Pedophile millionaire Jeffrey Epstein dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

[The Bobster]

https://nypost.com/2018/11/28/pedop...h-sentence-by-ratting-out-bear-stearns-execs/

Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs
By Bruce Golding
November 28, 2018 | 6:42pm | Updated November 28, 2018 | 7:07pm

Multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein secretly served as a “key federal witness” against two hedge fund managers around the time he cut the sweetheart deal that let him avoid federal child sex-trafficking charges and serve just 13 months in a Florida jail, according to a new report Wednesday.

A year-long investigation by the Miami Herald turned up records that show Epstein — who was one of the fund’s largest investors — cooperated in the prosecution of a pair of executives at now-defunct Bear Stearns financial firm and received “valuable consideration” for providing investigators with unspecified information.

Emails also show then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta — who is now President Trump’s secretary of labor — and the lead prosecutor in the case agreeing to help Epstein’s high-powered defense lawyers try to contain the scandal sparked by his 2006 arrest in Palm Beach, according to the Herald.

“On an ‘avoid the press’ note…I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?” Assistant US Attorney Marie Villafana wrote in September 2007 to defense lawyer (((Jay Lefkowitz))), a former colleague of Acosta’s at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm.

The following month, Acosta met with Lefkowitz for breakfast at a Marriott hotel in West Palm Beach — 70 miles from Acosta’s office — to negotiate terms of Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement with the feds, according to the Herald.

Once the pact was struck, Epstein — who’s hosted former President Bill Clinton, British Prince Andrew and others at his own private Caribbean Island (Rape Island) — pleaded guilty to two felony prostitution charges in state court, even though the feds identified 36 underage girls who accused Epstein, then a powerful pal of Clinton and Prince Andrew, of sexually abusing them in his Palm Beach mansion between 2001 and 2005, the Herald said.

A Labor Department spokeswoman didn’t immediately return a request for comment, but Acosta was questioned about the Epstein plea deal during his US Senate confirmation hearing in March 2017.

Although he said he couldn’t “discuss the details of the case,” Acosta said the decision not to file federal charges “was a broadly held decision” in his office.

“As part of any plea, it is not unusual to have an indictment that says these are all the places we can go, yet at the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decide that a plea that guarantees that someone goes to jail, that guarantees that someone register [as a sex offender] generally, and that guarantees other outcomes is a good thing,” he said.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/04/11/da-kn...angerous-pedophile-when-arguing-for-leniency/

DA knew Jeffrey Epstein was a dangerous pedophile when arguing for leniency
By Susan Edelman and Rebecca Rosenberg
April 11, 2019 | 8:20pm | Updated April 12, 2019 | 2:06am

The Manhattan DA’s office had graphic and detailed evidence of pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s depravity when a prosecutor inexplicably argued for leniency during his 2011 sex offender registry hearing, The Post has learned.

In advance of the hearing, then-deputy chief of Sex Crimes, Jennifer Gaffney, had been given a confidential state assessment that deemed Epstein to be highly dangerous and likely to keep preying on young girls, the DA’s office admitted in its own appellate brief eight months after the hearing.

The brief has been sealed since 2011, but The Post obtained it Thursday after suing to get it unsealed.

It describes a state assessment’s findings that Epstein should be monitored in New York as a level three offender — reserved for the most dangerous.

In making its assessment, the NY state Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders evaluated the sworn, corroborated accounts of numerous young girls who had been lured into Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., compound in 2005 and 2006.

Girls aged 14 to 17 years old were recruited and paid $200 to $1,000 to give Epstein erotic massages that included sexual contact, intercourse and rape, Palm Beach cops found.

Epstein pleaded guilty in Palm Beach to abusing just one of these young victims, and was required to register as a sex offender in New York since he had an Upper East Side home.

Manhattan prosecutors were aware the state board had assigned Epstein a risk assessment of 130, a number that is “solidly above the 110 qualifying number for level three,” with “absolutely no basis for downward departure,” the brief notes.

Nevertheless, Gaffney argued that he should be labeled a level one offender, the least restrictive, which would keep him off the online database.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz sided with the board and against Gaffney in designating Epstein a level three offender. Epstein appealed, and the DA’s change-of-heart brief agreeing that Epstein deserved the highest level of monitoring was filed in opposition to that appeal.

The appellate division ultimately upheld that Epstein be monitored as a level three offender, and he remains on the registry.

“Our prosecutor made a mistake,” Danny Frost, spokesman for DA Cyrus Vance Jr., told The Post in December, when news broke that Epstein’s sweetheart Palm Beach deal had buried evidence he had allegedly abused some 80 girls and young women.

Reached late Thursday, Frost declined to say who above Gaffney might have approved her decision to go easy on Epstein. Vance’s office has insisted that he was unaware of the sex-offender registry hearing at the time.

Gaffney could not immediately be reached for comment.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/04/16/anoth...-comes-forward-against-billionaire-pedophile/

Another Jeffrey Epstein accuser comes forward against billionaire pedophile
By Andrew Denney
April 16, 2019 | 5:55pm | Updated April 16, 2019 | 6:38pm

Another accuser has come forward with claims against billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein alleging that he sexually assaulted her in 1996, when she was 26 years old, and molested her then 15-year-old sister.

Documents filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court by accuser Maria Farmer allege that Epstein hired her in 1995 when she was an art student in New York City to help him purchase works of art but that she was also tasked with manning the door of his Upper East Side mansion to note who came and went.

While working in the position, Farmer claims, she witnessed a “number of school age girls coming to the home.”

Farmer claims that Epstein and his British socialite pal Ghislane Maxwell took an interest in her 15-year-old sister and flew her with them to their ranch in New Mexico, where they ordered her to take off her clothes and then touched her inappropriately.

“To my knowledge, I was the first person to report Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI. It took a significant amount of bravery for me to make that call because I knew how incredibly powerful and influential both Epstein and Maxwell were, particularly in the art community,” she wrote in the affidavit.

Farmer also alleges that while she was working at a mansion in Ohio in the summer of 1996 Epstein and Maxwell visited and sexually assaulted her.

The documents were filed as exhibits in Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s defamation lawsuit against prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz. Giuffre alleges that for two years starting in 2000, when she was 16 years old, she was a victim of sex trafficking scheme run by Epstein.

Giuffre says Epstein repeatedly abused and forced to have sex with Dershowitz :barf2: at Epstein’s mansion on East 71st Street in Manhattan as well as with other older men.

Dershowitz has long denied Giuffre’s claims and has publicly said he wants to go to trial so that he can clear his name. He has also argued in court papers submitted to a federal appeals court in Manhattan that documents from Giuffre’s defamation suit against Maxwell should be made public.

Dershowitz told The Post Tuesday that Giuffre’s suit is “what I’ve been waiting for” and that he has obtained emails showing that she is lying about having sex with the 80-year-old appeals expert and law professor. He predicted she would end up committing perjury by sticking with her allegations.

“She’s totally made up this story, completely out of whole cloth,” Dershowitz said.

