jury before, said Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the state attorney's office. "That's what you do with a case that falls into a gray area," he said.

The state attorney's office did not recommend a particular criminal charge on which to indict Epstein, Edmondson said. The grand jury was presented with a list of charges from highest to lowest, then deliberated with the prosecutor out of the room, he said.

"People are surprised at the grand jury proceeding," West Palm Beach defense attorney Richard Tendler said. "It's a way for the prosecutor's office to not take the full responsibility for not filing the (charge), and not doing what the Palm Beach Police Department wanted. I think something fell apart with those underage witnesses."

Defense attorney Robert Gershman was a prosecutor for six years. "Those girls must have been incredible or untrustworthy, I don't know," he said.

Other attorneys said Epstein's case raises the issue of whether wealthy, connected defendants like Epstein — whose friends include former President Clinton and Donald Trump — are treated differently from others. Once he knew he was the subject of a criminal probe, Epstein hired a phalanx of powerful attorneys such as Dershowitz and Lefcourt, who is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Miami lawyer Roy Black — who became nationally known when he successfully defended William Kennedy Smith on a rape charge in Palm Beach — also was involved at one point.

Said defense attorney Michelle Suskauer: "I think it's unfortunate the public may get the perception that with power, you may be treated differently than the average Joe."

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Billionaire Harvard Donor Arrested For Soliciting Prostitutes

Epstein donated $30 million to Harvard in 2003; Law professor Dershowitz has been hired to defend Epstein

By Katherine M. Gray

Harvard Crimson - July 31, 2006

Billionaire money manager Jeffrey Epstein, who donated $30 million to Harvard in 2003, has been charged with soliciting sex from prostitutes in his Palm Beach, Florida mansion—and has hired Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz to serve in his defense.

According to an indictment that was unsealed last week, Epstein allegedly solicited sex at least three times between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31 of last year. According to a police report, the Palm Beach Police Department believes it has probable cause to charge Epstein with four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and of lewd and lascivious molestation.

Epstein has retained Dershowitz as part of his defense team, according to the Palm Beach Post. The paper reported the case was going to be presented to a grand jury in February but was postponed after Dershowitz produced information further weakening the girls' credibility.

Dershowitz attempted to discredit the reliability of the girls' testimony by providing information from some of the girls' myspace.com profiles in which they mentioned alcohol and marijuana use, the Post reported.

Epstein donated $30 million in February 2003 to fund the research of mathematical biologist Martin A. Nowak, who is the director of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.

It is unclear if Harvard will return any of Epstein's donation. Neither Nowak nor University President Derek C. Bok could be reached for comment Monday.

The New York Daily News has reported that New York State Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer, who is currently running for Governor, has returned an approximately $50,000 gift from Epstein. And Mark A. Green, who is running to replace Spitzer as attorney general, has returned a $10,000 donation, according to the Daily News.

In April, Epstein lawyer Guy Fronstin accepted a plea deal that would have the billionaire plead guilty to one count of aggravated assault with intent to commit a felony, and would give him five years' probation but no criminal record, according to the Post. That deal was to only apply to one of the five alleged victims.

Fronstin has since been fired, and a new defense attorney, Jack A. Goldberger, said that no such plea deal was made by any of Epstein's attorneys, according to the Post.

Goldberger and Dershowitz could not be reached for comment Monday.

According to a police report released last week, someone contacted a woman involved in the case and told her that she would be compensated for not cooperating with the police. The woman said she was told that those who did talk to the police "would be dealt with," according to the Post.

Goldberger told the Post that while his client did host women at his house, at issue was whether Epstein knew how old they were.

"He's never denied girls came to the house," Goldberger told the Post.

According to the probable cause affidavit released by the Palm Beach Police Department, one of the girls Epstein solicited for sexual acts was a 16-year-old girl who performed sexual acts for him in his bedroom on several occasions over a span of two years.

The woman, whose name was blotted from the affidavit, told the police that she would completely remove her clothes and begin massaging Epstein's back, while he lay on a massage table, wearing only a towel. She would then massage his chest, and Epstein would begin to masturbate both himself and the woman.

The woman told the police that Epstein asked for her age and knew she was 16. She said that Epstein had asked her and another female to have intercourse in front of him, and that he also performed oral intercourse on both of them.

On one occasion when the women were fondling each other, Epstein allegedly grabbed the 16-year old woman, turned her over on to her stomach on the massage table, and forcibly penetrated her vagina with his penis.

"She said her head was being held against the table forcibly, as he continued to pump inside her," according to the affidavit. "She screamed `No!' and Epstein stopped." Epstein apologized and paid the woman $1000 for that massage, according to the affidavit.

Epstein, who in 2003 was named one of New York's most eligible bachelors by the New York Post, achieved fame after he took then-President Clinton on an African AIDS awareness tour on his personal jet.

In a 2002 New York Magazine article, Donald Trump described long-time friend Epstein as "a lot of fun to be with."

"It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life," Trump said.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the reporting of this article.

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Ignorance of age not valid defense in sex cases, expert says

By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post - Friday, August 04, 2006

Even if Palm Beach money manager Jeffrey Epstein didn't know that girls who police say gave him sexual massages at his Intracoastal home were under the legal age, that alone wouldn't have exempted him from criminal charges of sexual activity with minors.

"Ignorance is not a valid defense," said Bob Dekle, a legal skills professor who was a Lake City prosecutor for nearly 30 years, half of that time specializing in sex crimes against children.

"There is no knowledge element as far as the age is concerned," Dekle said.

After an 11-month investigation, Palm Beach police said there was probable cause to charge Epstein, 53, with unlawful sex acts with a minor and lewd and lascivious molestation. They contend that Epstein — friend of the rich and famous and financial patron of Democratic Party organizations and candidates — committed those acts with five underage girls.

In the past week, New York Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer has returned about $50,000 in campaign contributions he received from Epstein, and Mark Green, a candidate to replace Spitzer in his current job, has returned $10,000 to him because of the Palm Beach scandal, the New York Daily News has reported.

Rather than file charges, the state attorney's office presented the case to a county grand jury. The panel indicted Epstein last week on a single, less serious charge of felony solicitation of prostitution.

The case raised eyebrows because the state attorney's office rarely, if ever, kicks such charges to a grand jury. And it increases the difficulty of prosecuting child sex abuse cases, especially when the defendant is enormously wealthy and can hire high-priced, top-tier lawyers.

At least one of Epstein's alleged victims told police he knew she was underage when the two of them got naked for massages and sexual activity. She was 16 years old at the time and said Epstein asked her questions about her high school, according to police reports.

A girl who said she met Epstein when she was 15 said he told her if she told anybody what happened at his house, bad things could happen, the police reports state.

Epstein's youngest alleged victim was 14 when she says she gave him a massage that included some sexual activity. She is now 16. The girl's father says he doesn't know whether she told Epstein her age.

"My daughter has kept a lot of what happened from me because of sheer embarrassment," he said. "But she very much looked 14. Any prudent man would have had second thoughts about that."

Defense attorney Jack Goldberger maintains that not only did Epstein pass a polygraph test showing he did not know the girls were minors, but their stories weren't credible. The state attorney's office also implied that their credibility was an issue when it decided not to charge Epstein directly, but instead give the case to the grand jury.

