Free-for-all over Epstein’s estate gets more tangled
WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein is gone, but the fight over his estate — involving lawyers, creditors, victims and the U.S. Virgin islands, to name a few — is far from settled, and getting more complicated all the time.
The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands has asked a judge to let her get involved in the decisionmaking in the settlement of the estate of the disgraced financier. She has also objected to the creation of a victims’ compensation fund — at least one that would be run out of New York.
Among the recent claims on the estate was a legal bill totaling nearly $600,000. It is considered an interim tab.
Sorting out Epstein’s financial affairs and divvying up the proceeds were made more difficult when Epstein rewrote his will two days before he was found dead in his cell last August at a New York lockup, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
He was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges last July, eight months after The Miami Herald published Perversion of Justice, a series of stories examining the extraordinary plea deal 10 years earlier that absolved him of trafficking allegations.
Denise George, the attorney general, filed a motion to intervene before the Superior Court of the Virgin Islands, arguing that the government must protect its interests as executors make decisions about how Epstein’s creditors are paid and his accusers are compensated.
“Intervention is particularly necessary given the potential conflict of interest of the Executors in administering the Estate and, in particular, proposing to hire and compensate ‘Designers’ to administer a voluntary fund to compensate victims trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein,” George argued in a complaint filed on Jan. 23 but made public on Monday.
A parallel motion was also filed by George on Jan. 23 opposing a plan offered by executors of the estate to create the New Yorkbased victims’ compensation fund.
Also made public this week was a court request by the estate’s executors to pay a whopping $581,000 in legal bills to the Virgin Islands law firm of Erika Kellerhals, which helped create Epstein’s shell companies and did the legal work on his controversial purchase of Great St. James island from a buyer who did not want to sell to him.
George brought a multicount indictment in a civil enforcement action against the Epstein estate on Jan 15, effectively staking a huge claim on Epstein’s estate.
The little-known attorney general, who took office last April, wants the Virgin Islands to take back both local islands that Epstein had developed, Great St. James and Little St. James, worth more than $80 million. On Jan. 16, she filed a criminal lien on the estate.
The attorney general argues that Epstein used his two islands to support his sex trafficking scheme. George’s indictment alleges direct sexual abuse of minors, some as young as 12, by Epstein on his islands.