Epstein, a former Wall Street financier, was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for sex. He served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence and was required to register as a Level 3 sex offender.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/05/11/feds-looking-to-talk-to-jeffrey-epstein-victims-before-plea-deal/

Feds looking to talk to Jeffrey Epstein victims before plea deal
By Eileen AJ Connelly
May 11, 2019 | 9:35am

Federal prosecutors are looking to talk to victims of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before deciding whether to toss his 2008 plea deal.

The Justice Department is investigating the plea deal that secretly ended a federal sex abuse probe involving at least 40 teens that could have locked the hedge fund manager in prison for life. Instead, he spent 13 months in jail , paid settlements and registered as a sex offender under the deal arranged by then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta, now the U.S. Secretary of Labor.

Prosecutors said in court filings say that input from victims, who were underage at the time he committed the crimes, is essential to decide how to proceed with the case, the Associated Press reported.

Epstein, who once counted former President Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew and Donald Trump as friends, is also being investigated on additional accusations in New York.

 

[The Bobster]

Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/06/billi...n-held-in-manhattan-on-new-underage-sex-case/

Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein arrested in new underage sex case
By Larry Celona and Alex Taylor
July 6, 2019 | 11:35pm | Updated

Billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested in New York in a massive new underage sex trafficking case, according to law enforcement sources.

The hedge funder — who twelve years ago wriggled out of similar charges of abusing young girls — must appear in federal court in Manhattan on Monday on charges of trafficking dozens of minors between 2002 and 2005 in New York and Florida, where he has homes, the sources said Saturday night.

He was busted in Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the Miami Herald reported.

About a dozen federal agents meanwhile broke down the door of Epstein’s $50 million mansion on East 71st Street on the Upper East Side at around 6:30 p.m. to execute search warrants, witnesses said.

“Me and my partner heard a big bang,” a doorman who works on the block told The Post of hearing the door come down.

“They broke the door down — FBI, cops,” some 20 law enforcement agents in total, he said. “They just went in with bags.”

The doorman, who asked not to be identified by name, said that even now, Epstein entertained a continuous parade of “girls” who came and went at all hours.

“Tall,” he said. “They looked like models … I’m not sure [of their ages] because of all that makeup.”

Bizarrely, Woody Allen, who’d been a father figure to teenaged Soon-Yi Previn before marrying her, lives nearby and is a pal of Epstein’s, the doorman said.

Allen was among the crowd of people ogling the fed’s raid, he said.

“Bill Cosby used to live here, too,” the doorman said. “Next to Woody Allen. We get all of them.”

He added, of Epstein, “I got a daughter who is turning fourteen. I’d put a bullet in his head.” :guns:

The indictment will be unsealed Monday; it includes additional victims and witnesses who spoke to the Feds in New York over the past several months.

“Oh my God. Finally, finally, finally! Justice!” one of Epstein’s previous victims, Michelle Licata, told The Herald. Licata had been molested by Epstein when she was 16 years old, the Herald said.

The new arrest was first reported by the Daily Beast.

Epstein had been hit with a mere wrist-slap twelve years ago, after more than 30 underage girls came forward with accounts of being lured by money and threats to his mansions in Palm Beach, Manhattan and his Caribbean Island retreat.

There, they allegedly performed sex acts on the wealthy financier and his powerful friends ranging from erotic massages to statutory rape.

The charges then carried a potential ten years to life in prison.

In 2008, Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting only a single minor under the age of 18.

He was sentenced to 18 months in a Florida state jail and the federal investigation was ended.

He served just 13 months of the sentence before returning to the Upper East Side to celebrate his release with his close pal, Britain’s Prince Andrew.

“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an offender — it’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel,” Epstein had cracked to a Post reporter after serving the time.

The plea deal was struck by Miami’s then-top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, who is now secretary of labor.

The victims were not notified and the matter was kept under seal, the Herald reported in a bombshell November 2018 expose on the plea deal.

It was one of the most lenient sentences ever given to a serial sex offender in the US, the Herald reported.

FBI investigators had alleged in that probe that between 1999 and 2006, he abused nearly three dozen girls, most of them ages 13 to 16, and most at his Palm Beach mansion.

He also used adult recruiters to help him schedule time with as many as three or four girls a day, the feds alleged.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/nude-...ound-at-jeffrey-epsteins-manhattan-home-feds/

Nude photos of underage girls found at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan home: feds
By Ruth Brown
July 8, 2019 | 12:52pm | Updated July 8, 2019 | 1:22pm

Jeffrey Epstein (left) and federal agents carrying seized items from his Manhattan home. AFP/Getty Images; Robert Mecea


The feds found naked photos of young girls while searching Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan home, prosecutors alleged Monday.

At a press conference, Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said investigators “seized evidence including nude photographs of what appeared to be underage girls” while scouring the convicted pedophile’s mansion over the weekend.

Agents busted into the 66-year-old’s $50 million Upper East Side townhouse Saturday as Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges at a New Jersey airport.

In a memo, Berman alleged they found “perhaps thousands” of photos of nude and half-nude females there — including images of “at least one girl who, according to her counsel, was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken.”

In an indictment unsealed Monday, prosecutors said they want to seize the seven-story, 21,000-square-foot East 71st Street property.

Epstein is accused of cultivating “a vast network” of underage girls as young as 14 whom he “sexually exploited and abused” in New York and Florida in the 2000s.

An FBI agent carries seized materials from the home of Jeffrey Epstein.
Robert Mecea

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/fbi-urges-jeffrey-epstein-victims-to-call-hotline/

FBI urges Jeffrey Epstein victims to call hotline
By Ruth Brown
July 8, 2019 | 12:18pm | Updated July 8, 2019 | 1:31pm

Do you recognize this pedophile?

After arresting Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges, the feds on Monday urged other alleged victims to get in contact with an FBI hotline to share their experiences.

At a press conference, Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman pointed to a large photo of Epstein next to the number 1-800-CALL-FBI, while an FBI official implored people to get in touch.

“Today I’m asking everyone to take a good look at this man. If you have been victimized in any way or if you are somebody who has any additional information about his alleged illegal behavior, we want to hear from you,” said William Sweeney Jr., the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office.

“Whatever age you are now, whatever age you were then, no matter where or when the incident or incidents took place. The number to call is 1-800-CALL-FBI.”

Sweeney then explained exactly what prompts to follow when calling that number.

“Your bravery might just empower others to speak out about crimes committed against them,” he continued. “We know that reliving these events can be brutal, we’re here to work side by side with you as you go through this process.”

Epstein is expected to be arraigned later Monday on sex trafficking charges for allegedly creating “a vast network of underage victims” for him to exploit in the early 2000s.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/feds-say-they-have-devastating-evidence-against-jeffrey-epstein/

Feds say they have ‘devastating evidence’ against Jeffrey Epstein
By Bruce Golding
July 8, 2019 | 1:44pm

The feds have “devastating evidence” against Jeffrey Epstein that includes notes and messages seized from his Manhattan townhouse that corroborate the claims of women who claim he sexually abused them there when they were underage, according to court papers filed Monday.

The raid on the convicted pedophile’s Upper East Side home also turned up hundreds – if not thousands – of photos of “nude and partially nude young women or girls,” including one whose lawyer says she was underage at the time.

“The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant; rather he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges,” Manhattan federal prosecutors wrote.