"A prosecutor has to look at it in a much broader fashion," a state attorney's spokesman said last week.

Epstein hired Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz when he became aware he was under investigation, and Dershowitz gave prosecutors information that some of the alleged victims had spoke of using alcohol and marijuana on a popular Web site, according to a Palm Beach police report.

Prosecutors typically consider two things in deciding whether to charge somebody with sex-related offenses against minors — whether there is sufficient evidence and whether there is a public interest in doing so, Dekle said.

If two teens are in a sexual relationship and the boy turns 18 before the girl, he could be charged with a sex crime if the sex continues. There would be no public interest in pursuing that, Dekle said.

But where there is a large gap in ages — and especially in cases of teachers with students — there is a public interest in prosecuting, he said. Likewise if the accused has a track record of sex with minors.

Still there is a "universal constant" in prosecuting these cases, Dekle said. Men who exploit underage children for sex often carefully choose their victims in ways that will minimize the risk to them, he said.

Victims usually are from a lower social status, and they may suffer from psychological problems, Dekle said.

"Lots of child sexual abuse victims have been victimized by multiple people over a period of time. Then the act of abuse produces behavior in the victims that further damages their credibility." Examples include promiscuous behavior and drug abuse.

Some of the alleged victims in the Epstein case returned to his home multiple times for the massage sessions and the $200 to $300 he typically paid them per visit. "That would be a definite problem for the prosecutor," said Betty Resch, who prosecuted crimes against children in Palm Beach County for five years and now is in private practice in Lake Worth.

"The victim becomes less sympathetic" to a jury, Resch said. "But she's a victim nevertheless. She's a kid."

Most men charged with sex crimes against minors look normal, Dekle said. A jury expecting to see a monster seldom will. And the victims' ages work against them and in favor of the defendant in a trial, Dekle said.

If a child and an adult tell different stories and both swear they're telling the truth, adult jurors are more likely to believe the adult, Dekle said.

"You have all these things working against you in a child sex abuse case. Prosecutors normally try to be very careful in filing those cases because they know what they're getting into. There is no such thing as an iron-clad child sexual abuse case."

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Epstein camp calls female accusers liars

By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post - Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Epstein's Palm Beach home

Attorneys and publicists for Palm Beach financier Jeffrey Epstein went on the offensive Monday, contending that teenage girls who have accused Epstein of sexual shenanigans at his waterfront home are liars and saying that the Palm Beach Police Department is "childish."

"There never was any sex between Jeffrey Epstein and any underage women," his lead attorney, Jack Goldberger, said from Idaho where he was vacationing with his family.

Epstein did have young women come to his house to give him massages, Goldberger said. "Mr. Epstein absolutely insisted anybody who came to his house be over the age of 18. How he verified that, I don't know. The question is, did anything illegal occur. The law was not violated here."

He had no explanation as to why Epstein would pay girls or women with no massage training — as the alleged victims said was the case — $200 to $300 for their visits. "The credibility of these witnesses has been seriously questioned," Goldberger said.

Epstein, 53, was indicted by a county grand jury last month on a charge of felony solicitation of prostitution. After an 11-month investigation that included sifting through Epstein's trash and surveilling his home, Palm Beach police concluded there was enough evidence to charge him with sexual activity with minors. When the grand jury indicted Epstein on the less serious charge, Police Chief Michael Reiter referred the case to the FBI to determine whether there were federal law violations.

After a spate of stories about the case last week, New York publicist Dan Klores — whose client list has included Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez — said on Saturday that Epstein's camp was ready "to get their story out."

They did that Monday via Goldberger and a Los Angeles publicist for Miami criminal defense attorney Roy Black, who also has represented Epstein in the case.

"We just think there has been a distorted view of this case in the media presented by the Palm Beach police," Goldberger said.

Reiter has consistently declined to comment on the case and did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

The implication that State Attorney Barry Krischer was easy on Epstein by presenting the case to a grand jury rather than filing charges directly against him is wrong, Goldberger said.

The Palm Beach Police Department was "happy and ecstatic" that the panel was going to review the evidence. "I think what happened is they weren't happy with the result. They decided to use the press to embarrass Mr. Epstein."

But records show that Reiter wrote Krischer on May 1 — well before the case went to the grand jury — suggesting that Krischer "consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification from the prosecution of these cases."

Rather than flat-out decline to charge Epstein, Krischer referred the case to the grand jury to "appease" the chief, Goldberger said.

A state attorney's spokesman would say only that the office refers cases to the grand jury when there are issues with the viability of the evidence or witnesses' credibility.

Both the state attorney and the grand jury concluded there was not sufficient evidence that Epstein had sex with minors, according to Goldberger. "It was just a childish performance by the Palm Beach Police Department," Goldberger said.

The defense attorney said one of the alleged victims who claimed she was a minor was in fact over the age of 18. Another alleged victim who was subpoenaed to testify to the grand jury failed to do so. Epstein's accusers, he added, have histories of drug abuse and thefts. "These women are liars. We've established that."

But why would they all invent their stories about meeting Epstein for sexual massages?

"I don't have an answer as to what was the motivation for these women to come forward and make these allegations," Goldberger said.

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Police chief's reputation helps discredit attacks

By Larry Keller

Palm Beach Post  - Monday, August 14, 2006

In the case of Palm Beach financier Jeffrey Epstein, it seems, at times, as if two men are accused of wrongdoing: Epstein and Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter.

Epstein, 53, was indicted last month on a charge of felony solicitation of prostitution solely because of Reiter's "craziness," one of Epstein's lawyers said. His department disseminated "a distorted view of the case" and behaved in a "childish" manner when the grand jury didn't indict Epstein on the charges it sought, another Epstein lawyer complained.

To hear the Epstein camp tell it, Reiter, 48, is a loose cannon better suited to be the sheriff of Mayberry. They whisper that he's embroiled in a messy divorce.

Reiter did in fact file for divorce from his wife, (NAME REMOVED), last year, after 24 years of marriage. They have a son, 18, and a daughter, 14. The couple is scheduled to go to mediation next week, Aug. 16. Nothing in the court file suggests their split is particularly ugly.

Reiter incurred the wrath of the Epstein camp as well as the state attorney's office for two reasons. First, he pressed for Epstein to be charged with the more serious crimes of sexual activity with minors. Second, he slammed State Attorney Barry Krischer in blunt language seldom used by one law-enforcement official concerning another because of what he perceived as that office's mishandling of the case.

In a letter to Krischer written May 1, Reiter called his actions in the Epstein case "highly unusual." He added, "I must urge you to... consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification from the prosecution of these cases."

In short, Reiter told the county's top prosecutor for the past 13 years that he ought to get off the case. "It looks like a departure from professionalism," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said of Reiter's letter.

Following Epstein's indictment, Reiter referred the case to the FBI to determine whether the super-rich, super-connected defendant had violated any federal laws.

Reiter won't discuss the case or the broadsides aimed at him. But others almost uniformly use one word to describe the chief: professional.

"I have always been impressed by Mike's professionalism and his leadership," said Rick Lincoln, chief of the Lantana Police Department and a Palm Beach County cop for 32 years.

