Billionaire Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein Goes Free

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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jul 31, 2017 9:16 am

Venture Capital‏ @kelly2277 17m17 minutes ago

Here’s Jeffrey Epstein’s Amazon receipt for his book purchases on sex slaves
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby cptmarginal » Sun Aug 27, 2017 8:57 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pri ... ef9f1c129d

This post is hosted on the Huffington Post's Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and post freely to our site.

Private Donor Helps Fund Scientists After Trump’s Proposed “Anti-Science” Budget Cuts

08/24/2017 06:35 pm ET

The famous American Astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, once said,

“The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s quote from The Colbert Report distinguishes the difference between opinion and fact. Science, as a base, is always true. Yet, it is interpretation that imparts human error. In other words, while science is a universal truth, not everyone believes in the importance of science.

Consider President Trump’s 2018 budget request. Many of these call for massive cuts in spending on scientific research, medical research, disease prevention programs and more. If these requests are met, the National Cancer Institute would face a $1 billion cut compared to its 2017 budget. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute could see a $575 million cut, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would see a reduction of $838 million. The administration would cut the overall National Institutes of Health budget from $31.8 billion to $26 billion.

The National Science Foundation, which gives $7 billion a year in grants to universities and research institutes, is not specifically mentioned in the budget. However, unspecified “other agencies” are in line for a 9.8 percent budget cut.

Since Trump became president, the official White House website also deleted all mentions of climate from the site – all but one – the promise to eliminate the “harmful and unnecessary” Climate Action Plan.

Following these actions, scientists and other employees of the EPA and USDA were told not to speak to the public about climate change or other scientific concerns that should be addressed.

Private Donations To Fund Science

Due to Trump’s anti-science policies and budget cuts, scientists are looking towards private donors for funding. Philanthropic dollars have now come to play an important role in scientific progress.

The successful American financier and philanthropist, Jeffery [sic] Epstein, is well known for supporting science; he is currently taking action to help a number of scientists thrive during the “Trump Era.”

None of this is new for Jeffery, though. Jeffery’s funding for science dates back to the year 2000, when he founded the Jeffery Epstein VI foundation to support cutting-edge science and science education around the world. The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation has supported many leading scientists including Stephen Hawkings, Martin Nowak, Gregory Benford, Lee Smolin, Seth Lloyd, Lawrence Krauss, Artificial Intelligence scientist, Marvin Minsky and Nobel Laureates Gerard ‘t Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek.

In 2003, the Foundation established the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, providing a $35 million gift to the university. The program is one of the first to study the evolution of molecular biology with the primary use of mathematics. It also became one of the first departments to develop a mathematical model to show how cancer cells evolve as infectious bacteria and viruses such as HIV.

Image

Lifeboat Foundation

American Financier and Philanthropist, Jeffery [sic] Epstein


While Jeffrey has donated large sums of money to help find a cure for cancer and infectious diseases, President Trump’s proposed budget seeks an $82 million cut for the center that works on vaccine-preventable and respiratory diseases, such as influenza and measles.

Trump’s budget also proposes a cut of $186 million from programs at CDC’s center on HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis prevention. One of the biggest cuts, however, is $222 million for the agency’s chronic disease prevention programs, which are designed to help people prevent diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and obesity.

“I have helped scientists for 20 years and I don’t really believe that you can say you fully understand a particular problem, unless your ideas can be tested against solid evidence,” Jeffery said. “But to tackle those problem you need resources, and if you have them the results can be marvellous. For example, in one simple and elegant equation, mathematics managed to describe the whole motion of the planets that alluded [sic] men for ages.”

A Helping Hand Goes A Long Way


Private donors who help fund science-based research and projects, such as Jeffery, are making a huge difference. When federal dollars become tight, the donors who step in become the real heroes. And while private funds are not usually as large as federal funds, these donations can go a long way in terms of finding cures for diseases.

For example, HIV/AIDS was once viewed as a death sentence in the 1980s, but years of privately-funded research have helped scientists understand the basic biology of viruses and the workings on DNA. The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded by Jeffery, is now conducting research in mapping colon cancer resistance to inhibitor drugs, mapping the progression of pancreatic cancer, targeting the topology of minority mutations that drive tumor growth and creating a database to predict and minimize resistance to HIV drugs.

Robert Trivers is an evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist, who some consider to be one of the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today. Robert is one of the scientists who has received support from Jeffrey.

“Jeffrey’s donations have permitted me to work on whatever I choose, in whatever way I choose,” Robert said. “Most of this is theoretical work. I think I have recently solved the problem of “honour killings” in terms of the effects of repeated first cousin marriages (Muslim) and long histories of within caste endogamy (Hindu). Jeffrey’s support included discussions with him, which were valuable mostly because he is extremely bright, open-minded and widely travelled. They key is that he gives me consistent, warm support without me having to write endless applications for grants, and trusts me to put it to good use, as indeed I do.”

Yet as Trump continues to make anti-science policies and excessive budget cuts, scientists and their supporters can only hope for the best. Science is a unviersal truth, but unfortunately, the truth can be ignored. With the help from private donors though, science can continue to thrive and help us evolve.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_Foundation

The Lifeboat Foundation is notable for its extremely large set of advisory boards, containing thousands of scientists, businessmen, and other individuals across dozens of separate disciplines.[15] Owing to their size, the Lifeboat boards meet online, rather than in person.[3] The boards contain a number of Nobel Prize winners,[15] four MacArthur genius grant fellows,[16][17][18] including Mathematica founder Stephen Wolfram,[11] anti-Islam political activist Pamela Geller,[19] and formerly hosted two Russian secret agents identified in 2010 as part of the Illegals Program.[20]
The new way of thinking is precisely delineated by what it is not.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 27, 2017 9:42 pm

Fight to reopen teen sex case against Jeff Epstein may set precedent
LOCAL By Jane Musgrave - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer 28
UMA SANGHVI
Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy Palm Beach resident charged with having teenage girls give him sexual massages, pleaded guilty to prostitution solicitation charges in Palm Beach County Circuit Court on June 20, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi / The Palm Beach Post)
Posted: 8:00 a.m. Saturday, August 26, 2017

WEST PALM BEACH —
Nearly 10 years after billionaire Jeffrey Epstein signed a plea deal that let him escape federal prosecution on charges of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls at his Palm Beach mansion, the 64-year-old politically-connected money manager faces the possibility that the agreement could be thrown out.

In court papers filed this month, attorneys representing two of the 30 young women prosecutors say Epstein molested lodged their final written pleas aimed at spurring U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra to force federal officials to reopen their investigation into the sordid case.

U.S. government lawyers in September will have another chance to defend themselves against allegations that they violated the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act by failing to alert Epstein’s victims of the terms of what some describe as a “sweetheart deal.” Marra could make a decision as early as this fall.

The stakes for all crime victims are high, said attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell, who filed the rare lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of two Jane Does who were 13 and 14 when they claim Epstein paid them for sex.

If Marra dismisses the lawsuit, “then the government will never have to give any information in any case to any victim,” they wrote, urging him to uphold the provisions of the 13-year-old federal law.

At the same time, the stakes are equally high for Epstein, who has ferried President Bill Clinton on his private jet and counts celebrities, such as Britain’s Prince Andrew, as friends.

Marra has already ruled that if he finds that federal prosecutors violated the act, he will consider throwing out the plea deal that Epstein signed with federal prosecutors in 2007. Miami attorney Roy Black, one of dozens of high-profile lawyers who has represented Epstein, claims that would be manifestly unfair.

As part of the unusual non-prosecution agreement, which wasn’t shared with victims for nearly a year while and after it was being negotiated, federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges that could have sent Epstein to prison for life. In exchange, Epstein in 2008 pleaded guilty in Palm Beach County Circuit Court to two Florida criminal charges — one count each of soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a vacant wing of the county stockade — a cell he was allowed to leave 16 hours a day, six days a week.

Epstein, who now spends most of his time on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, also is required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. In addition, as part of the plea deal, he paid roughly 30 women, who were identified by prosecutors as his victims, undisclosed amounts of money to settle civil lawsuits they had filed against him.

To throw out the deal after Epstein has been punished would rob him of his constitutional right to due process, Black wrote in court papers. “If a defendant lives up to his end of the bargain, the government is bound to perform its promises,” he wrote, quoting a prior court decision.

However, Edwards and Cassell claim that because federal prosecutors didn’t confer with their clients about the plea deal before it was made, they violated the law and that makes the non-prosecution agreement illegal. They cited examples where plea deals have been invalidated after judges later found prosecutors violated the crime victims’ rights law.

In most of the cases they cited, the mistakes were the result of oversights. But Edward and Cassell wrote, “The undisputed facts of this case prove that, rather than forthrightly discharging its obligations to numerous child sexual assault victims, the government chose to enter into a secret deal with the man who had victimized them.”

Federal prosecutors have said they didn’t reveal the terms of the non-prosecution agreement because they feared Epstein and his high-powered attorneys were trying to circumvent it. Still, Edwards and Cassell, said there was no justification for the secrecy.

“The government’s conduct here was particularly egregious, because it repeatedly found time to confer with attorneys for Epstein — the man who sexually abused the victims,” they said of emails and meetings between federal prosecutors, including U.S. Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was then U.S. attorney for South Florida.

