Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion sells for $51m with victims to receive money
Disgraced financier Jeffery Epstein’s Manhattan mansion has been sold to an unnamed buyer for $51m, which will directly benefit the restitution fund providing compensation for Epstein’s sexual abuse victims.
The seven-floor mansion – once valued at $88m – was sold for considerably less after the 66-year-old was charged with sex trafficking in 2019, shortly before he was found dead in his cell in the Metropolitan correctional center in New York, where he had been awaiting trial.
Epstein had pleaded not guilty to the federal charges stemming from an indictment accusing him of running a sex-trafficking ring of underage girls, some as young as 14.
The house, which is seven stories tall and has 40 rooms, is one of Manhattan’s largest private homes, and the property sale is expected to be one of the most high value of the year. It was dubbed the “house of horrors” by New York’s tabloid press after Epstein was alleged to have abused underage girls in the mansion, and child abuse images were found in a safe during an FBI raid.
The sale was completed after a judge in the US Virgin Islands rejected an attempt by the territory’s attorney general to freeze the sale of any further assets by his estate.
The attorney general, Denise George, along with a group of more than two dozen alleged victims, made the emergency request to freeze assets in February after an administrator of the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program announced it was suspending compensation offers due to uncertainty about the future funding of the program by the estate.
The judge overseeing the administration of the Epstein estate ruled that George had no legal standing to request an asset freeze.
In a statement from Jordana H Feldman, the program’s independent administrator, it was revealed that the estate “did not have sufficient liquidity” to replenish the fund, and could not predict when it would be able to do so again.
When the program was being designed in 2019, George sought and received assurances from the estate that there were sufficient assets to fully fund the program, and there was no upper limit on the amount it could set aside to pay claims, though the damages caused by Epstein seem to outweigh his wealth.
The protocol of the victims’ compensation program requires the estate to pay all eligible claims based solely on the administrator’s determination and to supplement the available money for compensation from other funds in the estate when the account falls below a certain threshold, ABC News reported. The fund has received more than 150 applications since beginning operations last June and has paid out $55m in compensation for an undisclosed number of victims.
The $51m sale of the Manhattan mansion earlier this week is already being transferred to the compensation program so it can “resume issuing new claims determinations”, per an email from one of the estate’s lawyers, Daniel Weiner.
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