"The town of Palm Beach has a very professional police department. We all consider Mike to be our peer and a man of integrity."

Juno Beach Police Chief H.C. Clark II agreed. Although he doesn't know Reiter well, he has met with him on countywide law enforcement issues. "I've never seen him lose his cool. I've never seen anything but a professional demeanor from him."

Reiter joined the Palm Beach Police Department in 1981, leaving a $20,000-a-year patrol job at the University of Pittsburgh. His personnel jacket shows consistently excellent job evaluations.

Posh Palm Beach is no hotbed of crime, and in his first year on the job, a resident confined to his home with a sick child thanked Reiter for delivering a few Cokes to the house. Reiter refused payment for the beverages. Another resident thanked Reiter for shutting off his car's headlights in his driveway, saying a valet must have been at fault.

Reiter worked everything from road patrol to organized crime, vice and narcotics. And he's no novice at investigations involving the island's rich and famous. He was the lead detective probing the drug overdose death of David Kennedy in 1984. He also was one of the officers who worked the investigation of William Kennedy Smith, who was charged in 1991 — and later acquitted — with raping a woman at the Kennedy family compound in Palm Beach.

Reiter, who has a master's degree in human resource development from Palm Beach Atlantic University, also has attended the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va., and management courses at Harvard. He's been active in countywide interagency law enforcement organizations and has a "top secret" national security clearance.

"He has a perspective that's broader than just addressing the needs of the town," said Town Manager Peter Elwell, who promoted Reiter from assistant chief to chief in March 2001. Reiter makes more than $144,000 as the town's top cop. Elwell thinks he's worth it.

"He's very businesslike, very straightforward. He's not easily agitated or flamboyant. He's about the work," Elwell said. "I think that his service as chief has been outstanding in five-plus years."

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Jeffrey Epstein craved big homes, elite friends - and, investigators say, underage girls

By Andrew Marra

Palm Beach Post - Monday, August 14, 2006

WINGED GARGOYLES guarded the gate at Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion. Inside, hidden cameras trolled two rooms, while the girls came and went.

For the police detectives who sifted through the garbage outside and kept records of visitors, it was the lair of a troubling target.

Epstein, one of the most mysterious of the country's mega-rich, was known as much for his secrecy as for his love of fine things: magnificent homes, private jets, beautiful women, friendships with the world's elite.

But at Palm Beach police headquarters, he was becoming known for something else: the regular arrival of teenage girls he hired to give him massages and, police say, perform sexual favors.

Epstein was different from most sexual abuse suspects; he was far more powerful. He counted among his friends former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, along with some of the most prominent legal, scientific and business minds in the country.

When detectives started asking questions and teenage girls started talking, a wave of legal resistance followed.

If Palm Beach police didn't know quite who Jeffrey Epstein was, they found out soon enough.

Epstein, now 53, was a quintessential man of mystery. He amassed his fortune and friends quietly, always in the background as he navigated New York high society.

When he first attracted notice in the early 1990s, it was on account of the woman he was dating: Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell.

In a lengthy article, headlined "The Mystery of Ghislaine Maxwell's Secret Love," the British Mail on Sunday tabloid laid out speculative stories that the socialite's beau was a CIA spook, a math teacher, a concert pianist or a corporate headhunter.

"But what is the truth about him?" the newspaper wondered. "Like Maxwell, Epstein is both flamboyant and intensely private."

The media frenzy did not begin in full until a decade later. In September 2002, Epstein was flung into the limelight when he flew Clinton and actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa on his private jet.

Suddenly everyone wanted to know who Epstein was. New York magazine and Vanity Fair published lengthy profiles. The New York Post listed him as one of the city's most eligible bachelors and began describing him in its gossip columns with adjectives such as "mysterious" and "reclusive."

Although Epstein gave no interviews, the broad strokes of his past started to come into focus.

Building a life of extravagance

He was born blue-collar in 1953, the son of a New York City parks department employee, and raised in Brooklyn's Coney Island neighborhood. He left college without a bachelor's degree but became a math teacher at the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan.

The story goes that the father of one of Epstein's students was so impressed with the man that he put him in touch with a senior partner at Bear Stearns, the global investment bank and securities firm.

In 1976, Epstein left Dalton for a job at Bear Stearns. By the early 1980s, he had started J. Epstein and Co. That is when he began making his millions in earnest.

Little is known or said about Epstein's business except this: He manages money for the extremely wealthy. He is said to handle accounts only of $1 billion or greater.

It has been estimated he has roughly 15 clients, but their identities are the subject of only speculation. All except for one: Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited retail chain and a former Palm Beacher who is said to have been a mentor to Epstein.

Wexner sold Epstein one of his most lavish residences: a massive townhouse that dominates a block on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It is reported to have, among its finer features, closed-circuit television and a heated sidewalk to melt away fallen snow.

That townhouse, thought to be the largest private residence in Manhattan, is only a piece of the extravagant world Epstein built over time.

In New Mexico, he constructed a 27,000-square-foot hilltop mansion on a 10,000-acre ranch outside Santa Fe. Many believed it to be the largest home in the state.

In Palm Beach, he bought a waterfront home on El Brillo Way. And he owns a 100-acre private island in the Virgin Islands.

Perhaps as remarkable as his lavish homes is his extensive network of friends and associates at the highest echelons of power. This includes not only socialites but also business tycoons, media moguls, politicians, royalty and Nobel Prize-winning scientists whose research he often funds.

"Just like other people collect art, he collects scientists," said Martin Nowak, who directs the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University and was reportedly the recipient of a $30 million research donation from Epstein.

Epstein is said to have befriended former Harvard President Larry Summers, prominent law Professor Alan Dershowitz, Donald Trump and New York Daily News Publisher Mort Zuckerman.

And yet he managed for decades to maintain a low profile. He avoids eating out and was rarely photographed.

"The odd thing is I never met him," said Dominick Dunne, the famous chronicler of the trials and tribulations of the very rich. "I wasn't even aware of him," except for a Vanity Fair article.

Epstein's friendship with Clinton has attracted the most attention.

Epstein met Clinton as early as 1995, when he paid tens of thousands of dollars to join him at an intimate fund-raising dinner in Palm Beach. But from all appearances, they did not become close friends until after Clinton left the Oval Office and moved to New York.

Epstein has donated more than $100,000 to Democratic candidates' campaigns, including John Kerry's presidential bid, the reelection campaign of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and the Senate bids of Joe Lieberman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Charles Schumer.

Powerful friends and enemies

A Vanity Fair profile found cracks in the veneer of Epstein's life story. The 2003 article said he left Bear Stearns in the wake of a federal probe and a possible Securities and Exchange Commission violation. It also pointed out that Citibank once sued him for defaulting on a $20 million loan.

The article suggested that one of his business mentors and previous employers was Steven Hoffenberg, now serving a prison term after "bilking investors out of more than $450 million in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history."

As he amassed his wealth, Epstein made enemies in disputes both large and small. He sued the man who in 1990 sold him his multimillion-dollar Palm Beach home over a dispute about less than $16,000 in furnishings.

A former friend claimed Epstein backed out of a promise to reimburse him hundreds of thousands of dollars after their failed investment in Texas oil wells. A judge decided Epstein owed him nothing.