In an affidavit, Edwards said Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana, who was handling Epstein’s case, had numerous chances to tell him and the young women he represented about the non-prosecution agreement. Instead, four months after the agreement was signed in September 2007, federal officials wrote victims letters, assuring them the case was still under investigation.

“This can be a lengthy process and we request your continued patience while we conduct a thorough investigation,” officials wrote in a January 2008 letter to Edwards’ clients.

In court papers, Villafana said she alerted Edwards the day before Epstein was to plead guilty in circuit court, hoping that Edwards, his clients and other alleged victims would attend the hearing. But Edwards said neither he nor the young women had any idea that the plea in state court meant Epstein wouldn’t be prosecuted for federal crimes.

“The victims (and their attorneys) could hardly have expected that the prosecutors and the man who had sexually abused them would be working together to conceal an arrangement that would prevent his prosecution for crimes against them,” Edwards and Cassell wrote.

While Judge Marra could allow a jury to decide the complex case, prosecutors are asking him to toss the women’s lawsuit and end the litigation.

Edwards and Cassell instead want him to rule that prosecutors violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. Once that determination is made, Marra could then decide what remedies to impose, the two lawyers argue.

Under the act, neither of their clients can seek “damages” from the government but the attorneys have suggested Marra could order the government to pay the women restitution, impose a monetary sanction and pay their legal fees.

Still, Cassell insisted: “This isn’t about money, it’s about justice.”

Cassell, who is a law professor at the University of Utah, said the case is being watched closely by victims’ rights advocates along with federal lawmakers who pushed the legislation through Congress and have publicly questioned prosecutors’ handling of Epstein’s case.

A decision ordering federal prosecutors to reopen the investigation could establish a national precedent, he said. “It will be a big win for the victims,” Cassell said. “That’s the way we look at it.”
http://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/cri ... 9vrbz8teK/


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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby liminalOyster » Sat Dec 02, 2017 10:35 pm

Judge delays, tries to rein in X-rated civil trial of Jeffrey Epstein
LOCAL By Jane Musgrave - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH —
What promised to be a salacious trial probing billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual relationships with underage girls won’t get underway next week as planned.

Citing the many unanswered legal questions that still swirl around the 8-year-old civil lawsuit pitting attorney Bradley Edwards against the 64-year-old Palm Beach convicted sex offender, Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Donald Hafele agreed to delay the trial until March.

“Under the circumstances of this unusual and relatively complex case, the court finds that there are simply too many significant, lengthy motions that are pending and need to be heard prior to December 5, 2017, the date that the trial was originally scheduled to commence,” Hafele wrote in an order, granting a motion from Epstein’s new defense team to delay the trial until next year.

During a hearing Wednesday, Hafele made it clear that he doesn’t want the trial to become X-rated. When it comes to “graphic, sexual questions, the likelihood is that I will not allow them into evidence,” Hafele said.

But he acknowledged that his efforts to sanitize the trial will be difficult given that the allegations against Epstein involve lawsuits Edwards filed on behalf of three of dozens of teenage girls who claim they were paid to give the billionaire money manager sexually-charged massages at his Palm Beach mansion.

Further, Hafele said, it is likely jurors will be told about a controversial non-prosecution agreement Epstein negotiated with federal prosecutors. In 2008, he agreed to plead guilty to two state charges — soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution — and served roughly 13 months of an 18-month sentence. In exchange, federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue allegations that he had abused dozens of other teenage girls, instead allowing them to file civil lawsuits against Epstein.

Still, Hafele warned Edwards’ attorney, Jack Scarola, that he will limit what evidence can be used against Epstein, who now spends most of his time on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. “I don’t want this to turn into whether Jeffrey Epstein is a serial child molester,” Hafele said.

He said he does intend to call Virginia Roberts Giuffre to testify. In a civil lawsuit, she claimed Epstein turned her into a sex slave at age 15 when she was working at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, years before Donald Trump became president. Epstein flew her around the globe in his private jet filled with various celebrities, including Britain’s Prince Andrew and former President Bill Clinton, she later claimed in a separate lawsuit.

While Trump, Prince Andrew and Clinton are also on Scarola’s witness list, he has said it is doubtful he will call the three powerful men to testify.

Epstein’s new defense team, attorneys Scott Link and Kara Rockenbach, urged Hafele to limit the evidence to Epstein’s relationship with three teenage girls Edwards represented. Epstein paid $5.5 million to settle the lawsuits Edwards filed on behalf of the women, identified in court papers only as L.M., E.W. and Jane Doe, according to revelations Scarola made as part of the lawsuit. Epstein settled other lawsuits with nearly two dozen other women; those amounts remain confidential.

Hafele said evidence about Epstein’s exploitation of other young women is relevant because it helps explain why Edwards and Epstein are still locked in a legal battle.

The lawsuit began in 2009 when Epstein sued Edwards, who worked for Fort Lauderdale attorney Scott Rothstein. Rothstein, now disbarred, is serving a 50-year prison sentence in connection with a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme in which he sold phony settlements to investors. Epstein claimed Edwards “ginned up” the lawsuits he filed on behalf of the three women to fuel Rothstein’s far-flung scam.

Epstein ultimately dropped the lawsuit against Edwards. Edwards then filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Epstein, claiming Epstein sued him to punish him for representing the women. Scarola said Epstein was also angry at Edwards for filing a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to throw out the non-prosecution agreement.

While criminal charges are typically not mentioned in civil lawsuits, this case is different, Hafele said. “If not at the heart, (they) are certainly at the center of the entire case,” he said of the deal Epstein cut with federal and state prosecutors.

Before the trial begins, Hafele will have to decide many thorny questions about what evidence will be presented to the jury. In addition, Epstein’s lawyers have asked Hafele to sanction Scarola for revealing how much Epstein paid Edwards’ three clients. The settlement was supposed to be confidential.

Scarola counters that he was legally obligated to make the settlements public because of questions Epstein’s lawyers asked during the litigation.

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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby cptmarginal » Thu May 24, 2018 9:22 pm

These FOIA'd docs have been released now, though so far they appear to me to be essentially worthless. Hundreds upon hundreds of deleted pages. Of the pages that were released, nearly every single paragraph is redacted.

https://www.thewrap.com/fbi-sued-by-rad ... n-records/

The FBI needs to pony up its records on Jeffrey Epstein — at least, so says Radar Online, which is suing the bureau after allegedly being stonewalled on a Freedom of Information Act request.

In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in New York, Radar Online asks for the production of the bureau’s records concerning “the agency’s investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Edward Epstein for sexually trafficking underage women. Defendant FBI has withheld these records despite a properly filed FOIA request.”
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby cptmarginal » Thu May 24, 2018 9:58 pm

Counting 3877 deleted pages in total. All that remains is some blank paragraphs, a bunch of receipts, and some news clippings. I can think of no innocent, rational justification for this, given the purportedly non-political nature of the charges. What kind of bizarre behavior is that, stonewalling the FOIA and then releasing this junk?

I do know that the mainstream media silence on the whole thing is deafening to me at this point, particularly considering the current relevance of Dershowitz, Mar-a-Lago, and even Acosta. They have the pretense of dishing out the dirt on the President, while never actually mentioning simple facts that should have barred him from office in the first place. A little bit like what happened with George Bush and his father, never mentioning their family's Nazi background even though it would undoubtedly influence voters, but that's stretching the comparison. I guess the appropriate parallel between Bush and Drumpf family media treatment would be the attitude towards his KKK father, or his brothel-running grandfather, or his sister the federal judge that had to recuse herself - all of those continue to escape mention on TV despite being explosive and very interesting.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 16, 2018 3:25 pm

Steve Bannon trying to get on disgraced Jeffrey Epstein’s good side

By Emily Smith
August 11, 2018 | 4:27pm

Modal Trigger

Steve Bannon trying to get on disgraced Jeffrey Epstein’s good side


Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein Getty Images

Steve Bannon shared a secret meeting with reviled billionaire pedophile Jeffrey ­Epstein at the financier’s notorious Upper East Side mansion.

Former White House chief strategist Bannon was spotted stepping out of his SUV and entering the registered sex offender’s sprawling 21,000-square-foot mansion at 9 E. 71st St. shortly before 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Epstein’s ­palatial pad is one of his homes where young girls were allegedly brought in to perform massages and used as “sex slaves.”

We assume Bannon wasn’t there for a massage.

Sources speculate that the disgraced ­Epstein wants to use his millions to work his way close to political power again.

One told us, “Bannon needs money to bankroll his political agenda. Epstein has plenty of money, and craves power and access.”

Bannon made an early-morning beeline to Epstein, even though Bannon may have burned bridges when he savaged Ivanka Trump over her criticism of Roy Moore, whom Bannon backed despite claims the candidate had sexually harassed teens. Citing an allegation in ­legal papers from a woman (who later dropped her lawsuit) that Donald Trump and Epstein had raped her when she was 13, Bannon said in response to Ivanka, “What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?”

Epstein has previously used his millions to cultivate the world’s most powerful — but has mostly given money to Democrats.

From 2001 to 2003, Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s private plane, dubbed “The Lolita Express,” 26 times. Epstein is close to Prince Andrew and was a regular at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

Trump told New York magazine of Epstein in 2002, “Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Epstein, 65, pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a teen and served 13 months in jail.