In support of that contention, the feds noted his remarks to The Post in 2011, when Epstein tried to downplay his notorious reputation by claiming, “I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender.'”

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

FBI agents load seized materials from Epstein’s Manhattan home into an SUV.
Robert Mecea


The court papers were filed in a bid to deny Epstein bail on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy, and provide examples of his “vast wealth,” including the $77 million townhouse and a $12 million estate in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as his primary residence, which is a private island in the US Virgin Islands.

“His sex registration documentation of ‘current vehicles’ lists no fewer than 15 motor vehicles, including seven Chevrolet Suburbans, a cargo van, a Range Rover, a Mercedes-Benz sedan, a Cadillac Escalade and a Hummer II,” prosecutors said.

The 66-year-old financier — who is not married and has no kids or other immediate family — also has access to two private jets and has been recorded by US Customs and Border Patrol flying to or from a foreign country more than 20 times since Jan. 1, 2018, according to court papers.

Prosecutors said: “There can be little doubt that the defendant is in a position to abandon millions of dollars in cash and property securing any potential bond and still live comfortably for the rest of his life.”

The court papers also cite “credible allegations” that Epstein has a history of “witness tampering, harassment or other obstructive behaviors” that included paying private investigators who tailed the father of an accuser in Florida and forced his vehicle “off the road.”

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/07/jeffrey-epstein-busted-for-trafficking-underage-girls-to-ny-source/

Jeffrey Epstein busted for trafficking underage girls to NY: source
By Larry Celona and Bruce Golding
July 7, 2019 | 7:43pm | Updated

Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is facing sex-trafficking charges involving several underage girls he allegedly brought to New York from out of state — and who weren’t part of his previous prosecution, The Post has learned.

The new allegations also involve crimes that Epstein allegedly committed after those that led to his controversial, 2008 plea bargain in Palm Beach, Fla., according to a law-enforcement source familiar with the case.

The distinctions mean federal prosecutors won’t face any problems with double jeopardy when the multimillionaire, 66, gets hauled into Manhattan federal court on Monday, the source said.

The wealthy hedge-funder had been out of the US for more than a month before his arrest Saturday at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where he arrived on a flight from France, sources said.

In the meantime, a grand jury handed up a sealed indictment against him, so the FBI-NYPD Child Exploitation Human Trafficking Task Force sprang into action for the unusual, holiday-weekend bust, sources said.

Cops and FBI agents also pried their way through the heavy oak doors to Epstein’s $50 million Upper East Side townhouse to search for additional evidence against him.

Epstein lives in the Virgin Islands and also has homes in Paris, Palm Beach, Fla. and Stanley, N.M., according to his profile on New York’s sex-offender registry.

Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown — whose November expose of Epstein’s remarkably lenient plea deal spurred a pending Justice Department probe — said that his arrest likely has his some of VIP pals quaking in their boots.

The evidence against him includes “message pads where [his clients] would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, ‘I’m at this hotel,’” she told MSNBC’s “Up with David Gura.

“Why do you do that, unless you’re expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel?” Brown said.

“So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names.”

Last week, a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled that 2,000 pages of sealed records from a settled defamation suit against Epstein pal — and alleged accomplice — Ghislaine Maxwell should be made public. Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing.

The appeals court ruling noted that the paperwork could contain “new allegations of sexual abuse by several other prominent individuals, ‘including numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”

Epstein’s defense lawyer, Martin Weinberg, didn’t return a request for comment.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/prosecutors-had-gone-easy-on-monster-jeffrey-epstein/

Prosecutors had gone easy on ‘monster’ Jeffrey Epstein
By Andrew Denney and Bruce Golding
July 8, 2019 | 10:41pm | Updated July 8, 2019 | 11:10pm

The charges filed against Jeffrey Epstein by Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman followed harsh criticism of other prosecutors for their handling of sex abuse allegations against the financier.

Former Miami US Attorney Alex Acosta — who is now President Trump’s secretary of labor — came under fire in the wake of last year’s award-winning Miami Herald exposé of the non-prosecution agreement he struck with Epstein in 2008.

In February, the US Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility launched a probe into the deal in response to a request from Sen. Ben Sasse-Hole.

Sasse (R-Neb.) called the agreement part of an “epic miscarriage of justice” that let Epstein strike a plea bargain with Palm Beach County prosecutors to serve just 15 months of an 18-month sentence for two counts of solicitation of prostitution, one involving a minor.

In a statement following Epstein’s Saturday arrest, Sasse said, “This monster received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice.”

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. also went to bat for Epstein in 2011, arguing that he shouldn’t be labeled a Level 3 sex offender — the worst of the worst — in part because the Florida case against him never resulted in an indictment.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz denied the motion and said she was “shocked” by the unusual move.

“I have never seen the prosecutor’s office do anything like this,” she said in court at the time. “I have done many [cases] much less troubling than this one where [prosecutors] would never make a downward argument like this.”

A sealed court filing obtained by The Post in April revealed that prior to the hearing, Vance’s office received a confidential state report that gave Epstein a risk-assessment score of 130 points, “solidly above the 110 qualifying number for Level 3,” with “absolutely no basis for downward departure.”

Vance’s spokesman has claimed that the DA was unaware of the move at the time, saying, “Our prosecutor made a mistake.”

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/feds-found-vast-trove-of-nude-photos-in-jeffrey-epsteins-safe/

Feds found ‘vast trove’ of nude photos in Jeffrey Epstein’s safe
By Andrew Denney, Larry Celona and Bruce Golding
July 8, 2019 | 9:17pm | Updated

Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein kept a stash of lewd photos locked in a safe in his $77 million Upper East Side mansion, where authorities also found kiddie porn, the feds revealed Monday as they charged the multimillionaire with child sex trafficking.

Federal agents and NYPD officers cracked into the freestanding safe after they broke through the heavy oak doors to Epstein’s $77 million mansion and executed a search warrant late Saturday and early Sunday, according to court papers tied to Epstein’s sex-trafficking indictment.

The free-standing safe was found “in plain sight” in a room on the third floor of the seven-story townhouse at Nine East 71st St., according to a law enforcement source familiar with the matter.

Authorities found some photos stashed inside, along with “compact discs with hand-written labels including the following: ‘Young [Name] + [Name],’ ‘Misc nudes 1,’ and ‘Girl pics nude,’” court papers said.

Prosecutors said the “vast trove of lewd photographs” was part of the “devastating evidence” against Epstein, 66, whose famous former friends have included former President Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and former Harvard Law School professor and lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

The effort to crack the heavy-duty safe produced so much smoke that a window had to be opened — prompting a 911 call that sent firefighters racing to the scene around 4:30 a.m. Sunday, the source said.

The raid turned up “at least hundreds — and perhaps thousands — of sexually suggestive photographs of fully- or partially nude females” kept by the unmarried financier, court papers said.

Some of the photos “appear to be of underage girls, including at least one girl who, according to her counsel, was underage at the time the relevant photographs were taken,” according to the Manhattan federal court filing.

The two-count indictment unsealed Monday charges Epstein with sex trafficking and conspiracy for allegedly luring girls as young as 14 to his townhouse and a $12 million estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he “sexually exploited and abused” them between 2002 and 2005.