"It's a bad memory. I would rather not have ever met Jeffrey Epstein," said Michael Stroll, the retired former president of Williams Electronics and Sega Corp. "Suffice it to say I have nothing good to say about him."

Among the characteristics most attributed to Epstein is a penchant for women.

He has been linked to Maxwell, a fixture on the high-society party circuits in both New York and London. Previous girlfriends are said to include a former Ms. Sweden and a Romanian model.

"He's a lot of fun to be with," Donald Trump told New York magazine in 2002. "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Investigation leads to Epstein

Although he was not a frequenter of the Palm Beach social scene, he made his presence felt. Among his charitable donations, he gave $90,000 to the Palm Beach Police Department and $100,000 to Ballet Florida.

In Palm Beach, he lived in luxury. Three black Mercedes sat in his garage, alongside a green Harley-Davidson. His jet waited at a hangar at Palm Beach International Airport. At home, a private chef and a small staff stood at the ready. From a window in his mansion, he could look out on the Intracoastal Waterway and the West Palm Beach skyline. He seemed to be a man who had everything.

But extraordinary wealth can fuel extraordinary desires.

In March 2005, a worried mother contacted Palm Beach police. She said another parent had overheard a conversation between their children.

Now the mother was afraid her 14-year-old daughter had been molested by a man on the island.

The phone call triggered an extensive investigation, one that would lead detectives to Epstein but leave them frustrated.

Palm Beach police and the state attorney's office have declined to discuss the case. But a Palm Beach police report detailing the criminal probe offers a window into what detectives faced as they sought to close in on Epstein.

Detectives interviewed the girl, who told them a friend had invited her to a rich man's house to perform a massage. She said the friend told her to say she was 18 if asked. At the house, she said she was paid $300 after stripping to her panties and massaging the man while he masturbated.

Police interview 5 alleged victims

The investigation began in full after the girl identified Epstein in a photo as the man who had paid her. Police arranged for garbage trucks to set aside Epstein's trash so police could sift through it. They set up a video camera to record the comings and goings at his home. They monitored an airport hangar for signs of his private jet's arrivals and departures.

They quickly learned that the woman who took the 14-year-old girl to Epstein's house was Haley Robson, a Palm Beach Community College student from Loxahatchee. In a sworn statement at police headquarters, Robson, then 18, admitted she had taken at least six girls to visit Epstein, all between the ages of 14 and 16. Epstein paid her for each visit, she said.

During the drive back to her house, Robson told detectives, "I'm like a Heidi Fleiss."

Police interviewed five alleged victims and 17 witnesses. Their report shows some of the girls said they had been instructed to have sex with another woman in front of Epstein, and one said she had direct intercourse with him.

In October, police searched the Palm Beach mansion. They discovered photos of naked, young-looking females, just as several of the girls had described in interviews. Hidden cameras were found in the garage area and inside a clock on Epstein's desk, alongside a girl's high school transcript.

Two of Epstein's former employees told investigators that young-looking girls showed up to perform massages two or three times a day when Epstein was in town.

They said the girls were permitted many indulgences. A chef cooked for them. Workers gave them rides and handed out hundreds of dollars at a time.

One employee told detectives he was told to send a dozen roses to one teenage girl after a high school drama performance. Others were given rental cars. One, according to police, received a $200 Christmas bonus.

The cops moved to cement their case. But as they tried to tighten the noose, they encountered other forces at work.

In Orlando they interviewed a possible victim who told them nothing inappropriate had happened between her and Epstein. They asked her whether she had spoken to anyone else. She said yes, a private investigator had asked her the same questions.

When they subpoenaed one of Epstein's former employees, he told them the same thing. He and a private eye had met at a restaurant days earlier to go over what the man would tell investigators.

Detectives received complaints that private eyes were posing as police officers. When they told Epstein's local attorney, Guy Fronstin, he said the investigators worked for Roy Black, the high-powered Miami lawyer who has defended the likes of Rush Limbaugh and William Kennedy Smith.

While the private eyes were conducting a parallel investigation, Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, traveled to West Palm Beach with information about the girls. From their own profiles on the popular Web site MySpace.com, he obtained copies of their discussions about their use of alcohol and marijuana.

He took his research to a meeting with prosecutors in early 2006, where he sought to cast doubt on the teens' reliability.

The private eyes had dug up enough dirt on the girls to make prosecutors skeptical. Not only did some of the girls have issues with drugs or alcohol but also some had criminal records and other troubles, Epstein's legal team claimed. And at least one of them, they said, lied when she told police she was younger than 18 when she started performing massages for Epstein.

After the meeting, prosecutors postponed their decision to take the case to a grand jury.

In the following weeks, police received complaints that two of the victims or their families had been harassed or threatened. Epstein's legal team maintains that its private investigators did nothing illegal or unethical during their research.

By then, relations between police and prosecutors were fraying. At a key meeting with prosecutors and the defense, Detective Joseph Recarey, the lead investigator, was a no-show, according to Epstein's attorney.

"The embarrassment on the prosecutor's face was evident when the police officer never showed up for the meeting," attorney Jack Goldberger said.

Later in April, Recarey walked into a prosecutor's office at the state attorney's office and learned the case was taking an unexpected turn.

The prosecutor, Lanna Belohlavek, told Recarey the state attorney's office had offered Epstein a plea deal that would not require him to serve jail time or receive a felony conviction.

Recarey told her he disapproved of the plea offer.

The deal never came to pass, however.

Future unclear after charge

On May 1, the department asked prosecutors to approve warrants to arrest Epstein on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and to charge his personal assistant, Sarah Kellen, now 27, for her alleged role in arranging the visits. Police officials also wanted to charge Robson, the self-described Heidi Fleiss, with lewd and lascivious acts.

By then, the department was frustrated with the way the state attorney's office had handled the case. On the same day the warrants were requested, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter wrote a letter to State Attorney Barry Krischer suggesting he disqualify himself from the case if he would not act.

Two weeks later, Recarey was told that prosecutors had decided once again to take the case to the grand jury.

It is not known how many of the girls testified before the grand jury. But Epstein's defense team said one girl who was subpoenaed — the one who said she had sexual intercourse with Epstein — never showed up.

The grand jury's indictment was handed down in July. It was not the one the police department had wanted.

Instead of being slapped with a charge of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, Epstein was charged with one count of felony solicitation of prostitution, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. He was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail early July 23 and released hours later.

Epstein's legal team "doesn't dispute that he had girls over for massages," Goldberger said. But he said their claims that they had sexual encounters with him lack credibility.

"They are incapable of being believed," he said. "They had criminal records. They had accusations of theft made against them by their employers. There was evidence of drug use by some of them."

What remains for Epstein is yet to be seen.

The Palm Beach Police Department has asked the FBI to investigate the case. It also has returned the $90,000 Epstein donated in 2004.

In New York, candidates for governor and state attorney general have vowed to return a total of at least $60,000 in campaign contributions from Epstein. Meanwhile, Epstein's powerful friends have remained silent as tabloids and Internet blogs feast on the public details of the police investigation.

Goldberger maintains Epstein's innocence but says the legal team has not ruled out a future plea deal. He insists Epstein will emerge in the end with his reputation untarnished.