Last year, he reportedly paid millions to settle three lawsuits filed against him by teens. Bannon’s rep didn’t comment. A lawyer for Epstein said, “Let me ask him,” but didn’t respond by deadline.
https://pagesix.com/2018/08/11/steve-ba ... good-side/
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 28, 2018 6:46 am

Plaintiffs file new complaint against registered sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein for losses in decades-old $475M Ponzi scheme

In 1995 Steven Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to bilking investors of almost half a billion dollars in one of the worst Ponzi schemes in history — he paid a $60 million settlement and spent 18 years in jail. In 2016 Hoffenberg attempted to reclaim money for Ponzi victims from his ex-associate Jeffrey Epstein. And in June 2016 Hoffenberg launched a Super PAC to elect Donald Trump. Now Hoffenberg’s allegations are part of a new class action attempt to recover hundreds of millions of dollars from Epstein.

Wendy SiegelmanAug 27
Freelance journalist, wendyusa@protonmail.com https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman

Note: on some mobile devices source links within story do not display correctly, please view article on regular computer to see all source links.

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Last week law360.com reported a new class action complaint filed in New York federal court on August 21, 2018 against Jeffrey Epstein for his alleged role in a Ponzi scheme that ran from 1987 to 1993 and cost investors $475 million.

Court filings show that the complaint filed by two investors on behalf of themselves and others, includes an affidavit signed by Steven Hoffenberg that names Jeffrey Epstein as a co-conspirator in the Ponzi scheme that landed Hoffenberg in jail for 18 years. The Ponzi scheme had involved selling investors bonds, notes and securities to cover prior business losses and to fund the lavish lifestyles of Hoffenberg and, allegedly, of Epstein as well.

The action was filed to recover damages from Epstein and three companies he used to “conceal his ill-gotten gains.” The plaintiffs demand a trial by jury to determine compensation for various damages, and they estimate that the $475 million owed in restitution along with 20 years accrued interest, is now valued at approximately $1 billion.

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Top of complaint against Epstein and his three companies (left) and part of exhibit B affidavit from Steven Hoffenberg (right)
This new complaint is the latest installment in a saga that started over three decades ago when Steven Hoffenberg and Jeffrey Epstein first met and bonded over their reported obsession with making money. Since then one became an ex-felon and the other became a registered sex-offender. And, like the over-used trope of Russian nesting dolls, there’s a story tucked within this story, of a newly reported series of bizarre events in 2016 when Hoffenberg and a new business partner announced plans to take over $1 billion from Epstein and simultaneously launched a Super PAC to elect Donald Trump president. The Super PAC filed an FEC receipt for a $50 million in-kind contribution — that appears to be yet another fake scheme.

Steven Hoffenberg hired Jeffrey Epstein in 1987

From early in his career Jeffrey Epstein seemed to have a knack for skirting trouble with little or no repercussion. Epstein worked at brokerage firm Bear Stearns but left abruptly in 1981. According to SEC filings and legal documents reported in a 2003 Vanity Fair expose on Epstein, he departed Bear Stearns as the SEC was looking into insider trading in an acquisition deal involving the Bronfman family’s Seagram Company. The SEC was tipped off that Epstein had information on insider trading and questioned him about it — but the SEC never charged Epstein or anyone at Bear Stearns.

A few years later in the 1980’s Steven Hoffenberg met Jeffrey Epstein in London and the two bonded over their appreciation of lavish lifestyles and an obsession with making money. According to sources Hoffenberg’s Tower Financial Corporation hired Epstein in 1987 and paid him $25,000 per month. Epstein worked on several deals including “doomed bids to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987 and Emery Air Freight Corp. in 1988.”

When Hoffenberg started to encounter legal and regulatory troubles in the late 1980’s, Epstein formed a new alliance with Leslie Wexner, the billionaire founder of The Limited Brands, which included Victoria’s Secret, Express, and Bath & Body Works. Epstein moved on and continued to build his wealth and prestige while Hoffenberg took a steep fall.

In 1994 Hoffenberg was arrested on charges of securities fraud and obstruction of justice. In 1995 Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to defrauding investors of almost half a billion dollars by operating one of the largest Ponzi schemes on record through his company Towers Financial Corporation. Hoffenberg ended up paying a $60 million settlement to the SEC, a $1 million fine, and spent 18 years in prison.

Although Hoffenberg’s conviction was based in large part on business related to the Pan Am and Emery Air deals that Jeffrey Epstein had worked on, Hoffenberg did not name Epstein at the time as a co-conspirator.

While Epstein skirted business troubles from his work for Hoffenberg, his lifestyle pursuits partly caught up with him and in 2008 Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting an underage prostitute, spent 13 months in jail and became a registered sex offender.

Various legal documents have described accusations much more serious than Epstein’s 2008 conviction, including ‘loaning’ out underage girls to rich and powerful men, in part for the purpose of obtaining potential blackmail material. And there have been legal allegations by former victims that federal prosecutors in Florida violated the rights of dozens of teenage victims by secretly negotiating favorable terms for Epstein.

While Epstein continues to face legal issues related to allegations involving minor girls, he now also faces the new complaint that includes financial allegations made by his former employer Steven Hoffenberg. The two men who once bonded over their desire to make money are now foes, but they still share several things in common: notoriety for financial and sexual crimes — and ties to Donald Trump.

Epstein, Hoffenberg and Donald Trump

Jeffrey Epstein has ties going back decades with many famous and powerful men, including Bill Clinton, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew. And none are now more famous, or arguably more powerful, than U.S. president Donald Trump. In a New York Magazine article in 2002, Trump boasted of his friendship with Epstein:

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,’’ Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”


In 2017 Politico reported on a civil lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre who claimed that two decades ago when she was 15 and working as a towel girl at a Palm Beach resort, she was recruited into sexual slavery by socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s girlfriend at the time. The resort where Giuffre had been working as a towel girl when Maxwell recruited her, was Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which has since hosted visits by important US allies and world leaders. The story notes that “a lawyer for Trump says the president was unaware of any wrongdoing by Epstein.”

Of the many sexual assault allegations made against Donald Trump prior to his election, the most disturbing accusation was made by a woman referred to as Jane Doe in a lawsuit filed in 2016 against Trump and Jeffrey Epstein that accused both men of raping her in 1994 when she was only thirteen years old. A lawsuit filed in California was apparently dismissed over technical reasons in May 2016 and was refiled in New York and then dropped in November 2016 after the woman known as Jane Doe received threats and decided not to come forward. Trump maintains that the accusation is false.

Steven Hoffenberg has a less sordid history with Donald Trump. Before his arrest, Hoffenberg had been a tenant of Trump Tower which has been home to celebrities, gamblers, convicts and members of the Russian mafia. After he was released from prison and married in 2014, Hoffenberg showed his fondness for Trump by taking wedding photos in front of Trump Tower. In 2016 Steven Hoffenberg pursued his most pro-Trump effort yet — launching a Super PAC to elect Donald Trump president.

Hoffenberg Launched a Super PAC for Trump

The announcement that Steven Hoffenberg was launching a super PAC in early 2016 barely made a blip on the radar in the news storm that swirled around the Trump campaign.

The Washington Examiner published a short piece in May 2016 on the Get Our Jobs Back Inc. PAC and the plans of the PAC’s CEO Steven Hoffenberg to raise over $1 billion for presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In June the PAC filed an FEC expenditure report that noted a $50,000,000 In-kind contribution from Statware, Inc. at 90 Main Street, Centerbrook, CT, for the purpose of Digital Media Marketing, Revenue Sharing, on behalf of ‘Trump J. Donald’.

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June 14, 2016 Report of Independent Expenditures for Get Our Jobs Back, Inc.
An ‘in-kind’ contribution is defined by the FEC as gifts of goods or services, such as consulting, donations of office supplies or mailing lists, sponsoring fundraising events, or payments for advertising on behalf of a candidate.

Politico published a June 2016 story describing the donation from Statware:

“Statware Inc. was making an in-kind donation of services worth $50 million. The PAC listed the services as “Digital Media Marketing, Revenue Sharing,” though there’s little evidence yet of such a campaign.
Statware Inc. is a private company based in Centerbrook, Connecticut, that advises financial brokers on issues related to sensitive or proprietary data. According to its website, the firm does not have outside investors and operates “without distraction or undue outside influences.”


Hoffenberg issued a June 21, 2016 press release announcing that the new Trump Super PAC called Get Our Jobs Back Inc. planned to collect $0.99 donations to fund a $50 million digital marketing campaign. The press release also included a statement from PAC spokesman Theodore Fotsis, who was listed as the media contact and as Chairman/CEO of WHAM Inc.

Statware Founded by Richard Lepoutre

According to the Statware website the company that made the in-kind contribution to Hoffenberg’s Super PAC is a “wholly-owned, private Connecticut Corporation doing business exclusively in the list industry since 1984. Statware has no outside investors and is able to direct and focus its attention entirely on the needs of the list industry without distraction or undue outside influences.” Statware founder and President Richard A. Lepoutre, is described as “a 30 year veteran of the list industry. His career includes several years at Direct Media, Inc. and as Founder and President of Statlistics, Publishers Marketing Group and Statware.”

