Epstein back in court
Billionaire financier was charged Monday with sexually abusing dozens of underage girls
NEW YORK — In a startling reversal of fortune, billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was charged Monday with sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in a case brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors to dispose of nearly identical allegations.
The 66-year-old hedge fund manager who once socialized with some of the world’s most powerful people was charged in a newly unsealed federal indictment with sex trafficking and conspiracy during the early 2000s. He could get up to 45 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors said the evidence against Epstein included a “vast trove” of hundreds or even thousands of lewd photos of young women or girls, discovered in a weekend search of his New York City mansion. Authorities also found papers and phone records corroborating the alleged crimes, and a massage room still set up the way accusers said it appeared.
Epstein, who was arrested Saturday as he arrived in the U.S. from Paris aboard his private jet, was brought into court Monday in a blue jail uniform, his hair disheveled, and pleaded not guilty. He was jailed for a bail hearing next Monday, when prosecutors plan to argue that the rich world traveler might flee if released.
His lawyers argued that the sex-crime allegations had been settled in 2008 with a plea agreement in Florida.
“This is ancient stuff,” Epstein attorney Reid Weingarten said in court, calling the case essentially a “redo” by the government.
But U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of New York said that the non-prosecution agreement that spared Epstein from a heavy prison sentence a decade ago is binding only on federal prosecutors in Florida, not on authorities in New York.
The alleged victims “deserve their day in court,” Berman said. “We are proud to be standing up for them by bringing this indictment.”
Epstein was accused in the indictment of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York from 2002 through 2005.
He “intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18,” prosecutors said. He also paid some of his victims to recruit additional girls, creating “a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit,” prosecutors said.