But authorities cautioned the investigation was “ongoing,” with prosecutor Alex Rossmiller saying in court that more alleged victims have come forward since Saturday night and that additional arrests were “certainly possible down the road.” He didn’t elaborate.

Epstein was aided by three unidentified employees who helped him create a “vast network of underage victims” between Manhattan and Palm Beach, according to the indictment.

If convicted on both counts, Epstein would face up to 45 years in prison.

Monday’s charges followed an award-winning expose last year in the Miami Herald that detailed the sweetheart plea deal Epstein struck in 2008 in Florida, where he served just 13 months of an 18-month sentence for two counts of solicitation of prostitution, one involving a minor.

“The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant; rather, he is a continuing danger to the community and an individual who faces devastating evidence supporting deeply serious charges,” according to Monday’s court filing.

In a footnote, prosecutors cited remarks Epstein made to The Post in 2011, when he tried to downplay his notorious reputation.

“I’m not a sexual predator, I’m an ‘offender,’” he claimed. “It’s the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel.”

Epstein’s indictment describes in graphic detail how he allegedly paid the teens hundreds of dollars each to give him nude “massages” that would become “increasingly sexual in nature.”

“During the encounter, Epstein would escalate the nature and scope of physical contact with his victim to include, among other things, sex acts such as groping and direct and indirect contact with the victim’s genitals,” the papers allege.

“Epstein typically would also masturbate during these sexualized encounters, ask victims to touch him while he masturbated, and touch victims’ genitals with his hands or with sex toys.”

Prosecutors said that the raid on Epstein’s townhouse says should be forfeited as uncovered a special “massage room” outfitted with a table and an assortment of sex toys.

The indictment seeks forfeiture of the mansion on grounds it was “used to commit or to facilitate” Epstein’s crimes.

In addition to paying girls for the “massages,” Epstein also “incentivized his victims to become recruiters” by giving them cash to bring in other girls, supplying him with “a steady stream of minor victims,” according to the indictment.

Epstein “intentionally sought out” girls under 18 — and knew they were underage because some told him how old they were, the feds charge.

“The alleged behavior shocks the conscience and while the charged conduct is from a number of years ago, it is still profoundly important to the alleged victims,” Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said at a morning news conference.

“They deserve their day in court and we are proud to be standing up for them by bringing this indictment.”

Officials didn’t detail how Epstein sought out his alleged victims, but a Miami Herald report cited allegations from a civil lawsuit that said he used an international modeling agency, Mc2, to recruit girls from Europe, Ecuador and Brazil.

Epstein paid for the girls’ visas and housed them in a building he owned in New York, the Herald said, citing a sworn statement from the agency’s former bookkeeper.

The agency’s owner has denied any wrongdoing.

Epstein, a former options trader for since-shuttered Bear Stearns, in 1982 founded a money-management firm that purportedly catered exclusively to billionaires.

His exact net worth is unknown, according to Forbes. His lawyers have said his fortune is “is in excess of nine figures,” but an attorney who has represented three of his alleged victims told the magazine that he never provided any proof of that.

Epstein was arrested around 5:30 p.m. Saturday when he stepped off a private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where he arrived following a flight from Paris. He was locked up in Lower Manhattan’s infamous Metropolitan Correctional Center, was hauled into court Monday wearing a blue prison outfit and orange, slip-on sneakers.

When asked how he pleaded, he answered, “Not guilty, your honor.”

Prosecutors argued that Epstein should be held without bail pending trial, with court papers saying that there’s an “exceptionally high” risk he’ll try to run away and that his release “would pose a significant threat to the community and to the ongoing investigation.”

The filing provided numerous examples of his “vast wealth,” including the townhouse and Palm Beach estate, as well as a home in Paris and his primary residence, which is a private island in the US Virgin Islands.

“His sex registration documentation of ‘current vehicles’ lists no fewer than 15 motor vehicles, including seven Chevrolet Suburbans, a cargo van, a Range Rover, a Mercedez-Benz sedan, a Cadillac Escalade and a Hummer II,” prosecutors said.

Epstein — who has no kids or other immediate family — also has access to two private jets and has been recorded by US Customs and Border Protection flying to or from a foreign country more than 20 times since Jan. 1, 2018, according to court papers.

Prosecutors said “there can be little doubt that the defendant is in a position to abandon millions of dollars in cash and property securing any potential bond and still live comfortably for the rest of his life” and noted that he holds three valid US passports.

The court papers also cite “credible allegations” that Epstein has a history of “witness tampering, harassment or other obstructive behaviors” that included paying private investigators who tailed the father of an accuser in Florida and forced his vehicle “off the road.”

Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten didn’t present any arguments in favor of bail and instead asked for a hearing that was set for Monday.

Weingarten also described the photos seized from Epstein’s apartment as “ancient” and “pre- his spending time in prison and/or erotic pictures of adults voluntarily engaged in the conduct.”

He declined to comment outside court.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/08/jeffr...ars-old-and-still-in-braces-when-abuse-began/

Jeffrey Epstein accuser: I was 14 years old and still in braces when abuse began
By Kate Sheehy
July 8, 2019 | 2:45pm | Updated

She was 14 and still in braces when she met globe-trotting millionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

And the former middle-school cheerleading captain proved to be just his type: cute, white, a bit troubled — and, above all, prepubescent.

“I remember standing in his kitchen, and he also had a lot of girls there at the time,” Courtney Wild, now in her 30s, recalled to ABC News on Monday.

Wild — who was in Manhattan federal court later in the day to watch the 66-year-old convicted pervert appear on federal charges — has admitted that she eventually helped recruit other girls for Epstein in Florida.

“He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,’’ she told the Miami Herald last year.

Michelle Licata at the age when Jeffrey Epstein allegedly sexually abused her
ZUMAPRESS.com


“If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.”

Michelle Licata — who, like Wild, accused Epstein of forcing her into sex acts years ago — told ABC that she was recruited by a high-school pal to give the twisted financier “massages’’ starting when she was 16.

When she first met him, Licata recalled, “he said, ‘God, you’re just so beautiful and sexy and gorgeous,’ and it was making me feel really uncomfortable.”

During an interview with authorities, part of which ABC aired, she added: “Then he wanted me to rub his back. And then he kept asking me to go lower and lower.

Two of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged victims, Michelle Licata, left, and Courtney Wild, right, exit New York Federal Court after the arraignment of Epstein.
Matthew McDermott


“He was kind of talking to me, like trying to get to know me, about my sex life.”

Licata joined Wild in watching Epstein hauled into court on Monday. It didn’t appear the women were part of the new criminal case against him.

Their lawyer later referred in a statement to a state plea deal Epstein reached in 2008 involving watered-down allegations levied against him in Florida.

Epstein’s “lead defense is the fact that the government 10 years ago thought enough of the case to just make it go away, and that’s what [his attorneys] are now going to use to say, ‘Hey, look, someone else thought it was nothing, so you should think it’s nothing, too,’ ” said the lawyer, Bradley Edwards.

“But I don’t see that working” in New York.

The lawyer for two other Epstein accusers, Virginia Giuffre and Sarah Ransome, read their statements outside court.