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Image from the Statware website
Richard LePoutre’s LinkedIn page lists a wide range of experience with marketing and direct mail companies. LePoutre is also listed as the founder of various conservative, military-related, and anti-porn or sex-trafficking organizations including: Founder of CauseACTION, Co-Founder of The March of Honor Campaign, credit as Executive Producer of the Honor Bound Trailer, Co-Founder of the Stop Child Porn on Facebook Campaign, and Co-Founder of MenAPAT/Men Against Prostitution and Trafficking.

It is not clear how Richard LePoutre met Steven Hoffenberg or how he came to agree to make a $50 million in-kind contribution to the Get Our Jobs Back Inc. Super PAC. And there is no evidence the in-kind contribution was ever made.

WHAM Inc. Briefly Acquired Hoffenberg’s Businesses

What was not made clear in the sparse news coverage about Hoffenberg’s Get Our Jobs Back, Inc. Super PAC for Trump and the Statware in-kind contribution, was that earlier in 2016 the company WHAM Inc. and CEO Theodore Fotsis agreed to acquire Hoffenberg’s businesses, making WHAM Inc. the owner of the Super PAC. However, this business agreement only lasted a few months and right before the election in early November 2016, WHAM Inc and Fotsis ended their agreement with Hoffenberg.

A February 2016 news release had stated that Theodore Fotsis, CEO of penny-stock company WHAM Inc. planned to acquire Steven Hoffenberg’s NYPP (New York Post Publishing — not related to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post) and it’s holdings including Towers Investors.com.

The quarterly report filed for WHAM Inc. for the period through March 31, 2016 included more details on the February news release and described the binding agreement to acquire Hoffenberg’s businesses including NYPP and Towers Investors.

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Excerpt from WHAM Inc. March 31, 2016 Quarterly filing
The March 31, 2016 filing stated that WHAM, Inc. was authorized to issue 500 million shares in addition to approximately 265 million shares already outstanding. As part of the deal with Hoffenberg, his company New York Post Publishing received almost 146 million shares, which had voting rights equal to 55% of outstanding voting shares. At the time of the announcement of the binding agreement, the WHAM, Inc. stock price for the public float appears to have been listed as $0.079. However, outside of the WHAM filing, there is no clear evidence that the stock was actually issued to Hoffenberg.

In March 2016 WHAM Inc. also bought construction company American Services Inc. (ASI). The announcement was made by Theodore Fotsis CEO of WHAM Inc., Steven Hoffenberg CEO of Towers Investors, and Alan Fraade, General Counsel at The Mintz Fraade Law Firm — the same firm that represented Hoffenberg when he launched the Super PAC.

The WHAM Inc. deal to acquire Hoffenberg’s businesses was announced along with another unusual plan that involved convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The February 2016 release that announced the WHAM/Hoffenberg deal also announced a bigger more bizarre plan — a binding agreement for WHAM Inc. and CEO Fotsis, along with Hoffenberg’s NYPP, to take over “Jeffrey Epstein’s Billions in Order to Pay the Towers Investor Victims.”

A different February 2016 press release included additional details and noted that “WHAM INC. now owns the collection contract for the billions of dollars due by Epstein.” The release which noted that “Jeffrey Epstein owns Financial Trust Corporation operating out of Saint Thomas” included a Q and A, which had such lively comments as this one:

“Q: Does Jeffrey Epstein have to pay back the Billion of Dollars of debt owed to the Tower Investor victims under the complex WHAM INC. takeover, which was signed last week?
A: Yes!”


A Letter of Intent signed February 2, 2016 by Steven Hoffenberg and Theodore Fotsis includes a section on Jeffrey Epstein, noting “it is contemplated that the Financial Trust Company” and “Jeffrey Epstein” based on TFC’s (Hoffenberg’s Tower Financial Corp.) investment with Epstein and the Trust shall provide a minimum of one billion dollars in assets to the Company.

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There is no indication in the WHAM/Fotsis and Hoffenberg agreement to acquire Jeffrey Epstein’s one billion dollars that Jeffrey Epstein actually knew about or agreed to the deal.

The bizarre announcement almost had the feel of a hostile takeover, where the plan of the acquiring party was made without the consent or possibly even the knowledge of the target of the acquisition.

And then a few months later, May 2016, Hoffenberg filed a civil lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein accusing him of helping Hoffenberg defraud investors. The lawsuit was later withdrawn with prejudice. But it appears that the plan announced for WHAM Inc. with Hoffenberg to take over Epstein’s billions may have been announced in coordination with the lawsuit Hoffenberg filed a few months later against Epstein.

It’s not clear if WHAM Inc.’s CEO Theodore Fotsis and Steven Hoffenberg realistically thought they could reclaim some of Jeffrey Epstein’s money, or if they intended to try to raise funds from other investors or Super PAC contributors based on their grand plans. However, all of their news releases seem far reaching and unbelievable and beg the question around what the real intent was for their partnership and the Super PAC activities.

An August 2016 press release noted that Hoffenberg’s Tower Investors.com, which managed the Trump Super PAC at Get Our Jobs Back, Inc., was a fully-owned subsidiary of WHAM, Inc. The press release described the fantastical plan for the new PAC to wipe out all US student loan debt for 43 million college student loans — a debt of 1.37 trillion dollars. Part of the plan included a Christ credit and debit card system, part of a faith-based credit card company, to be marketed to churches throughout the US. WHAM projected issuing 10 million credit cards, and making a fortune of $500,000,000 for investors. A related PR Newswire press release was briefly hosted on yahoo.com/news but was later removed.

While there has been no reporting up until now about WHAM Inc., Fotsis and Hoffenberg in the media, a July 2016 blog post by Tom Aswell on the Louisianavoice.com summarized many of the highlights of Steven Hoffenberg’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein and to WHAM Inc. based on some of their mid-year news releases.

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In another odd story — the same month the Get Our Jobs Back PAC was launched, WHAM, Inc.’s June 2016 consolidated financials noted two contracts “for performance based consulting services with third‐parties” with future revenue of $113,000,000. Revenue for the same period was $463,595, making the two contracts worth $113 million a complete anomaly. None of WHAM Inc.’s financials after June 2016 referenced the two contracts or the potential $113,000,000 again.

In October the Super PAC Appears to Implode

An FEC Form 99 filing dated on the top right October 7, 2016 indicated that all elements of the Super PAC were in dispute, noting 1) the $50 million transaction is under investigation for unlawful acts by Statware Inc. to damage the Super PAC donations, 2) the investigation shows Statware lied to the Super PAC, and 3) the Super PAC fired and claimed malpractice against its law firm Mintz Fraade.

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A 2017 New York Post article about unrelated work done by Alan Fraade from the law firm Mintz Fraade has the headline “Lawyer accused of misconduct has the worst name ever” and opens stating “Maybe Alan P. Fraade — pronounced fraud — should have considered a career other than law.” It appears that Hoffenberg hired a lawyer for the Super PAC who had quite a questionable reputation.

However, despite the legal items noted in October 2017, in subsequent filings Hoffenberg continued to report the $50 million in-kind contribution. For example the in-kind contribution is listed in a report filed in February 2017 for the period 04–01–2016 to 06–30–2016.

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And the February 2017 cover page included hand scrawled comments noting that the Super PAC closed on November 8, 2016.

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In November 2016 WHAM and Hoffenberg Part Ways

At the same time that the Super PAC closed, WHAM Inc and Fotsis parted ways with Hoffenberg.

The WHAM Inc. filing dated September 30, 2016 included a section noting that the February 2, 2016 acquisition agreement between WHAM Inc. and Hoffenberg’s NYPP was rescinded effective November 2, 2016. In addition the shares given to Hoffenberg were rescinded as well.

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September 30, 2016 WHAM Inc. Information and Disclosure Statement
And then in 2017, as though WHAM Inc. wanted to distance itself further from 2016 activity, the company made two major transitions and name changes.

WHAM Inc → BERITH Holdings → Syntrol Corp

Following the strange acquisition and then divesture of Hoffenberg’s businesses by WHAM Inc. in 2016, the company quickly went through two major transformations in 2017, into BERITH Holdings and then Syntrol Corp.

A January 2017 press release about the WHAM Secure Android mobile application noted that on December 20, 2016 the company changed its name to BERITH Holdings Corporation, and WHAM Inc. CEO Theodore Fotsis, along with Russ Guzior and a few other WHAM executives, joined BERITH Holdings Corporation.

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BERITH Holdings via corporationwiki.com
Later the same year a September 2017 quarterly disclosure statement for BERITH Holdings noted the company was acquiring Syntrol Plumbing, Heating, and Air, Inc. and the new company would “be named Syntrol Corp.”

Both Theodore Fotsis and Russ Guzior resigned from the company in September 2017. However a January 2018 Form 1A filing for Syntrol notes that Fotsis cancelled 1,000,000 shares he owned in ex-change for 1,600,000 newly issued SNLP (Syntrol) shares, so Fotsis appears to have remained a shareholder into 2018.

Theodore Fotsis and WHAM Inc.

It is not clear how Theodore Fotsis and Steven Hoffenberg met and developed the plan for WHAM Inc. to acquire Hoffenberg’s businesses, to launch the Trump Super PAC, and to attempt to take over $1 billion from Jeffrey Epstein.

