Land office provides AG with documents related to Epstein

The State Land Office said Tuesday it provided the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office with more than 400 pages of documents related to state trust land leases with a U.S. Virgin Islands corporation associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, owner of the Zorro Ranch near Stanley.

Epstein, 66, pleaded not guilty this week in New York to federal charges of sex trafficking of minors and sex trafficking conspiracy. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to federal sex trafficking charges in Florida.

Epstein’s Cypress Inc. holds two agricultural leases totaling about 1,244 acres, the land office said. Those leases, first secured in the late 1990s, were renewed in 2016 and are set to expire in 2021. Epstein had an earlier grazing lease that dated to 1993, the year he bought the 10,000-acre property in southern Santa Fe County from former Gov. Bruce King. “The leases that we sign are legally binding contracts but we are pursuing every legal avenue to terminate Epstein’s leases with the State Land Office as soon as possible,” Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said in a news release.

Last week, a spokesman for Attorney General Hector Balderas said his office has interviewed women who say they are victims of Epstein and has shared documents with federal prosecutors in New York. Epstein has not been charged with committing crimes in New Mexico, though some women have said they were sexually abused at Zorro Ranch.

Besides Zorro Ranch, Epstein has homes in Florida, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands.