Lawsuit: Epstein trafficked girls in Caribbean until 2018

New evidence shows Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused and trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018, significantly expanding the scope of his alleged conduct, a top law enforcement official said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Epstein, a wealthy financier who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail last year, was bringing girls as young as 11 and 12 to his secluded estate in the Virgin Islands, known as Little Saint James, and kept a computerized database to track the availability and movements of women and girls, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit, which was filed by Denise N. George, attorney general of the Virgin Islands, broadened the dimensions of the wrongdoing in which Epstein was said to have engaged. He had been charged by Manhattan prosecutors in July with sexually exploiting dozens of women and girls in New York and Florida, but they did not point to any actions beyond 2005.

In August, Epstein hanged himself at the

Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was being held awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Prison guards had not checked on him for hours on the night he died, and the circumstances surrounding his death are now the subject of at least three federal investigations.

In the weeks before Epstein killed himself, he and his lawyers vigorously denied the criminal charges. His lawyers had previously said he had been law-abiding since his 2008 conviction in Florida for solicitation.

The suit was filed against Epstein’s estate and seeks the forfeiture of Little Saint James and Epstein’s second private island, Great Saint James, as well as the dissolution of numerous shell companies he established in the territory that officials have said acted as fronts for his sex trafficking enterprise.

As part of its policies, the government of the Virgin Islands could take any assets recovered from Epstein’s estate and consider disbursing them to women and girls who were victimized by him in the region, George said.