WHAM Inc. is short for Woodman Holdings Asset Management — which appeared to trade under the stock symbol WFMC. According to the March 31, 2016 Information and Disclosure Statement WHAM Inc. was established in December 2001 as East Coast Distribution Corporation, which became IPMC-Europe Corporation in 2002, and became The Wholefood Farmacy Corporation in 2004, and then was renamed WHAM Inc. in 2011.

The company described its nature of business as investing in and/or acquiring early stage companies. These businesses ranged broadly, from WhamSecure Inc., described as a “Secure Mobile Encrypted Communications Solution” to A.S.I Construction Services, a “Full Service Construction Co., Specializing in Roofing.”

The Wham Inc. website on the Wayback Machine archive from June 2016 is filled with references to the Hoffenberg acquisition, the Get Our Jobs Back Inc. Super PAC, and blaring negative headlines about Jeffrey Epstein.

Relatively little is known about WHAM Inc. CEO Theodore Fotsis. The March 31, 2016 company filing describes his background, including his role as President of Honeyfield Restaurant Corp. in Lockport IL and that he studied theology at the Moody Bible Institute and Fire School of Ministry International.

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March 31, 2016 WHAM Inc. Information and Disclosure Statement
A search of Open Corporates reveals a Theodore Fotsis who is the agent for two Nevada registered companies, Masadah Solutions, LLC and Sego Corporation. They were incorporated at different times in 2015 and both display their status as ‘Revoked.’

The other executive from WHAM Inc. listed in the March 31, 2016 filing is Russ Guzior, COO and Director, and his bio notes his connection to Hobby Lobby owner David Green, and a disposal and an antique and design company he runs. The bio ends by noting that Gucior has learned that a “biblically run company offers tremendous blessings and results versus a company that is not, (Romans 12:2).”

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March 31, 2016 WHAM Inc. Information and Disclosure Statement

WHAM Inc. Website Domain Information

An independent researcher who wishes to stay anonymous helped uncover some interesting hosting information for the WHAM Inc. website. One change occurred in mid 2016 during the period when WHAM Inc. owned the Trump Super PAC. And a big change occurred in early 2018, well after the WHAM Inc. name had changed several times (to BERTIH Holdings and then again to Syntrol) and Theodore Fotsis had no known remaining connection to WHAM Inc. Therefore, the domain information below may have no significance other than an interesting coincidental domain connection — to a Ukrainian hosting company that appears in the Trump-Russia story.

Starting in July 2013 WHAM Inc. used whamcorp.us as its primary corporate domain name and used Godaddy and Cloudflare infrastructure for hosting and registration, both relatively standard for a small US based company.

According to the Waybackmachine archives by April 7, 2016 WHAM Inc. was redirecting its whamcorp.us domain to its new domain and was using a new corporate website located at whaminc.us. And per historical domain records this domain was hosted at the French cloud computing company OVH SAS which provides VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. The earliest resolution of the whaminc.us domain that was found was on April 4, 2016 to the IP address 167.114.211.10 controlled by the French company OVH SAS.

OVH SAS gained some notoriety in early 2017 because of its implication in a number of hacking events attributed to the Russian state-sponsored hacking group Fancy Bear.

Other than less transparency and regulatory oversight, it is not clear why a change like this would have been made in the months leading up to the 2016 US Presidential elections.

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Image

The other big change occurred on January 14, 2018 when Pavel Birjukovskis of Latvia took ownership of the domain whaminc.us. Given the historical timeline and changes to the hosting of this domain it is not clear whether Birjukovskis took ownership of the whaminc.us domain after it had expired and went back on the open market, or whether it was sold to him in a private transaction. Since that time the domain has been hosted on IP addresses controlled by the ITL Company.

The ITL company, based in Ukraine, has been prominent in the Trump-Russia story and was implicated as the hosting/network provider for the Blacktivist.info website and also leased servers to Greenfloid LLC, a Florida registered company run by Sergey Kashyrin, Iurii Udovenko and Iryna Volokhai on Staten Island. Greenfloid LLC ran the sites blackmattersus.com and DoNotShoot.Us. These BLM troll sites were outed by articles back in October of 2017 by the DailyBeast and Thinkprogress. ITL also hosted the Whoiswhos.me domain in September 2016 — a domain confirmed to have been controlled and used by the Russian Internet Research Agency and confirmed to have hosted malware. More recently the ITL company was again linked to a hacking campaign called VPNFilter (IP:217.12.202.40), which was again linked to the Russian hacking group Fancy Bear.

As noted earlier, in January 2018 when whaminc.us domain ownership moved to Pavel Birjukovskis from Latvia and was hosted on IP addresses controlled by ITL Company, there is no apparent connection with Theodore Fotsis, Steven Hoffenberg or anyone involved with the 2016 WHAM Inc. business. The move to ITL hosting may be an unusual coincidence.

Jeffrey Epstein link to SCL Group’s Alexander Nix

One final interesting note. Jeffrey Epstein has a tangential connection to Trump’s scandal ridden data company Cambridge Analytica and its CEO Alexander Nix.

Ghislaine Maxwell, who had been Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend and who allegedly recruited girls for him and his associates, is the daughter of late publishing magnate Robert Maxwell who had owned the Mirror Group and Macmillan in the UK. Robert Maxwell had been closely affiliated with the company Robert Fraser & Partners LLP. Journalist Ann Marlowe identified that Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix had worked at Robert Fraser & Partners, and that the firm was incorporated in 2003 by John Michael Bottomley who served as a director for several hundred companies including Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Group from 2005 to 2014.


For the past few years Steven Hoffenberg appears to have jumped from one new outlandish scheme to another. The partnership he had with Jeffrey Epstein three decades ago has devolved into attempts by Hoffenberg to hold Epstein legally and financially accountable for the Ponzi scheme Hoffenberg claims they ran together. And in the midst of the pursuit of Epstein started in 2016, Hoffenberg formed a strange short-lived partnership with Theodore Fotsis and WHAM Inc., launched a Super PAC that claimed a mystery $50 million in-kind contribution to support the Trump campaign, and then everything was dissolved before the 2016 election.

These events may comprise yet more odd stories in the ever bizarre Trump-Russia saga. Hoffenberg’s exploits may be merely nothing-burgers, albeit colorful ones. Now it remains to be seen if the new complaint filed last week with an affidavit from Steven Hoffenberg against Jeffrey Epstein will have any traction.
https://medium.com/@wsiegelman/plaintif ... a734847ddc
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 27, 2018 8:50 pm

Much-anticipated Jeffrey Epstein civil case trial set for Dec. 4



Jeffrey Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence. Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy Palm Beach resident charged with having teenage girls give him sexual massages, was in court Monday morning to enter a plea after nearly two years, June 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi / The Palm Beach Post)

Jeffrey Epstein

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Jeffrey Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence. Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy Palm Beach resident charged with having teenage girls give him sexual massages, was in court Monday morning to enter a plea after nearly two years, June 30, 2008. (Uma Sanghvi / The Palm Beach Post)

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

By
Posted Aug 23, 2018 at 12:01 AM Updated Aug 23, 2018 at 7:06 PM

A long-awaited-for trial that promises a first-ever exploration of the sexual misdeeds of billionaire convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is expected to begin Dec. 4 in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.

During a two-hour hearing on Wednesday, Circuit Judge Donald Hafele dispensed with a series of routine motions filed by attorneys representing Epstein and those representing his longtime nemesis, lawyer Bradley Edwards.

Jeffrey Epstein: Coverage of Palm Beach billionaire sex offender case

Unless the two agree to settle their differences during yet another mediation session on Sept. 21, the civil lawsuit is expected to go to a jury nearly 10 years after it was filed.

However, the money manager who counts President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew among his friends has no plans to be there, his attorneys said.

Memo: Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein talked to FBI to get plea deal

As a result, attorney Jack Scarola said he will be forced to read excerpts from Epstein’s sworn statements. The part-time Palm Beach resident refused to answer nearly every question — ranging from how many times he had sex with the girls at his waterfront mansion to how much he is worth. In each case, he invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Epstein attorney Scott Link said the strategy is simply to vilify Epstein. “Mr. Scarola and Mr. Edwards want to show what a horrible person Mr. Epstein was,” he said. “They hope the jury dislikes Mr. Epstein enough to award Mr. Edwards lots of money in damages.”

Jeffery Epstein civil trial spins on claims of stolen documents

While Judge Hafele threw out some of the questions, he said Epstein’s relationship with the young women and his net worth are relevant to the malicious prosecution lawsuit Edwards filed against Epstein.

Link argued that Epstein has good reason not to answer questions about his relationships with young women. While Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution and soliciting prostitution and served 13 months in jail, Edwards is trying to convince a federal judge to reopen the investigation.

Until U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra decides whether federal prosecutors violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act by not telling the young women that they agreed to drop their investigation if Epstein pleaded guilty to the state charges, Epstein is not off the hook, Link said.

Epstein and Edwards have been duking it out in court for years. Edwards successfully sued Epstein on behalf of three women who claimed he paid them for sex when they were in their teens.