“Finding the words adequate enough now to express how I feel is a tall task,’’ Giuffre said in the statement read by her lawyer, Sigrid McCawley.

“But I can say without hesitation I am deeply pleased that the federal prosecutors in New York have arrested Jeffrey Epstein and our case is taken in a serious way.”

Ransome added in her own statement, “The news of my abuser’s arrest today is a step in the right direction to finally hold Epstein accountable for his sex crimes and restore my faith that power and money can’t triumph over justice.’’

Epstein — a former hedge-fund honcho who moved in the same circles as England’s Prince Andrew, former President Bill Clinton and President Trump — has been accused of running a cult-like ring so he could prey on underage girls.

He and underlings would allegedly lure teens to his palatial homes for “massages” in exchange for $200 to $300 a session and offers to help with their problems or careers.

But the visits quickly took sick turns, involving molestation, oral sex and rape, the women have said.

When the girls arrived at his Palm Beach, Fla., home, Epstein would have his chef offer them cereal, then have them sent up to his master bedroom, according to interviews dozens of accusers gave the Herald.

The teens, mainly ages 13 to 16, would find Epstein clad only in a towel, with a bottle of lotion next to him on the table, they said.

The girls would start massaging his back, then he would flip over, asking them to pinch his nipples while he masturbated, according to police documents.

Sometimes he would use a vibrator on them or engage in intercourse, the accusers said.

Afterward, Epstein would shower in his bathroom, furnished with a pink and green sofa, cops have said.

Joseph Recarey, then the lead detective on the case, told the Herald that authorities amassed a huge amount of evidence against Epstein, including the girls’ descriptions of the pedophile’s genitalia.

 

[The Bobster]

Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/09/cy-va...for-downgrading-epsteins-sex-offender-status/

Cy Vance challenger slams DA for downgrading Epstein’s sex offender status
By Max Jaeger
July 9, 2019 | 12:37pm | Updated July 9, 2019 | 12:38pm

Cy Vance (left) and Alvin Bragg
Getty Images/Twitter


A challenger to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance called out the prosecutor on Tuesday for his kid-glove treatment of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, following the multi-millionaire financier’s arrest on charges he “sexually exploited and abused” dozens of underage girls.

“It’s long past time for District Attorney Vance to end his silence and explain why his office went to court to reduce the sex offender status of Jeffrey Epstein,” said New York Law School professor Alvin Bragg, a Democrat who has already announced he’s taking on Vance in 2021.

During a 2011 sex-offender registry hearing, Vance’s office inexplicably argued to downgrade Epstein — who was required to register in 2008 under a sweetheart non-prosecution plea deal in Miami involving one underage victim — from level 3 to the less-restrictive level 1 status, despite a detailed state assessment obtained by The Post that deemed Epstein highly dangerous and likely to prey again.

“Why did the DA’s office ignore a confidential state assessment that deemed Epstein to be highly dangerous? Which lawyers for Mr. Epstein approached the office to have his offender status reduced?” Bragg raged in a statement.

“It’s not enough to send a spokesman out to say ‘our prosecutor made a mistake’ in a case of this seriousness and magnitude. Manhattan residents deserve to hear from the DA himself on how this egregious decision was made.”

Epstein, 66, was arrested Saturday for allegedly paying underage girls hundreds of dollars for nude “massages” at his Manhattan and Palm Beach homes that would become “increasingly sexual in nature.”

Vance has a history of going easy on high-profile pervs.

His office let disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein off the hook after admittedly groping a model in 2015 — and it was later revealed that Vance had received $26,550 in campaign donations from Weinstein’s lawyer, with some of the dough coming after the investigation was dropped.

Vance’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/jeffrey-epsteins-latest-accuser-says-says-he-raped-her-at-15/

Jeffrey Epstein’s latest accuser says he raped her at 15
By Priscilla DeGregory, Natalie Musumeci and Lia Eustachewich
July 10, 2019 | 8:54am | Updated

Another one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged victims has come forward, saying the billionaire pedophile raped her at age 15 at his multimillion-dollar Manhattan townhouse.

Jennifer Araoz was just 14-year-old when she was recruited by a mystery brunette woman in her early 20s to become part of Epstein’s harem of underage victims, Araoz claimed in court documents filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

What began as mostly nude massages escalated to rape a year later, she said in the documents.

“He raped me, forcefully raped me,” Araoz, now 32, told NBC News in an interview. “He knew exactly what he was doing.”

Araoz’s nightmare began in 2001, when the mystery woman approached her outside her high school, The Talent Unlimited, on the Upper East Side and chatted her up about her upbringing, her family and their finances.

The woman, only identified in court papers as “the Recruiter,” “approached Ms. Araoz repeatedly over the course of a week or two, offering to take her for lunches close by the school, and during the meals, would continue to ask personal questions about her,” the documents state.

“I was kind of a lost kid and she sensed it,” Araoz, whose father died of AIDS when she was 12, told NBC News.

The woman brought up Epstein to a young Araoz, speaking “glowingly” of him and telling Araoz that he “felt horrible about the loss of her father and said that he wanted to help her,” according to the documents.

Jennifer Araoz
TODAY


The woman told Araoz that Epstein was a “caring guy” who said that she “should not be struggling” and that he wanted “to be there for her.”

Soon, the woman introduced the teen to Epstein at his East 71st Street townhouse, where she opened up to the much older financier about wanting to become a Broadway actress.

During the first visit, Epstein gave Araoz $300 and said, “Here’s a little something to help you out. I take care of the people I care about,” the documents say.

Epstein told her that the teen was “very lucky to have met somebody like him” and “that he could really help me,” she recalled to NBC News.

Araoz had visited Epstein’s home with the woman up to two times a week during the first month, and each time Araoz stayed between one and two hours.

At the end of the stay, “Epstein would direct his Secretary to give her $300 and just say that he ‘wanted to help her out,’ while she and the Recruiter would be served cheese, crackers and wine by the Maid,” the documents said.

When Araoz first visited Epstein’s alone, Epstein took her on a tour of his $77 million residence — leading her to what he called his “favorite room in the house.”

Jeffrey Epstein’s residence at 9 East 71st Street
James Messerschmidt


It was the massage room – equipped with a table on the floor, paintings of nude women on the walls, and a ceiling “painted to look like a blue sky with clouds and angels to give the appearance that you were in heaven,” according to the documents.

Right behind the massage table was one painting of a nude woman “with small breasts and brunette hair,” which Epstein said “how much the woman in the picture looked like” a 14-year-old Araoz.

“He said he liked ‘girls with small breasts’ because they were ‘natural and real.’ He then complimented Ms. Araoz repeatedly about her breasts,” the documents say.

For a year, Araoz said, she was brainwashed into giving Epstein massages while wearing only her underwear. He would masturbate until he finished — and then leave her $300.

“I take care of you, you take care of me,” Araoz claims Epstein told her after the first sexual encounter, according to the court documents.

“This was amazing, you’re beautiful, I can’t wait to see you again. I will give you a call during the week and we’ll see each other again,” Epstein told Araoz, the documents say.