"He will recover from this," he said.

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Governor to dump cash from billionaire

By Steve Terrell

The Free New Mexican - August 16, 2006

Gov. Bill Richardson plans to donate money he received from a billionaire financier recently indicted in Florida on felony charges of soliciting prostitutes.

Jeffrey Epstein, who owns a 26,700-square-foot hilltop mansion in southern Santa Fe County, allegedly had sex with five teenagers as young as 14 in his Palm Beach home after luring them to give him massages.

Epstein, 53, insists he is innocent and blames his indictment on an overzealous police chief, according to a recent story in the Palm Beach Post.

According to a police affidavit, he paid the girls between $200 and $1,000 each.

Epstein -- who also has addresses in New York and the Virgin Islands -- gave thousands to New Mexico political candidates. According to state campaign contribution reports, Epstein gave $50,000 for Gov. Bill Richardson's 2002 campaign and, under the name of one of his companies, The Zorro Trust, another $50,000 to Richardson's re-election campaign this year.

$15,000 to attorney general candidate Gary King.

$10,000 to state land commissioner candidate Jim Baca.

$2,000 to Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano.

Richardson's campaign manager Amanda Cooper said Tuesday that the campaign would donate the money from the Zorro Trust to charities around the state.

His campaign did the same thing with more than $44,000 it received from Albuquerque investor Guy Riordan after Riordan was implicated in the state treasurer scandal. Riordan never has been charged with a crime.

King said Tuesday that ``to avoid any appearance of impropriety,'' he plans to return the $15,000 to Epstein.

``I don't think I've ever met him personally,'' King said. ``He knows other members of my family better.''

Epstein bought his 10,000-acre Zorro Ranch in Stanley from King's father, former Gov. Bruce King in 1993.

Baca also said he never met Epstein in person. ``He mailed me the check,'' he said. ``I took the money in good faith.'' Baca said he'll discuss with his campaign treasurer whether to return the donation.

Solano said he's not in a position to return his Epstein donation. ``I was $2,500 in debt after the primary,'' the sheriff said. ``There isn't any to return.''

New Mexico Democrats aren't the only politicians to whom Epstein has contributed. According to the Institute of Money in State Politics, he's also given $50,000 to New York gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer.

He also was a contributor and friend to former President Clinton.

According to the Palm Beach Post, ``In September 2002, Epstein was flung into the limelight when he flew Clinton and actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa on his private jet.''

The same article said Epstein Ýenjoys friendships with New York developer Donald Trump and ÝEngland's Prince Andrew.

In addition to his massive home in Stanley -- reportedly the largest home in New Mexico -- the Zorro Ranch has an airplane hangar, airstrip and several other structures.

In 2001, Epstein sued Santa Fe County, claiming the county assessor overcharged him in property taxes. The suit claimed the Zorro Ranch was worth only $30 million, not $33 million, as it was assessed. Epstein asked for a refund of more than $20,000. Epstein and the county settled the case before it went to trial.


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Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free
By Conchita Sarnoff
Daily Beast - July 20, 2010

Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein becomes a free man today, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term.

Hedge fund mogul and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who went free this week, lived in a depraved world of thrice-daily massages, pornographic artwork, and hush money—that’s only now being revealed. Conchita Sarnoff follows up on her investigation of the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term and reports on the sordid details in part two of her exclusive exposé. Also:

• Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation.
• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.
• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.
• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.
• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.
• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”

Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.

Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.

But the question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them—to escape equal justice?

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims’ civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein was minimized by the State Attorney’s Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that Reiter became estranged from several colleagues. At the time, Reiter, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein’s plea agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered “yes.”

In March 2005, Reiter’s department, acting on a complaint from the Florida parents of a 14-year-old girl, launched an investigation that would eventually uncover a pattern of predatory behavior stretching back years and spanning several continents, knowingly enabled by Epstein’s associates and employees. Two or three times a day, whenever Epstein was in Palm Beach, a teenage girl would be brought to the mansion on El Brillo Way. (“The younger the better,” he instructed Haley Robson, a local teenager who was paid to bring other girls to the house, and who declared, on a police tape, that she was “like a Heidi Fleiss,” the infamous California madam.) Advised that she would be giving a “massage,” the girl was then pressured to remove her clothes, submit to fondling and a large vibrator, and sometimes lured into more invasive sexual contact. Each girl was paid $200 or more, depending on how far things went, by house manager Alfredo Rodriguez, who was instructed always to have $2,000 cash on hand.

The Palm Beach Police Department identified 17 local girls who had contact with Epstein before the age of consent; the youngest was 14, and many were younger than 16. And that was just at one of Epstein’s many homes around the world—he also owns property in New York, Santa Fe, Paris, London, and the Caribbean. Subsequent investigation by the FBI, reaching as far back as 2001, indentified roughly 40 victims, not counting Nadia Marcinkova, whom Epstein referred to  as his “Yugoslavian sex slave” because he had imported her from the Balkans at age 14. Now 24, Marcinkova became a member of the household and is alleged to have participated in the sexual contact with underage girls.

Epstein quickly got wind of the investigation, and progress on the case got messy very quickly. He hired a squad of lawyers and private investigators and dispatched influential friends to pressure the police into backing off. Instead, local detectives pressed on and brought the matter to the attention of the FBI. The detectives asked their federal colleagues whether the fact that some victims appeared to have traveled out of state on Epstein’s planes—plus the use of interstate phone service to arrange assignations—might be violations of the federal 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years. (Florida enacted the federal TVPA in 2002.)

So when State Attorney Barry Krischer, who also ran Florida’s Crimes Against Children Unit, proved reluctant to mount a vigorous prosecution of Epstein, saying the local victims were not credible witnesses, Chief Reiter wrote the attorney a letter complaining of the state’s “highly unusual” conduct and asking him to remove himself from the case. He did not, and the evidence his office presented to a state grand jury produced only a single count of soliciting prostitution. (Krischer has since retired and would not comment for this article.) The day after that indictment was returned, Reiter was relieved to have the FBI step in and take over the investigation.

The details that eventually emerged were often shocking and occasionally bizarre. For Epstein’s birthday one year, according to allegations in a civil suit, he was presented with three 12-year-old girls from France, who were molested then flown back to Europe the next day. These same civil complaints allege that young girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, few of whom spoke English, were recruited for Esptein’s sexual pleasure. According to a former bookkeeper, a number of the girls worked for MC2, the modeling agency owned by Jean Luc Brunel, a longtime acquaintance and frequent guest of Epstein’s. Brunel received $1 million from the billionaire around the time he started the agency.

The non-prosecution agreement executed between Epstein and the Department of Justice states that Epstein and four members of his staff were investigated for “knowingly, in affecting interstate and foreign commerce, recruiting enticing and obtaining by any means a person, knowing that person has not yet obtained the age of 18 years and would be caused to engage in commercial sex act”—that is, child sex trafficking. Yet the agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to only two lower-level state crimes, soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor child for prostitution.