After Epstein paid $5.5 million to settle the three lawsuits and undisclosed amounts to settle dozens of others, he sued Edwards and his former boss, disbarred lawyer and convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein. Epstein claimed Rothstein and Edwards used the cases they filed against him to lure investors into the $1.2 million Ponzi scheme. Investors were lured by tales of bogus settlements of various lawsuits filed against high-profile people.

After Rothstein was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison, Epstein dropped the lawsuit. Edwards responded by suing Epstein for malicious prosecution to clear his reputation. Epstein knew Edwards wasn’t part of Rothstein’s scheme but sued him to punish him for representing the young women, Scarola claims.

Link disagrees. At the time, he said Epstein had good reason to believe Edwards was part of the scam.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby elfismiles » Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:17 pm

Cops worked to put serial sex abuser in prison. Prosecutors worked to cut him a break
BY Julie K. Brown
Nov. 28, 2018
Perversion of Justice logo
A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 10674.html

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime
BY Julie K. Brown
Nov. 28, 2018
Perversion of Justice logo
A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 97825.html
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:47 am

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime
Julie K. BrownNov. 28, 2018
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The story behind a Palm Beach sex offender’s remarkable deal
Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now.

Perversion of Justice logo
A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break.

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.

It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.

Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.

His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

Home 02 Epstein EKM.jpg
At this home on El Brillo Way in Palm Beach, young girls, recruited by other young girls, would arrive by car or taxi, be greeted in the kitchen by a member of Jeffrey Epstein’s staff and ascend a staircase. They were met by Epstein, clad in a towel.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.

Interactive image link
Interactive: Sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein was surrounded by powerful people. Here’s a sampling

Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.

But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.

Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.

The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.

As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.

This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

“I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,’’ said one of Epstein’s victims, Michelle Licata, now 30. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.”

Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. He also has been on a list of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month.

Acosta did not respond to numerous requests for an interview or answer queries through email.

acosta (1).jpg
Alexander Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, was the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida when he negotiated an end to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
Florida International University
But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.

“The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”

As a result, neither the victims — nor even the judge — would know how many girls Epstein allegedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005, when his underage sex activities were first uncovered by police. Police referred the case to the FBI a year later, when they began to suspect that their investigation was being undermined by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office.

Not a ‘he said, she said’

“This was not a ‘he said, she said’ situation. This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ — and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story,’’ said retired Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, who supervised the police probe.

More than a decade later, at a time when Olympic gymnasts and Hollywood actresses have become a catalyst for a cultural reckoning about sexual abuse, Epstein’s victims have all but been forgotten.

The women — now in their late 20s and early 30s — are still fighting for an elusive justice that even the passage of time has not made right.

Like other victims of sexual abuse, they believe they’ve been silenced by a criminal justice system that stubbornly fails to hold Epstein and other wealthy and powerful men accountable.

“Jeffrey preyed on girls who were in a bad way, girls who were basically homeless. He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right,’’ said Courtney Wild, who was 14 when she met Epstein.

Courtney Wild NEW 02 EKM.jpg
Courtney Wild, 31, was a victim of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein beginning at the age of 14. Epstein paid Wild, and many other underage girls, to give him massages, often having them undress and perform sexual acts. Epstein also used the girls as recruiters, paying them to bring him other underage girls.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
Over the past year, the Miami Herald examined a decade’s worth of court documents, lawsuits, witness depositions and newly released FBI documents. Key people involved in the investigation — most of whom have never spoken before — were also interviewed. The Herald also obtained new records, including the full unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation and witness statements that had been kept under seal.

The Herald learned that, as part of the plea deal, Epstein provided what the government called “valuable consideration” for unspecified information he supplied to federal investigators. While the documents obtained by the Herald don’t detail what the information was, Epstein’s sex crime case happened just as the country’s subprime mortgage market collapsed, ushering in the 2008 global financial crisis.

Records show that Epstein was a key federal witness in the criminal prosecution of two prominent executives with Bear Stearns, the global investment brokerage that failed in 2008, who were accused of corporate securities fraud. Epstein was one of the largest investors in the hedge fund managed by the executives, who were later acquitted. It is not known what role, if any, the case played in Epstein’s plea negotiations.

The Herald also identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein from 2001 to 2006. About 60 of them were located — now scattered around the country and abroad. Eight of them agreed to be interviewed, on or off the record. Four of them were willing to speak on video.

The women are now mothers, wives, nurses, bartenders, Realtors, hairdressers and teachers. One is a Hollywood actress. Several have grappled with trauma, depression and addiction. Some have served time in prison.

A few did not survive. One young woman was found dead last year in a rundown motel in West Palm Beach. She overdosed on heroin and left behind a young son.

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As part of Epstein’s agreement, he was required to register as a sex offender, and pay restitution to the three dozen victims identified by the FBI. In many cases, the confidential financial settlements came only after Epstein’s attorneys exposed every dark corner of their lives in a scorched-earth effort to portray the girls as gold diggers.

“You beat yourself up mentally and physically,’’ said Jena-Lisa Jones, 30, who said Epstein molested her when she was 14. “You can’t ever stop your thoughts. A word can trigger something. For me, it is the word ‘pure’ because he called me ‘pure’ in that room and then I remember what he did to me in that room.’’

Now, more than a decade later, two unrelated civil lawsuits — one set for trial on Dec. 4 — could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. The Dec. 4 case, in Palm Beach County state court, involves Epstein and Edwards, whom Epstein had accused of legal misdeeds in representing several victims. The case is noteworthy because it will mark the first time that Epstein’s victims will have their day in court, and several of them are scheduled to testify.

JenaLisa 05 Epstein EKM.jpg
Jena-Lisa Jones, with her 18-month-old son, Raymond, says she was 14 when she was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein and was paid $200 by him to give him a massage at his home. Jones says Epstein told her to take off all of her clothes and that he fondled her during the massage.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
A second lawsuit, known as the federal Crime Victims’ Rights suit, is still pending in South Florida after a decade of legal jousting. It seeks to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement in hopes of sending Epstein to federal prison. Wild, who has never spoken publicly until now, is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 vs. the United States of America,” a federal lawsuit that alleges Epstein’s federal non-prosecution agreement was illegal.

Federal prosecutors, including Acosta, not only broke the law, the women contend in court documents, but they conspired with Epstein and his lawyers to circumvent public scrutiny and deceive his victims in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The law assigns victims a series of rights, including the right of notice of any court proceedings and the opportunity to appear at sentencing.

“As soon as that deal was signed, they silenced my voice and the voices of all of Jeffrey Epstein’s other victims,’’ said Wild, now 31. “This case is about justice, not just for us, but for other victims who aren’t Olympic stars or Hollywood stars.’’

In court papers, federal prosecutors have argued that they did not violate the Crime Victims’ Rights Act because no federal charges were ever filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, an argument that was later dismissed by the judge.


How a teen runaway became one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims
Virginia Roberts was working at Mar-a-Lago when she was recruited to be a masseuse to Palm Beach hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein. She was lured into a life of depravity and sexual abuse.

Despite substantial physical evidence and multiple witnesses backing up the girls’ stories, the secret deal allowed Epstein to enter guilty pleas to two felony prostitution charges. Epstein admitted to committing only one offense against one underage girl, who was labeled a prostitute, even though she was 14, which is well under the age of consent — 18 in Florida.

“She was taken advantage of twice — first by Epstein, and then by the criminal justice system that labeled a 14-year-old girl as a prostitute,’’ said Spencer Kuvin, the lawyer who represented the girl.

“It’s just outrageous how they minimized his crimes and devalued his victims by calling them prostitutes,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, a human rights attorney and executive director of Rights4Girls, which is working to end the sexual exploitation of girls and young women.

“There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Under federal law, it’s called child sex trafficking — whether Epstein pimped them out to others or not. It’s still a commercial sex act — and he could have been jailed for the rest of his life under federal law,” she said.

It would be easy to dismiss the Epstein case as another example of how there are two systems of justice in America, one for the rich and one for the poor. But a thorough analysis of the case tells a far more troubling story.

A close look at the trove of letters and emails contained in court records provides a window into the plea negotiations, revealing an unusual level of collaboration between federal prosecutors and Epstein’s legal team that even government lawyers, in recent court documents, admitted was unorthodox.

Acosta, in 2011, would explain that he was unduly pressured by Epstein’s heavy-hitting lawyers — Lefkowitz, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, Jack Goldberger, Roy Black, former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, Gerald Lefcourt, and Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton’s sexual liaisons with Monica Lewinsky.

‘Avoid the press’ plan

That included keeping the deal from Epstein’s victims, emails show.

“Thank you for the commitment you made to me during our Oct. 12 meeting,’’ Lefkowitz wrote in a letter to Acosta after their breakfast meeting in West Palm Beach. He added that he was hopeful that Acosta would abide by a promise to keep the deal confidential.

“You ... assured me that your office would not ... contact any of the identified individuals, potential witnesses or potential civil claimants and the respective counsel in this matter,’’ Lefkowitz wrote.

In email after email, Acosta and the lead federal prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, acquiesced to Epstein’s legal team’s demands, which often focused on ways to limit the scandal by shutting out his victims and the media, including suggesting that the charges be filed in Miami, instead of Palm Beach, where Epstein’s victims lived.

“On an ‘avoid the press’ note ... I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ Villafaña wrote to Lefkowitz in a September 2007 email.