Jennifer Araoz when she was a teenager
TODAY


During the second sexual encounter, “while Epstein started to masturbate, he grabbed Ms. Araoz’s breasts hard without asking, and this time, insisted that Ms. Araoz rub his chest, arms and legs, and pinch his nipples, which he said was one of the main things that turned him on,” the document state.

One day in 2002, during the fall of Araoz’s sophomore year in high school, Araoz claims Epstein her to remove her underwear because he wanted to “try something different” during a massage.

“Why don’t we do it where you’re on top of me massaging me and take your underwear off,” Epstein told her, according to the court documents.

Araoz told him that she was “uncomfortable,” but Epstein responded saying, he “loved her and cared for her,” the court papers say.

The teen “just did what as she was told and got on top of him” as Epstein masturbated and as she “rubbed his chest.”

Suddenly, “without giving Ms. Araoz any notice, Epstein forced his penis (which already had massage oils on it) inside her vagina and proceeded to have sex with her,” the documents say.

“Araoz was petrified, felt trapped and didn’t know what to do, so she just did as she was told. Epstein held her tightly and forcibly raped her,” the papers say, adding that Epstein did not use a condom.

“It was very aggressive, it was forceful,” Araoz told NBC News. “I was terrified, and I was telling him to stop. ‘Please stop.’”

After raping Araoz, Epstein told the teen that “she was amazing, that she felt amazing, and that she did nothing wrong,” the documents say.

She said she never returned to his home after that day — but that the trauma of her last encounter with Epstein took a toll on her. She dropped out of school to avoid going to his neighborhood and suffered from anxiety and panic attacks.

“I kind of hated myself for it,” Araoz told NBC News. “I was like, ‘I’m stupid, I should have known better. I’m a bad kid.’”

“I basically just tried to forget about it and live my life,” she said.

Jennifer Araoz
TODAY


Asked why she never went to authorities, Araoz said she was scared.

“I was so young that I was worried that somehow I would get in trouble,” she said. “I was really frightened of Epstein. He knew a lot of powerful people and I didn’t know what he could do to me, and I wasn’t sure that anyone could protect me.”

Araoz plans to file a lawsuit against Epstein on Aug. 14 and in court papers filed Wednesday asked a judge to sign off on a subpoena to depose Epstein and requested his employee records all to help her find out the identity of the woman who recruited her.

Epstein’s lawyer did not return requests for comment by The Post about Araoz’s claims.

The 66-year-old is charged with sexually abusing underage girls at his homes in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.

In 2008, Epstein dodged federal charges as part of a sweetheart deal he struck with prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to plead guilty to two counts of soliciting prostitution, one involving a minor, in exchange for an 18-month sentence. He wound up serving 15 months.

Araoz said she hopes Epstein, who faces a maximum of 45 years behind bars, spends the rest of his life in prison.

“He shouldn’t be on the streets anymore, period,” she told the news outlet.

 

[The Bobster]

Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/schumer-got-thousands-in-donations-from-jeffrey-epstein/

Schumer got thousands in donations from Jeffrey Epstein
By Nikki Schwab
July 10, 2019 | 11:51am | Updated July 10, 2019 | 1:02pm

Sen. Chuckie "The Vulture" Schumer — who called on Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to resign and said President Trump should “answer” for his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — accepted thousands of dollars in donations from the alleged pedophile throughout the 1990s, The Post has learned.

Federal Election Commission records show that Schumer received seven $1,000 donations from Epstein between 1992 and 1997, first as a US congressman from New York and then when he was vying to be the state’s senator in 1998, an election he won.

Epstein — who was arrested Saturday and charged with sex trafficking and a related conspiracy count for allegedly sexually abusing a vast network of underage girls — also gave $10,000 to Victory in New York, a joint fundraising committee established by Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Epstein gave an additional $5,000 to Win New York, a Schumer-associated joint committee that benefited the Liberal Party of New York state.

Both of Epstein’s donations to the committees came in October 1998 — and look to have primarily benefited the DSCC and the Liberal Party of New York, as Epstein would have already met the $2,000 limit on donating individually to Schumer.

At the time, donors could give $1,000 to a candidate per election — once in the primary and again in the general.

That means Schumer and Schumer-linked entities received a combined $22,000.

Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro responded, “While these campaign accounts closed about 20 years ago, and even then the campaign never controlled the two political action committees (PACs), Senator Schumer is donating an equal sum to anti-sex trafficking and anti-violence against women groups.”

The top Senate Democrat previously donated $14,200 — the amount donated to his campaigns by accused sexual predator Harvey Weinstein — to several charities supporting women.

On the Senate floor Tuesday, Schumer made three Epstein-related demands.

He first called on Acosta to resign.

Acosta, the former US attorney in Miami, was responsible for inking a plea deal with Epstein that victims weren’t informed of, according to an expose in the Miami Herald.

While Epstein was accused of molesting dozens of teenage girls at his Palm Beach estate, he served just 13 months in prison, much of it out on work release.

“Instead of prosecuting a predator and serial sex trafficker of children, Acosta chose to let him off easy,” Schumer said on the floor. “This is not acceptable. We cannot have, as one of the leading appointed officials in America, someone who has done this.”

Schumer also asked that the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility make public its review of Acosta’s handling of the case.

Finally, Schumer said Trump should paint a fuller picture of what he meant when he called Epstein a “terrific guy” in a 2002 article for New York Magazine.

Epstein was arrested this week and charged with trafficking dozens of minors between 2002 and 2005 in New York and Florida.

An April 2011 court filing shows that Trump eventually barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago “because Epstein sexually assaulted a girl at the club,” the documents allege.

Trump didn’t officially launch a political career until June 2015. No FEC records show that Epstein was ever a Trump donor.

 

[The Bobster]

Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/09/jeffr...o-distance-themselves-after-predators-arrest/

Jeffrey Epstein’s A-list pals rush to distance themselves
By Bruce Golding
July 9, 2019 | 10:26pm | Updated

Jeffrey Epstein carefully cultivated a circle of prestigious and powerful friends by exploiting the aura of money and mystery that surrounded him — but the hint of a dark side was always there.

Now, in the wake of his blockbuster arrest on child sex trafficking charges, some of those high-flying former pals may be quaking in their boots.

During a news conference Monday announcing Epstein’s indictment, Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman dramatically pointed to the suspect’s mug shot on a poster, and the FBI’s New York chief, William Sweeney Jr., urged anyone who has been “victimized” or “has additional information” on the multimillionaire financier to immediately call the feds.

But the appeal was not just meant for victims of the convicted pedophile, former Justice Department prosecutor Bradley Simon said Tuesday. The underlying message, he said, is: Call us before we come a-calling on you.

“If there are people out there who facilitated or participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, they would probably be well-advised to seek counsel, and for their counsel to make overtures to the US attorney,” said Simon, now co-chair of the white-collar criminal defense practice at Phillips Nizer.

“Earlier is better than later in these types of cases.”

Epstein, 66, rose from middle-class origins in Coney Island to amass a fortune that includes a $77 million Upper East Side townhouse, a $12 million estate in Palm Beach, Fla., a 7,500-acre ranch in New Mexico and a private island — called “Little St. James” — in the US Virgin Islands, which he claims as his primary residence.

