Inside Epstein network, layers of protection

NEW YORK — A few cells away from drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman at a New York City jail, jetsetting financier Jeffrey Epstein sits accused of running a different kind of criminal network.

There was the team of recruiters and enablers bringing Epstein dozens of underage girls to sexually abuse, federal prosecutors allege.

There was the assistant who scheduled those encounters, and the butler who cleaned up afterward and doled out cash and gifts to the girls, authorities contend in court records.

There were the mansions in New York and Florida, the sprawling ranch in New Mexico and the private island in the Caribbean that kept prying eyes at a distance, and the forms his employees had to sign swearing they wouldn’t speak about him publicly.

All of it served to insulate Epstein with layer upon layer of secretiveness, investigators say, like a kingpin. And, as eventually happened to Guzman, all of it could be on the verge of collapsing inward on him.

The linchpin of the operation described in the federal indictment against Epstein were the recruiters — some of them victims themselves — who targeted girls as young as 13. Epstein deemed his team so essential that he attempted to shield several of them from federal charges under the same nonprosecution agreement that allowed him to avoid a lengthy federal prison sentence and plead guilty in 2008 to lesser state charges in Florida.

That unusual deal, initially filed in secret, went as far as to bar the federal government from charging “any potential coconspirators of Epstein.”

That agreement could be upended by the indictment unsealed in New York federal court this month that charges Epstein with conspiracy and sex trafficking, which could see the 66yearold sentenced to up to 45 years in prison if convicted.

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, declined to say whether any of Epstein’s associates will be charged. He also would not say whether they are cooperating with the investigation.

Epstein’s lawyers did not respond to several messages seeking comment. In court last week, they attacked the federal indictment in New York as a collection of warmedover allegations that should be moot based on Epstein’s deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.

Epstein has pleaded not guilty and is due in court Monday for a bail hearing. Prosecutors want him jailed pending trial, arguing that he is a flight risk and could attempt to influence witnesses. They said Friday that Epstein sent $350,000 recently to two individuals, including a former employee, after the Miami Herald started publishing articles about the Florida plea agreement.

Epstein’s New York indictment refers to unnamed employees who prosecutors say played a critical role in Epstein’s alleged crimes in the early 2000s and received payments to arrange massages that led to sex acts, with girls who then sometimes would be paid to find others like themselves.

“Through these victim recruiters, Epstein gained access to and was able to abuse dozens of additional minor girls,” the indictment states.

Epstein invited some of his victims to fly aboard his private jet, and lured others through an associate who ran a modeling agency, according to hundreds of pages of police reports, FBI records and court documents.

His recruiters generally sought out economically disadvantaged girls from poorer Palm Beach County neighborhoods far from the tony beachfront community where he lived, according to police reports and lawsuits filed in the wake of the nonprosecution agreement. The indictment said the victims were “often particularly vulnerable to exploitation.”

Epstein’s former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was described in accuser Sarah Ransome’s 2017 lawsuit as the “highestranking employee” of Epstein’s alleged sextrafficking enterprise. She oversaw and trained recruiters, developed recruiting plans and helped conceal the activity from law enforcement, Ransome alleged.

Jennifer Araoz, a new accuser who alleged last week that Epstein raped her in New York when she was 15, said her encounters with Epstein began when a friendly young woman approached her outside her Manhattan performingarts high school in 2001. The unidentified woman told Araoz — then 14 — that Epstein wanted to meet her and could help her achieve her dreams of becoming an actress.

“I feel like it was really well thoughtout to really make me feel as comfortable as possible, to almost keep me coming back,” Araoz said in an interview on NBC’s “Today.”

Epstein’s personal assistant, Sarah Kellen, would call ahead to recruiters in Florida when Epstein was planning a trip to Palm Beach, the police reports say. Kellen, who Ransome said also recruited girls and made travel arrangements for them, “maintained Epstein’s sex schedule in order to ensure that he was not without the sexual favors of young females for any extended period of time,” according to Ransome’s lawsuit.