Federal prosecutors identified 36 underage victims, but none of those victims appeared at his sentencing on June 30, 2008, in state court in Palm Beach County. Most of them heard about it on the news — and even then they didn’t understand what had happened to the federal probe that they’d been assured was ongoing.

Edwards filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the non-prosecution agreement, but by the time the agreement was unsealed — over a year later — Epstein had already served his sentence and been released from jail.

Brad Edwards 01 Epstein EKM (1).jpg
Attorney Bradley Edwards is representing several young women who say they were sexually abused as minors by Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards’ Fort Lauderdale law office is packed with files relating to the Epstein case.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
“The conspiracy between the government and Epstein was really ‘let’s figure out a way to make the whole thing go away as quietly as possible,’ ’’ said Edwards, who represents Wild and Jane Doe No. 2, who declined to comment for this story.

“In never consulting with the victims, and keeping it secret, it showed that someone with money can buy his way out of anything.’’

It was far from the last time Epstein would receive VIP handling. Unlike other convicted sex offenders, Epstein didn’t face the kind of rough justice that child sex offenders do in Florida state prisons. Instead of being sent to state prison, Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County jail. And rather than having him sit in a cell most of the day, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office allowed Epstein work release privileges, which enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day, to go to a comfortable office that Epstein had set up in West Palm Beach. This was granted despite explicit sheriff’s department rules stating that sex offenders don’t qualify for work release.

epsteinsexoffender-resized-600.png
Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage women, grins for his mugshot on Florida’s sex offender registry. He once compared his crimes to ‘stealing a bagel.’
Florida sex offender registry
The sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, would not answer questions, submitted by the Miami Herald, about Epstein’s work release.

Neither Epstein nor his lead attorney, Jack Goldberger, responded to multiple requests for comment for this story. During depositions taken as part of two dozen lawsuits filed against him by his victims, Epstein has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, in one instance doing so more than 200 times.

In the past, his lawyers have said that the girls lied about their ages, that their stories were exaggerated or untrue and that they were unreliable witnesses prone to drug use.

In 2011, Epstein petitioned to have his sex offender status reduced in New York, where he has a home and is required to register every 90 days. In New York, he is classified as a level 3 offender — the highest safety risk because of his likelihood to re-offend.

A prosecutor under New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance argued on Epstein’s behalf, telling New York Supreme Court Judge Ruth Pickholtz that the Florida case never led to an indictment and that his underage victims failed to cooperate in the case. Pickholtz, however, denied the petition, expressing astonishment that a New York prosecutor would make such a request on behalf of a serial sex offender accused of molesting so many girls.

“I have to tell you, I’m a little overwhelmed because I have never seen a prosecutor’s office do anything like this. I have done so many [sex offender registration hearings] much less troubling than this one where the [prosecutor] would never make a downward argument like this,’’ she said.

The house on El Brillo

The women who went to Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion as girls tend to divide their lives into two parts: life before Jeffrey and life after Jeffrey.

Before she met Epstein, Courtney Wild was captain of the cheerleading squad, first trumpet in the band and an A-student at Lake Worth Middle School.

After she met Epstein, she was a stripper, a drug addict and an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida’s Panhandle.

Wild still had braces on her teeth when she was introduced to him in 2002 at the age of 14.

She was fair, petite and slender, blonde and blue-eyed. Wild, who later helped recruit other girls, said Epstein preferred girls who were white, appeared prepubescent and those who were easy to manipulate into going further each time.

“By the time I was 16, I had probably brought him 70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old. He was involved in my life for years,” said Wild, who was released from prison in October after serving three years on drug charges.

The girls — mostly 13 to 16 — were lured to his pink waterfront mansion by Wild and other girls, who went to malls, house parties and other places where girls congregated, and told recruits that they could earn $200 to $300 to give a man — Epstein — a massage, according to an unredacted copy of the Palm Beach police investigation obtained by the Herald.

The lead Palm Beach police detective on the case, Joseph Recarey, said Epstein’s operation worked like a sexual pyramid scheme.

Joe Recarey 01 Epstein EKM.jpg
Joseph Recarey, the former Palm Beach police detective who led the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, said the millionaire’s solicitation of sex with underage girls resembled a pyramid scheme. Its unraveling was similar, with one victim leading to two others, each of whom led to others, and so on.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
“The common interview with a girl went like this: ‘I was brought there by so and so. I didn’t feel comfortable with what happened, but I got paid well, so I was told if I didn’t feel comfortable, I could bring someone else and still get paid,’ ’’ Recarey said.

During the massage sessions, Recarey said Epstein would molest the girls, paying them premiums for engaging in oral sex and intercourse, and offering them a further bounty to find him more girls.

Recarey, in his first interview about the case, said the evidence the department collected to support the girls’ stories was overwhelming, including phone call records, copies of written phone messages from the girls found in Epstein’s trash and Epstein’s flight logs, which showed his private plane in Palm Beach on the days the girls were scheduled to give him massages.

Epstein could be a generous benefactor, Recarey said, buying his favored girls gifts. He might rent a car for a young girl to make it more convenient for her to stop by and cater to him. Once, he sent a bucket of roses to the local high school after one of his girls starred in a stage production. The floral-delivery instructions and a report card for one of the girls were discovered in a search of his mansion and trash. Police also obtained receipts for the rental cars and gifts, Recarey said.

Epstein counseled the girls about their schooling, and told them he would help them get into college, modeling school, fashion design or acting. At least two of Epstein’s victims told police that they were in love with him, according to the police report.

The police report shows how uncannily consistent the girls’ stories were — right down to their detailed descriptions of Epstein’s genitalia.

“We had victims who didn’t know each other, never met each other and they all basically independently told the same story,’’ said Reiter, the retired Palm Beach police chief.

Epstein_Reiter 01 EKM.jpg
Michael Reiter is the former chief of police in the Town of Palm Beach, and was the chief during the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. He says the young women lured to Epstein’s mansion didn’t necessarily know each other but they told nearly identical stories.
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
Reiter, also speaking for the first time, said detectives were astonished by the sheer volume of young girls coming and going from his house, the frequency — sometimes several in the same day — and the young ages of the girls.

“It started out to give a man a back rub, but in many cases it turned into something far worse than that, elevated to a serious crime, in some cases sexual batteries,’’ he said.

Most of the girls said they arrived by car or taxi, and entered the side door, where they were led into a kitchen by a female staff assistant named Sarah Kellen, the report said. A chef might prepare them a meal or offer them cereal. The girls — most from local schools — would then ascend a staircase off the kitchen, up to a large master bedroom and bath.

They were met by Epstein, clad in a towel. He would select a lotion from an array lined up on a table, then lie facedown on a massage table, instruct the girl to strip partially or fully, and direct them to massage his feet and backside. Then he would turn over and have them massage his chest, often instructing them to pinch his nipples, while he masturbated, according to the police report.

At times, if emboldened, he would try to penetrate them with his fingers or use a vibrator on them. He would go as far as the girls were willing to let him, including intercourse, according to police documents. Sometimes he would instruct a young woman he described as his Yugoslavian sex slave, Nadia Marcinkova, who was over 18, to join in, the girls told Recarey. Epstein often took photographs of the girls having sex and displayed them around the house, the detective said.

Once sexually gratified, Epstein would take a shower in his massive bathroom, which the girls described as having a large shower and a hot pink and mint green sofa.

Kellen (now Vickers) and Marcinkova, through their attorneys, declined to comment for this story.

Never enough

One girl told police that she was approached by an Epstein recruiter when she was 16, and was working at the Wellington mall. Over the course of more than a year, she went to Epstein’s house hundreds of times, she said. The girl tearfully told Recarey that she often had sex with Marcinkova — who employed strap-on dildos and other toys — while Epstein watched and choreographed her moves to please himself, according to the police report. Often times, she said, she was so sore after the encounters that she could barely walk, the police report said.

But she said she was firm about not wanting to have intercourse with Epstein. One day, however, the girl said that Epstein, unable to control himself, held her down on a massage table and penetrated her, the police report said. The girl, who was 16 or 17 at the time, said that Epstein apologized and paid her $1,000, the police report said.

Most of the girls came from disadvantaged families, single-parent homes or foster care. Some had experienced troubles that belied their ages: They had parents and friends who committed suicide; mothers abused by husbands and boyfriends; fathers who molested and beat them. One girl had watched her stepfather strangle her 8-year-old stepbrother, according to court records obtained by the Herald.

Many of the girls were one step away from homelessness.

“We were stupid, poor children,’’ said one woman, who did not want to be named because she never told anyone about Epstein. At the time, she recalled that she was 14 and a high school freshman.

“We just wanted money for school clothes, for shoes. I remember wearing shoes too tight for three years in a row. We had no family and no guidance, and we were told that we were going to just have to sit in a room topless and he was going to just look at us. It sounded so simple, and was going to be easy money for just sitting there.”


Where are they now? The biggest players in the Jeffrey Epstein case
The girls who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and the cops who championed their cause remain angry over what they regard as a gross injustice, while Epstein's employees and those who engineered his non-prosecution agreement have prospered.

The woman, who went to Epstein’s home multiple times, said Epstein didn’t like her because her breasts were too big. The last time she went, she said, one girl came out crying and they were instructed to leave the house and had to pay for their own cab home.

