Billionaire pleads not guilty to abusing underage girls.
NEW YORK — A decade after they were accused of letting Jeffrey Epstein off the hook, federal prosecutors made another run at putting the billionaire financier behind bars on sex allegations, charging him Monday with abusing dozens of underage girls as young as 14.
The hedge fund manager who once socialized with some of the world’s most powerful people was charged in a newly unsealed indictment with sex trafficking and conspiracy and could get up to 45 years in prison.
Prosecutors said the evidence included a “vast trove” of hundreds or even thousands of lewd photographs of young women or girls, discovered in a search of his New York mansion.
Epstein, 66, who was arrested over the weekend 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. His lawyers argued that the matter had been settled in 2008 with a plea agreement in Florida involving similar allegations.
“This is ancient stuff,” Epstein attorney Reid Weingarten said in court, calling the case essentially a “redo” by the government.
The defendant was ordered jailed for a bail hearing next Monday, when prosecutors plan to argue that the world traveler might flee if released.
Epstein was accused 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 allegedly paid some of his victims to recruit additional girls.
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of New York said that the nonprosecution agreement that spared Epstein from a heavy prison sentence a decade ago is binding only on federal prosecutors in Florida, where the deal was made, not on authorities in New York.
“While the charged conduct is from a number of years ago, it is still profoundly important to the many alleged victims — now young women,” Berman said. “They deserve their day in court. We are proud to be standing up for them by bringing this indictment.”
Federal authorities said new accusers have come forward since Epstein’s arrest, and they urged other possible victims to contact the FBI.
Epstein, who is unmarried, has socialized with President Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew.
Under the oncesecret nonprosecution deal — overseen by Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time and is now Trump’s labor secretary — Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He avoided a possible life sentence and served 13 months in jail, during which he was allowed out to go to his office during the day.
Acosta has defended the agreement as appropriate, though the White House said in February that it was looking into his handling of the case.