During the early 2000s, his growing prominence in Manhattan’s social circles led to a profile in Vanity Fair magazine that listed former President Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman and several Nobel Prize-winning scientists among his friends and admirers.

A list of contacts identified as Epstein’s “Little Black Book” was published by the now-defunct webSite Gawker in 2015 and contains hundreds of names, including those of celebrities, politicians and other *A-listers, with their phone numbers and email addresses blacked out.

Notable entries include former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, actor Alec Baldwin, singer Jimmy Buffett, industrialist David Koch and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Epstein treated some of his rich and powerful pals to trips aboard his Boeing 727, with Clinton revealed in 2016 to have flown on the private jet airliner at least 26 times between 2001 and 2003, according to flight logs obtained by Fox News.

The plane was nicknamed the “Lolita Express” in media reports following the first wave of underage sex abuse allegations that led to Epstein’s 2008 conviction in Florida.

In a statement following the announcement of Epstein’s indictment, Clinton’s office said he only “took a total of four trips” on the plane to Europe, Asia and Africa, and that he “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” that Epstein has admitted or is accused of committing.

Epstein began teaching physics and math at Manhattan’s elite Dalton private school, where he tutored the son of Alan “Ace” Greenberg, chairman of the since-shuttered Bear Stearns investment bank.

He parlayed that side hustle into a job as an options trader at Bear Stearns, where he was named a limited partner before quitting in 1981 to open his own money-management firm — J. Epstein & Co. — that he claimed catered only to billionaires.

Although various news outlets have repeatedly called him a billionaire, he’s never made the definitive list compiled annually by Forbes magazine, which has cited “so much uncertainty around his numbers.”

“The source of his wealth — a money-management firm in the US Virgin Islands — generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released,” the magazine said in 2010.

Vanity Fair described Epstein as being “very generous with friends,” and quoted Rosa Monckton, former CEO of Tiffany & Co.’s British operations, recounting how he extended an open invitation for her to bring her daughter, who has Down syndrome, to his home in Palm Beach.

But Monckton also called Epstein, with whom she had been close friends for about two decades, “very enigmatic.”

In a characterization that came to seem eerily prescient, the article also said Epstein — who has never married or had kids — was “known about town as a man who loves women — lots of them, mostly young.”

In 2008 it became clear just how young, when Epstein struck a plea bargain in Palm Beach to two counts of solicitation of prostitution, one involving a minor, and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence.

An award-winning exposé by the Miami Herald last year detailed how Epstein struck the deal by scoring a nonprosecution agreement from then-Miami US Attorney Alex Acosta — now President Trump’s secretary of labor — despite allegations he had molested or abused about 80 girls, mostly 13 to 16 years old, in his pink waterfront mansion.

Epstein has pleaded not guilty in the latest case and is jailed pending a bail hearing next Monday.

 

[The Bobster]

Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/nypd-...jeffrey-epstein-skip-judge-ordered-check-ins/

NYPD let convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein skip judge-ordered check-ins
By Elizabeth Rosner, Tina Moore, Larry Celona and Bruce Golding
July 10, 2019 | 9:19pm | Updated

Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein never once checked in with city cops in the eight-plus years since a Manhattan judge ordered him to do so every 90 days — and the NYPD says it’s fine with that.

After being labeled a worst-of-the-worst, Level 3 sex offender in 2011, Epstein should have reported in person to verify his address 34 times before he was arrested Saturday on federal child sex-trafficking charges.

Violating requirements of the state’s 1996 Sex Offender Registration Act — including checking in with law enforcement — is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison for a first offense.

Subsequent violations carry a sentence of up to seven years each.

But the NYPD hasn’t required the billionaire financier — who owns a $77 million Upper East Side townhouse — to check in since he registered as a sex offender in New York over the controversial 2008 plea bargain he struck in Florida amid allegations he sexually abused scores of underage girls in his Palm Beach mansion.

Several current and former high-ranking NYPD officials were shocked to learn from The Post that the department had given Epstein a pass on his periodic check-ins, with one saying, “It makes no sense.”

“The NYPD can’t modify a court order,” a source said. “If the judge says he has to report here, he has to report here.”

Another source said Epstein was “supposed to go to SOMU,” an acronym for the NYPD’s Sex Offender Monitoring Unit, located in the Manhattan criminal courthouse at 100 Centre St.

“If he didn’t, then he’s in violation and they could have arrested him,” the source said.

The NYPD maintains that Epstein, 66, wasn’t required to check in with New York cops because he claims his primary residence is a private island, Little St. James Island, in the US Virgin Islands.

But state Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz considered and rejected that very argument by defense lawyer Sandra Musumeci during the Jan. 18, 2011, hearing.

Musumeci insisted that Epstein wasn’t a “resident of New York” and that his seven-story townhouse at 9 E. 71st St. was a “vacation home” at which he had no plans to ever stay “longer than a period 10 days.”

Pickholz insisted that Epstein would have to abide by the mandatory reporting requirements for Level 3 offenders.

“I am sorry he may have to come here every 90 days,” she said, according to an official transcript. “He can give up his New York home if he does not want to come every 90 days.”

That was the same hearing where, in a highly controversial move, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tried to argue on Epstein’s behalf that he should be deemed a low-risk Level 1 offender, which would have exempted him from the reporting requirements.

The DA’s office has said that the prosecutor in that case — Jennifer Gaffney, who quit last year — “made a mistake” and that DA Cyrus Vance Jr. was unaware of it at the time.

In March, an NYPD spokeswoman told the Washington Post that Epstein never checked in following Pickholz’s ruling. Asked repeatedly about that admission this week, the NYPD declined comment.

Asked about her ruling, state court spokesman Lucian Chalfen said Pickholz “stands by what was said in court, on the record, at the hearing and has had no further role in any type of enforcement. That’s not the court’s role.”

In addition to verifying a sex offender’s address, the 90-day check-ins allow cops to take a new photograph if the offender’s appearance has changed, so it can be updated online.

The NYPD cop assigned to monitor Epstein has repeatedly complained to Vance’s Sex Crimes Unit that Epstein wasn’t in compliance, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But prosecutors told the cop to merely send Epstein a letter reminding him of his reporting requirement.

A Vance spokesman denied that allegation, saying “the NYPD — which is the agency responsible for monitoring SORA compliance — has repeatedly told us that Mr. Epstein was in full compliance with the law.”

“Our office vigorously prosecutes all failure-to-verify cases. Our prosecutors did not and would not discourage the NYPD from making an arrest,” Vance spokesman Danny Frost said.

NYPD spokesman Phillip Walzak said the SOMU “monitored Epstein while his reporting address was in New York City.”

“The NYPD is proud of its hard work alongside our federal partners to make the case against Epstein that led to his arrest for his vile crimes, and that will ultimately bring justice for his victims.”

An NYPD spokesman added that this took place years ago, before much of the current leadership at the NYPD was in place.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/jeffrey-epstein-kept-nude-art-fake-breasts-in-creepy-sex-lair-accuser/

Jeffrey Epstein kept nude art, fake breasts in creepy sex lair: accuser
By Aaron Feis
July 10, 2019 | 5:47pm

Jeffrey Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse was a creepy lair lined with tell-tale signs of his perversion, including a self-portrait of the multimillionaire and a young girl, and a pair of fake breasts the convicted pedophile played with in the bathtub, a new accuser alleges.