Although the police investigation was officially closed, Chief Reiter tried to stay abreast of the federal case against Epstein. He was particularly concerned that Epstein be registered as a sex offender, which was part of the final deal, and that a fund be set up to compensate his victims—which was not, although Epstein agreed to bankroll their civil lawsuits. Attorney Dershowitz says Epstein’s agreement to pay attorney fees for the victims and agree to civil damage claims—without admitting guilt—amounted to “extortion under threat of criminal prosecution.”

But exactly which crimes did the Department of Justice threaten to prosecute? The Daily Beast has learned that there were several earlier versions of the U.S Attorney’s charges, including a 53-page indictment that, had he been convicted, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years. Brad Edwards, attorney for seven of the victims, confirms the existence of an earlier draft of the non-prosecution agreement, officially under seal, in which it appears that Epstein “committed, at some point, to a 10-year federal sentence.” But in the end Epstein’s legal team refused that deal and threatened to proceed to trial. And that’s where the question of whether the case was “winnable” before a jury again came into play, according to a source in the U.S Attorney’s Office, which shared the state attorney’s view that the prosecution was far from a slam dunk.

For one, it was clear from the start that Epstein would spare no legal expense and that his team of veteran lawyers, whose cases ranged from O.J. Simpson to the investigation of Clinton’s relationship with an intern, would play rough. When the Palm Beach police started to identify victims, according to Detective Joe Recarey’s report, Dershowitz began sending the detective Facebook and MySpace posts to demonstrate that some of these girls were no angels. Reiter’s deposition also states that he heard from local private investigators that Dershowitz had launched background checks on both the police chief and Det. Recarey. Dershowitz denies all of that. According to Reiter, both he and Recarey also became aware that they were under surveillance for several months, without knowing who ordered it. And the Florida victims began to complain that they and family members were being followed and intimidated by private investigators who were then linked to local attorneys in Epstein’s employ. In one reported instance, the private investigator claimed to be a police officer, and Reiter considered filing witness-tampering charges.

The credibility of the victims was also an issue; they had never complained of their treatment by Epstein until they were contacted by police, and they may have voluntarily returned to the Palm Beach mansion several times. Many of the girls came from disadvantaged backgrounds or broken homes, and they were susceptible to Epstein’s cash, intimidation, and charm. Those who were 16 when they went to El Brillo Way would have been in their 20s by the time they took the stand, and Epstein’s investigators had dredged up every instance of bad behavior in their pasts. According to an exchange in the Reiter deposition, a few of the victims had worked in West Palm Beach at massage parlors known as “jack shacks.” Each new compromising detail was immediately forwarded to the State Attorney’s Office, where staff met frequently with Epstein’s lawyers.

The Florida statutes are clear: Any person older than 24 who engages in sexual contact with someone under the age of 18 commits a felony of the second degree. The victim’s prior sexual conduct is not relevant; ignorance of her age is no defense. She needn’t resist physically to cast doubt on the issue of “consent.” For a child under 16, even lewd behavior short of touching is a felony of the second degree. But convincing a jury that a sexual encounter is a heinous crime is difficult if the victim can be made to appear willing and unharmed, not to mention vulgar and mercenary. It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the victims quickly being discredited in court by Epstein’s crack legal team, who repeatedly noted that the age of consent is lower in many other states.

But that doesn’t quite explain why the Department of Justice would forgo the child-trafficking charges, which pertain regardless of a girl’s attitude or character. Epstein’s final sentence is so out of line with the statutory guidelines for that crime that it appears the department may have been influenced by the existence of his many powerful friends and attorneys. A highly intelligent man who once taught math at the Dalton School in New York without a bachelor’s degree, Epstein has been a serious and respected player in the highest reaches of politics and philanthropy. He has made substantial contributions to political candidates, served on the Council on Foreign Relations, and donated $30 million to Harvard University.

Moreover, many of his high-powered acquaintances availed themselves of Epstein’s private jets, for which the pilot logs, obtained by discovery in the civil suits, sometimes showed that bold-face names were on the same flights as underage girls. A high-profile trial threatened to splash mud over all sorts of big players, just as both Gov. Richardson and Bill Clinton’s wife were running for president. Also, a hedge fund prosecution in which Epstein offered to give evidence was heating up. Alberto Gonzales, who was U.S. attorney general throughout most of the Epstein investigation and resigned just before the non-prosecution agreement was signed, told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.” But that may have been an impossible mandate, given the players involved.

Instead, said attorney Brad Edwards, “Epstein committed crimes that should have jailed him for most of his life…he was jailed for only a few months.” And this week he walks through his door a free man.

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Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: I’m a sex offender, not a predator
By Amber Sutherland
New York Post - February 25, 2011

Billionaire pervert Jeffrey Epstein is back in New York City — and making wisecracks about his just-ended jail stint for having sex with an underage girl.

“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’ ” the financier told The Post yesterday.

“It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel,” said Epstein.

Epstein’s flippant reasoning aside, a New York judge ruled at a hearing last month that the moneyman is the most dangerous kind of sex offender: a Level 3.

That means, according to the state, Epstein is at “high risk” to repeat his offense and poses “a threat to public safety.”

But Epstein doesn’t seem bothered by the designation.

“The crime that was supposedly committed in Florida is not a crime in New York,” he said.

Epstein recently returned to his $50 million East 71st Street mansion and celebrated his release from a Florida jail with his close pal, Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

In court papers, the victim was identified as a 14-year-old girl.

At one point, Epstein was facing 10 years to life on multiple counts of statutory rape, according to investigators. Court documents in that case claimed he routinely sought out girls as young as 14 and paid them $200 to $1,000 for sexual massages in his homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and Manhattan.

He also molested girls he had brought in from South America and Europe and once was given three 12-year-old girls from France as a “birthday gift,” the documents alleged.

Epstein struck a secret nonprosecution deal with the feds. The government agreed to drop its probe of various sex-crime allegations if Epstein copped to prostitution felonies in Florida state court.

But in New York’s sex-offender database, Epstein doesn’t come up in a ZIP code search. He shows up only via the “name search” option, and no New York address is listed.

That’s because Epstein’s Upper East Side home is considered “temporary.” By state law, he is required to provide only his permanent address to the database, and Epstein listed his Florida home.

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Convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Would Like To Get A Few Things Straight 

By Bess Levin

Dealbreaker - February 25, 2011

First off, that business he went to jail for? You know, the having underage girls give him massages while he used vibrators on them and then jerked off into a towel (there was some other stuff but this was his go-to move)? People are blowing it wayyy out of proportion. They’re acting like he murdered someone when, in reality, his crime was basically on par with “stealing a bagel.”

“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’ ” the financier told The Post yesterday. “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel,” said Epstein.Epstein’s flippant reasoning aside, a New York judge ruled at a hearing last month that the moneyman is the most dangerous kind of sex offender: a Level 3. That means, according to the state, Epstein is at “high risk” to repeat his offense and poses “a threat to public safety.” But Epstein doesn’t seem bothered by the designation. “The crime that was supposedly committed in Florida is not a crime in New York,” he said.

And given that he’s currently in New York, he’s just sayin’…lock up your daughters! You never know when a craving will strike.

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Jeffrey Epstein: Sex Offender, Yes. Billionaire, No.

By Clare O'Connor

Forbes - February 28, 2011

Palm Beach pervert Jeffrey Epstein is allover the news today, thanks to a series ofstories in the UK’s Daily Mail linking the convicted pedophile and his underage masseuses to scandal-plagued Prince Andrew, the Duke of York. According to the Mail, an Australian woman has filed a writ in civil court saying that she was ‘sexually exploited by Epstein’s adult male peers including royalty’ at age 17.

Just like the last time Epstein hit the headlines – when he was freed from house arrest in July – media outlets on both sides of the pond have described him as a “billionaire”. Because we here at Forbes are in the billionaire business, I feel compelled to point out, as I did last summer, that Epstein may deserve all manner of colorful descriptors (“sex offender”, “scum bag”, etc) but “billionaire” isn’t one of them. Here, from my last report on the matter, is why he’s never made the Forbes 400:

The source of his wealth — a money management firm in the U.S. Virgin Islands — generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released. One known client,Leslie Wexner, billionaire founder of The Limited clothing chain, was widely believed to be his benefactor for years and the major source of his wealth: at one time, Epstein waslisted as a trustee of The Wexner Foundation, and Wexner reportedly bought Epstein a $13 million New York apartment.

But once Epstein was charged with engaging in sexual activity with minors, Wexner dropped his old friend, replacing him with JPMorgan’s Dennis Hersch. Without Wexner’s backing, Epstein is almost certainly not a billionaire — so why is he continually labeled one in the press?

It may all come down to an accident of wording. When asked to turn over his finances to the Florida court in May to establish punitive damages, Epstein’s lawyers “agreed to a confidential stipulation that his net worth is in excess of nine figures.” The Palm Beach Post ran a story following this filing, deeming Epstein a billionaire, while nine figures makes him only a multimillionaire.

“It was a bone of contention with Esptein’s lawyers,” said Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represented three of Epstein’s alleged Kuvin added that, for the three young women he represented, Epstein’s net worth and the resulting amount of settlement they received did not matter compared to the “psychological pain” caused.

“For my clients, the money didn’t really matter,” he said. “It was more anger than anything.”

victims on the case, of the “billionaire” designation. “In the litigation itself we were never able to get him to produce verified financial information. The ‘nine figures’ came by negotiation. It kept going up and up and up. They started at zero — they wouldn’t tell us at all.”

Kuvin added that he and his team “pursued every possible angle” to find out Epstein’s net worth but found that much of his wealth is offshore. “We’ll never know now because everything was resolved out of court,” he said.

Kuvin added that, for the three young women he represented, Epstein’s net worth and the resulting amount of settlement they received did not matter compared to the “psychological pain” caused.

“For my clients, the money didn’t really matter,” he said. “It was more anger than anything."

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Did Andrew fix Fergie's bailout? Billionaire paid off her debts within days of prince's visit

By Fay Schlesinger
Daily Mail - March 8, 2011

Billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein paid off the Duchess of York’s debts within days of Prince Andrew flying out to visit him in New York.

Sarah Ferguson was in negotiations with the disgraced American financier for nine months last year as he ‘insisted’ on presenting her with a £58,000 gift to pay off her debts.

But the now infamous deal was eventually struck in December as her ex-husband holidayed with Epstein for the first time since 2006, sources confirmed.

This is the clearest sign yet that Andrew smoothed the path for his ex-wife to take Epstein’s money just 18 months after he was released from a jail sentence for soliciting prostitution from under-age girls.

The two men were pictured strolling through Central Park together during a four-day break at the start of December, after the Duke of York abandoned plans to stay at the exclusive Carlyle Hotel in favour of Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.

Epstein threw a cocktail party in his honour attended by Woody Allen and CBS News presenter Katie Couric – and then the first instalment of £15,000 cash was paid to Johnny O’Sullivan, the duchess’s former personal assistant.

’Sullivan and Epstein fell out so no further money was ever transferred. The duke’s office has consistently refused to comment on suggestions that he brokered the deal.  

But Sarah yesterday admitted that Andrew ‘and his office’ – four staff funded by the Queen – had been ‘more than marvellous’ and ‘sorted out my debts’.

In a fawning interview, she sought to distract from her increasingly beleaguered ex-husband’s involvement in Epstein’s finances and issued a grovelling apology for her ‘terrible, terrible error of judgment’. 

She described the duke, fourth in line to the throne, as a ‘first-rate man ... who does not know how to tell an untruth or behave dishonourably’ and added: ‘I would throw myself under a bus for him.’ 

Her guileless apology laid Andrew open to accusations that he, by contrast, has failed to say sorry as he continues to cling to his trade role.

Last night Prince Andrew was embroiled in further controversy as it was revealed Kazakhstan had asked for his help in recruiting investors to the country.

The plea came after the former Soviet Republic's President's son-in-law had bought the Prince's former marital home for £3million above the asking price.

Timur Kulibayev paid £15million for Sunninghill Park but it has remained empty and has been allowed to fall into disrepair.

Last year the Prince told Hello! magazine: 'It was like any property deal between friends.'

Yesterday he attempted to perform business as usual as he visited an East London school and met rail bosses in Canary Wharf.

He steadfastly ignored questions from journalists asking whether he was an ‘embarrassment to his country’ and would resign from his trade ambassador role as he arrived for a briefing from business executives at the headquarters of the £15billion train project Crossrail.

His black Bentley with a personalised ‘DOY’ number plate and a host of lackeys – including a private secretary, press officer, three bodyguards and a chauffeur – will have fuelled diplomats’ accusations about his arrogance and extravagant lifestyle.

It was in a rambling interview with Geordie Greig, editor of the Evening Standard, that the duchess attempted to shoulder the blame on behalf of her ex-husband and claimed her judgment had been ‘clouded’ by her desperation to get out of £5million debts.

‘I personally, on behalf of myself, deeply regret that Jeffrey Epstein became involved in any way with me,’ she said. 

‘I abhor paedophilia and any sexual abuse of children and know that this was a gigantic error of judgment on my behalf.

‘I am just so contrite I cannot say. Whenever I can I will repay the money and will have nothing ever to do with Jeffrey Epstein ever again...

‘The duke is a man who does not know how to tell an untruth or behave dishonourably. There have been errors of judgment but nothing substantive has been done wrong by him, ever...

‘He is a first-rate father; he’s a first-rate man, the finest that I know. I will not have his name tarnished by me yet again. Look at all that he has done for the country. He works tirelessly.’ 

The duchess is thought to be terrified that the wholesome image she is trying to rebuild – together with a series of lucrative deals in the US – could be damaged. 

She equated the gravity of her latest error with her cataclysmic fall from grace last May, when she was secretly recorded taking £27,000 in cash from undercover reporters in return for guaranteed access to Andrew. 

She said: ‘Once again my errors have compounded and rebounded and also inadvertently impacted on the man I admire most in the world, the duke. 

‘He has supported me and come to my rescue again and again and there is absolutely nothing that I would not do for him. 

‘It is in times of difficulty that character shows itself. I am fiery Irish redhead and I am to remain strong, fight strong and try to do what is right.’

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Woody Allen pals around with child-sex creep

By Kate Sheehy

New York Post - September 24, 2013

This “New York Story” may not be fit for children.