Epstein’s latest accuser, Jennifer Araoz, was taken on an unnerving tour of the $66 million East 71st Street mansion during her visits there beginning in 2001, when she was just 14, she says in papers filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

“Ms. Araoz remembers after the first sexual encounter with Epstein, he showed her a room on the same floor as the massage room that he said was designed to look like his favorite room at the White House, which he called the ‘Blue Room,’ ” the accuser, now 32, says in the filing.

“He then showed her some more artwork, his master bedroom with a large jacuzzi and prosthetic breasts on the wall in a bathroom that he could look at or honk while in the bathtub,” recalled Araoz.

That artwork displayed across the home included “a lot of paintings of nude women on the walls,” the papers said. “He [Epstein] even commented on one painting of a nude woman with small breasts and brunette hair … That painting was right behind the massage table, and he said how much the woman in the picture looked like Ms. Araoz, then 14-years-old.

“He said he liked ‘girls with small breasts’ because they were ‘natural and real.’ ”

On the ground floor, “there was a spiral staircase with a self-portrait of Epstein on the wall with a young girl, who Epstein said he considered like a daughter.”

The identity of that girl is not made clear in the filing.

The opulent sprawl also included a “trophy room” lined with pelts and stuffed with the taxidermied remains of exotic animals.

“The room had marble floors with extremely high ceilings, mahogany wood with deep reds, and was filled with exotic, even endangered animals, including a giraffe and other rare specimens,” the filing said. “There were skins covering parts of the floor with more exotic animals.”

Araoz alleges that, after having been lured from her nearby high school by a female “recruiter,” she was trapped in an approximately year-long cycle of sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein.

As it allegedly began with other underage girls, the contact began with nude massages, and culminated with a forcible rape, claims Araoz.

In 2008, Epstein took a sweetheart plea deal from Florida prosecutors, pleading guilty to two counts of soliciting prostitution — one of which involved a minor — for an 18-month sentence, and dodging federal charges.

But the 66-year-old on Monday was freshly charged in Manhattan federal court with sexually abusing underage girls at his homes in New York and Florida across the early 2000s.

 

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Re: Pedophile millionaire dodged harsh sentence by ratting out Bear Stearns execs

https://nypost.com/2019/07/11/jeffrey-epstein-wants-to-swap-jail-for-house-arrest/

Jeffrey Epstein wants to swap jail for house arrest while awaiting trial
By Andrew Denney
July 11, 2019 | 2:09pm | Updated July 11, 2019 | 2:10pm

Jeffrey Epstein wants a federal judge to let him out on house arrest rather than sit in the notorious Manhattan federal lockup while he awaits trial for child sex trafficking.

Lawyers for the multimillionaire convicted pedophile offered to put up his $77 million Upper East Side townhouse and his private jet as collateral in exchange for being allowed to stay home with a GPS ankle monitor , his attorneys argue in a new Manhattan federal court filing.

Epstein’s attorneys note that the indictment against Epstein, which the U.S. Attorney unsealed Monday, pertains to conduct that allegedly occurred between 2002 and 2005 — and that the fact that the government hasn’t come forward with allegations of additional sex trafficking in the ensuring 14 years is a sign that he is “no longer a danger to anyone.”

“During the years since his release from incarceration in connection with his Florida guilty plea, Mr. Epstein has been a law-abiding citizen without a single allegation of criminal misconduct during that period and has focused his efforts on business and philanthropy,” the lawyers argue.

Prosecutors allege that Epstein, 66, who pleaded not guilty to the indictment, sexually exploited and abused “dozens” of minor girls at his townhouse at 9 E. 71st Street, which the government has moved to seize, as well as his residence in Palm Beach, Fla.

Authorities raided the lavish Manhattan pad last weekend and say they found kiddie porn and a massage room stocked with sexual paraphernalia. Jennifer Araoz, Epstein’s latest accuser, alleges in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court that the multimillionaire creep’s lair also featured a self-portrait of Epstein with a young girl and a pair of fake "honk honk" breasts in his bathtub.

The government has argued strongly against letting Epstein go free before he stands trial, noting that the globetrotting perv has a private jet and residences in Paris and the Virgin Islands and faces a possible 45-year maximum sentence.

A prosecutor told District Judge Richard Berman of Manhattan federal court at a hearing on Monday that there are no immediate plans to charge more defendants with being involved in the alleged sex trafficking ring — but didn’t rule it out.

In their filing arguing for Epstein’s release, attorneys called his 2008 sweetheart plea agreement in Florida — for which he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex and did 13 months of an 18 month sentence — Epstein’s “only notable brush with the law” up until this indictment.

 

[The Bobster]

https://nypost.com/2019/07/13/jeffr...-wealth-could-be-explained-by-a-ponzi-scheme/

Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious wealth could be explained by a Ponzi scheme
By Sara Dorn
July 13, 2019 | 10:48am | Updated July 13, 2019 | 11:18am

The mystery source of Jeffrey Epstein’s wealth could be buried in a 1980s fraud case resurfacing as the billionaire financier faces a slew of sex-trafficking charges.

For years, Epstein’s old boss, and former owner of The New York Post, (((Steven Hoffenberg))), has claimed that Epstein was his accomplice in a Ponzi scheme Hoffenberg ran through his Towers Financial Corp.

While Hoffenberg sat behind bars for 20 years in a New Jersey federal prison, Epstein allegedly lived a sex-crazed lifestyle in which he preyed on underage girls as young as 14, federal prosecutors allege.

Investigators describe him as “a man of nearly infinite means,” but the source — and magnitude — of his money has long been a Wall Street enigma.

Epstein’s Virgin Islands-based Financial Trust Co., a money management firm for billionaire clients only, “generates no public records, nor has his client list ever been released,” Forbes wrote in a 2010 article titled “Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Is Not a Billionaire.”

After the hedge-funder was arrested last Saturday on child sex-trafficking charges, Hoffenberg’s claims began to re-emerge.

In a new interview, Hoffenberg said Epstein was “totally in the mix” of the scheme that defrauded 200,000 investors of $460 million.

“He was my colleague daily, seven days a week,” Hoffenberg told Quartz magazine this week.

Tower investors also claimed in an August lawsuit that Epstein “knowingly and intentionally utilized funds he fraudulently diverted and obtained from this massive Ponzi scheme for his own personal use to support a lavish lifestyle.”

Epstein used the fraudulent funds to found Financial Trust in 1996, a business he used to manage the money of Victoria’s Secret mogul Les Wexner, among other clients, the investors allege.

In court papers filed in conjunction with Epstein’s bail application — which offers his $77 million Upper East Side townhouse and private jet as collateral — Epstein’s lawyers asked a judge to keep his financial records under wraps.

“Here, in the event Mr. Epstein is required to publicly file his financial statement, the information contained therein will inevitably be widely disseminated in the news media, contravening the statutory requirement of confidentiality,” Epstein lawyer Reid Weingarten wrote.

In the latest twist in the case, Manhattan prosecutors alleged Friday Epstein attempted to buy the silence of at least two witnesses.