Schlubby director Woody Allen was seen palling around Manhattan with billionaire convicted child-sex creep Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein put his arm around the cradle-robbing director-actor and quietly talked as the pair strolled on the Upper East Side Sunday with Allen’s 35-years-younger wife, Soon-Yi, in tow.

“[Epstein] was hugging him and talking close to his ear . . . [He] had his arm on Woody’s shoulder,’’ a spy told The Post.

“They appeared to have been walking together’’ along Madison Avenue beforehand, and the three then started “talking and laughing’’ as they neared Epstein’s East 71st Street town house, the source said.

Allen, 77, and his 42-year-old wife — the adopted daughter of ex-love Mia Farrow — live on East 70th Street.

They all went into Epstein’s building after the walk, the source said.

Epstein’s conviction hasn’t apparently put a damper on his high-flying lifestyle: State records show the convicted sex offender lists his addresses as St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, Paris, Palm Beach in Florida and on New York’s Upper East Side.

Among his current vehicles, records show Epstein counts a pair of Cadillac Escalades and a Bentley Arnage in New York, another Escalade and a Mercedes-Benz in Florida, and another Escalade in the Virgin Islands.

A rep for Allen did not respond to a phone call or e-mail seeking comment about the trio’s afternoon out, and no one answered 60-year-old Epstein’s door when a Post reporter knocked Monday afternoon.

It’s not the first time that Epstein and Allen have been seen together.

Allen was a guest at a celeb-packed party Epstein threw at the town house for his old pal, Britain’s Prince Andrew, in December 2010.

Allen was said to have asked the prince about his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, and Andrew replied, “She’s very well — we live together.”

Epstein, a former hedge-fund big, did time in 2008 under a deal in which he confessed to two counts of soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution.

His victim was identified in court papers as a 14-year-old girl identified only as “Jane Doe.”

Epstein was accused of paying the youngster — one of a string of girls who allegedly visited him — $200 for a massage at his Palm Beach retreat in 2005.

And Farrow once accused Allen of molesting their then 7-year-old adopted daughter, but the allegations were never proven.

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Woody Allen spotted with millionaire convicted child sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein on Upper East Side stroll 

Daily Mail - September 24, 2013

Woody Allen has been spotted strolling on New York's Upper East Side with millionaire child sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein, who served time for hiring minors to 'massage' him at his Florida mansion.

A source told The New York Post's Page Six the former hedgefunder was 'hugging (Allen) and taking close to his ear' on Sunday, with the eccentric film director's effective step daughter-turned-much younger wife, Soon-Yi, in tow.

'[He] had his arm on Woody's shoulder,' the spy added.

The three were walking together along Madison Avenue and began 'talking and laughing' as they neared Epstein's $50 million East 71st Street town house and went inside, the source told The Post.

Allen, 77, who lives on East 70th Street with his 42-year-old wife, has rubbed shoulders with convicted sex-offender before.

The sometime actor was a guest at a celebrity-filled soiree Epstein threw for his best pal Britain's Prince Andrew in December 2010.

Epstein served 13 months of an 18 month sentence for soliciting a 14-year-old for prostitution.

In court papers, the victim was only identified as 'Jane Doe.'

At one point, Epstein was facing 10 years to life on multiple sex offenses, The Post reported.

Court documents in that case claimed he routinely sought out underage girls and paid them $200 to $1,000 for sexual massages in his homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and Manhattan.

But the financier avoided a longer possible sentence after he signed a secret non-prosecution deal under which the government agreed to drop its investigation into the string of sex-crime allegations if Epstein confessed to prostitution felonies in Florida state court.

Epstein settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by underage girls since his sentence, with many recieving payouts in excess of $1 million.

In 2011, a New York judge ruled Epstein should be listed as a level 3 sex-offender - the highest and most dangerous level. 

This was despite the millionaire joking to The Post that his crimes were comparable to 'stealing a bagel.'

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Newest lawsuit against Epstein expected to include victim testimony 

By Michele Dargan

Palm Beach Daily News - October 20, 2013

One or more victims of Palm Beacher Jeffrey Epstein are expected to testify during a civil trial early next year that pits the billionaire sex offender against an attorney who represented four underage victims of Epstein.

Attorney Jack Scarola said it will be the first time the victims will have a chance to tell their stories.

Scarola represents Fort Lauderdale attorney Brad Edwards in the lawsuit, which alleges that Epstein tried to intimidate Edwards from representing the victims.

Said Scarola: “This has been a long time coming, and we’re extremely anxious to have the opportunity, for the first time, to lay out in detail the terrible nature of Jeffrey Epstein’s serial abuse of dozens and dozens of children.”

The case, set for a jury trial lasting at least 12 days in front of Circuit Judge David Crow, originated with a 2009 lawsuit that Epstein filed against Edwards.

At a calendar call on Friday, Crow told lawyers for both sides that he would have to specially set the trial because of several factors: its estimated length, “Mr. Epstein’s criminal issues,” Ponzi-scheme allegations surrounding Edwards’ former boss, and the expected length of time it will take to select jurors.

“With Mr. Scarola doing the voir dire, it’s going to take a long time to get through the process,” Crow said.

“The people involved are pretty well-known,” said Chester Brewer, one of Epstein’s attorneys, after the scheduling session. “So it’s going to take a lot of prospective jurors to find somebody that doesn’t already have an opinion in regard to some of the people involved.”

Among the claims in Epstein’s lawsuit: that Edwards knew his former boss, convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, was touting Epstein cases in order to lure investors into his scheme; and that Edwards used the judicial system improperly in investigating Epstein for civil lawsuits that Edwards filed on behalf of the victims.

Epstein dropped his claims against Edwards in August 2012.

But Edwards forged on with his counterclaim, which says Epstein filed his “baseless and unsupportable claims” to get Edwards to back down from representing victims and to force him to spend time, energy and resources on his own defense.

Fred Haddad, Epstein’s attorney, declined to say whether his client will be in the courtroom and/or whether he will testify.

“We’re defending this, and we’ll make decisions based on what the plaintiffs do,” Haddad said. “When you’re on the defense, you have to see what the offense does first. The trial will be very interesting. There are a lot of legal issues as well as factual issues.”

Edwards is seeking unspecified damages for: injury to his reputation, fear of injury to himself and members of his family, loss of time from his professional responsibilities, and the cost of defending himself against Epstein’s claims.

Epstein, now 60, pleaded guilty in June 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution after a Palm Beach police investigation revealed that he paid underage girls for sexually charged massages at his El Brillo Way home. He served 13 months of his 18-month sentence at the Palm Beach County Stockade and received liberal work-release privileges while in jail.

Epstein has paid confidential settlements to nearly two dozen young women who filed lawsuits against him. All the lawsuits contained similar allegations: that Epstein recruited underage girls to visit his home and to perform massages and sex acts.

A deal with federal prosecutors revealed that Epstein could have been charged with multiple federal counts of sexual exploitation of minors, resulting in much harsher penalties. But the feds deferred to the two state charges.

Representing two victims through a federal lawsuit, Edwards and attorney Paul Cassell are fighting to make public previously secret correspondence — between Epstein’s attorneys and the government — that could shed light on Epstein’s sentence.

Epstein must register as a lifetime sex offender on the National Sex Offender Public Website.

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