Some girls told police they were coached by their peer recruiters to lie to Epstein about their ages and say they were 18. Epstein’s legal team would later claim that even if the girls were under 18, there was no way he could have known. However, under Florida law, ignorance of a sex partner’s age is not a defense for having sex with a minor.

Wild, who worked for Epstein until she was 21, said he was well aware of their tender ages — because he demanded they be young.

“He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,’’ she said, explaining that as she grew older and had less access to young girls, Epstein got increasingly angry with her inability to find him the young girls he desired.

“If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.’’

The pyramid crumbles

Epstein’s scheme first began to unravel in March 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl told Palm Beach police that she had been molested by Epstein at his mansion. The girl reluctantly confessed that she had been brought there by two other girls, and those girls pointed to two more girls who had been there.

By the time detectives tracked down one victim, there were two and three more to find. Soon there were dozens.

Epstein plane 01 EKM.jpg
Jeffrey Epstein’s current private plane, painted a distinctive blue, is parked at an executive hub at Palm Beach International Airport on Thursday morning, May 24, 2018. It is how he shuttles between his homes in the Town of Palm Beach, New York City, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. During the decade when, police say, he sexually abused dozens of underage girls, he used a different plane, which tabloids nicknamed ‘The Lolita Express.’
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
“We didn’t know where the victims would ever end,” Reiter said.

Eventually, the girls told them about still other girls and young women they had seen at Epstein’s house, many of whom didn’t speak English, Recarey said. That led Recarey to suspect that Epstein’s exploits weren’t just confined to Palm Beach. Police obtained the flight logs for his private plane, and found female names and initials among the list of people who flew on the aircraft — including the names of some famous and powerful people who had also been passengers, Recarey said.

A newly released FBI report, posted on the bureau’s website as a result of the Herald’s Freedom of Information Act request, shows that at the time the non-prosecution deal was executed, the FBI was interviewing witnesses and victims “from across the United States.” The probe stretched from Florida to New York and New Mexico, records show.

Indeed, one lawsuit, still pending in New York, alleges that Epstein used an international modeling agency to recruit girls as young as 13 from Europe, Ecuador and Brazil. The girls lived in a New York building owned by Epstein, who paid for their visas, according to the sworn statement of Maritza Vasquez, the one-time bookkeeper for Mc2, the modeling agency.

Mike Fisten, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant who was also a homicide investigator and a member of the FBI Organized Crime Task Force, said the FBI had enough evidence to put Epstein away for a long time but was overruled by Acosta. Some of the agents involved in the case were disappointed by Acosta’s bowing to pressure from Epstein’s lawyers, he said.

Mike Fisten 01 Epstein EKM.jpg
Mike Fisten, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant and homicide detective who is now a private investigator with Bradley Edwards, attorney for some of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, says the punishment Epstein received was a ‘joke.’
Emily Michot emichot@miamiherald.com
“The day that a sitting U.S. attorney is afraid of a lawyer or afraid of a defendant is a very sad day in this country,’’ said Fisten, now a private investigator for Edwards.

Suit/countersuit

Now, a complex web of litigation could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. A lawsuit, set for trial Dec. 4 in Palm Beach County, involves the notorious convicted Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein, in whose law firm Edwards once worked.

In 2009, Epstein sued Edwards, alleging that Edwards was involved with Rothstein and was using the girls’ civil lawsuits to perpetuate Rothstein’s massive Ponzi operation. But Rothstein said Edwards didn’t know about the scheme, and Epstein dropped the lawsuit.

Edwards countersued for malicious prosecution, arguing that Epstein sued him to retaliate for his aggressive representation of Epstein’s victims.

Several women who went to Epstein’s home as underage girls are scheduled to testify against him for the first time.

Florida state Sen. Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor who has lobbied for tough sex offender laws, said Epstein’s case should serve as a tipping point for criminal cases involving sex crimes against children.

“Where is the righteous indignation for these women? Where are the protectors? Who is banging down the doors of the secretary of labor, or the judge or the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, demanding justice and demanding the right to be heard?’’ Book asked.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Villafaña, in court papers, said that prosecutors used their “best efforts’’ to comply with the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, but exercised their “prosecutorial discretion’’ when they chose not to notify the victims. The reasoning went like this: The non-prosecution deal had a restitution clause that provided the girls a chance to seek compensation from Epstein. Had the deal fallen through, necessitating a trial, Epstein’s lawyers might have used the prior restitution clause to undermine the girls’ credibility as witnesses, by claiming they had exaggerated Epstein’s behavior in hopes of cashing in.

Acosta has never fully explained why he felt it was in the best interests of the underage girls — and their parents — for him to keep the agreement sealed. Or why the FBI investigation was closed even as, recently released documents show, the case was yielding more victims and evidence of a possible sex-trafficking conspiracy beyond Palm Beach.

Upon his nomination by Trump as labor secretary in 2017, Acosta was questioned about the Epstein case during a Senate confirmation hearing.

“At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,’’ Acosta said of his decision to not prosecute Epstein federally.

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in opposing Acosta for labor secretary, noted that “his handling of a case involving sex trafficking of underage girls when he was a U.S. attorney suggests he won’t put the interests of workers and everyday people ahead of the powerful and well-connected.’’

Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who is one of the nation’s leading advocates for reforming laws involving sex crimes against children, said what Acosta and other prosecutors did is similar to what the Catholic Church did to protect pedophile priests.

“The real crime with the Catholic priests was the way they covered it up and shielded the priests,’’ Hamilton said. “The orchestration of power by men only is protected as long as everybody agrees to keep it secret. This is a story the world needs to hear.’’

Support investigative journalism

The Miami Herald obtained thousands of FBI and court records, lawsuits, and witness depositions, and went to federal court in New York to access sealed documents in the reporting of "Perversion of Justice." The Herald also tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims, some of whom had never spoken of the abuse before.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/ ... 97825.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 29, 2018 11:51 am

Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta Helped ‘Contain’ Scandal in Epstein Abuse Deal
6 hours ago


DOUBLE STANDARD




Before becoming Trump’s labor secretary, top Miami prosecutor Alexander Acosta worked with the lawyers of Jeffrey Epstein—a now-disgraced hedge fund manager whose been accused by dozens of underage girls of sexual abuse and sex trafficking—to “contain” the case he was supposed to be prosecuting, according to a Wednesday report from the Miami Herald. Although Acosta insisted that he pursued a harsh plea deal with Epstein’s lawyers, the resulting sweetheart deal smothered the FBI’s investigation and forced Acosta to spend only 13 months in jail. Records cited by the Herald show that Acosta did not seek a harsh sentence—instead, he repeatedly caved to lawyers’ demands and even worked with Epstein’s legal team to limit the scope of the FBI’s investigation.

Emails between Acosta and Epstein’s legal team show, the Herald notes, that “prosecutors spent a lot of time figuring out a way to settle the case with the least amount of scandal” instead of fighting for dozens of victims. Both parties agreed, for example, to allow Epstein to plea privately to avoid media coverage and to not inform any of his victims of the proceedings. They also spoke frequently over the phone to avoid a paper trail—a detail which alarmed one former prosecutor. “It’s highly unusual and raises suspicions of something unethical happening when you see emails that say ‘call me, I don’t want to put this in writing,’” he told the Herald. “There’s no reason to worry about putting something in writing if there’s nothing improper or unethical in the case.’’

Suicide and Drug Overdoses Push Down U.S. Life Expectancy

Suicides and drug overdoses have pushed down the life expectancy of Americans for the third year running, with the suicide death rate hitting its highest level in 50 years. The new figures show a continuation of the longest sustained decline in expected life span at birth in a century—the worst seen in the U.S. since World War I. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there were more than 2.8 million U.S. deaths in 2017—nearly 70,000 more than the previous year and the most in a single year since the government began counting over a century ago. Deaths in younger age groups have had the largest effect on calculations of life expectancy, experts said. A baby born last year is expected to live about 78 years and seven months—about a month less than a baby born the year before, and two fewer than the year before that. “These sobering statistics are a wake-up call that we are losing too many Americans, too early and too often, to conditions that are preventable,” said Robert Redfield, the CDC’s director.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-lab ... abuse-deal


Trump Labor Secretary Conspired to Offer Extraordinary Plea Deal to Millionaire in Sex-Abuse Case, Miami Herald Reports
Molly OlmsteadNov 28, 20185:13 PM
Acosta, in front of a blue background, speaks. The image is a close-up of his face.
US Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta
Jim Watson/Getty Images
Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, who has been criticized for his role in a plea deal 10 years ago with a multimillionaire alleged to have abused dozens of underage girls, allowed the billionaire’s lawyers to largely set the terms of their client’s prosecution, a yearlong investigation by the Miami Herald found.

On Wednesday, the Herald released its multi-part report into the sex crimes of hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s and the shockingly lenient punishment he received. The crimes described in the report are deeply upsetting: The Herald identified 80 victims, many of whom were preyed on because they were poor and in unstable homes, or on the verge of homelessness. They spoke of being paid to give massages and ultimately were coerced into sex acts, or of being tasked with finding other girls for him. Some described repeated and regular abuse by Epstein (one described going to his home “hundreds” of times), and one victim said Epstein raped her. A lawsuit pending in New York also alleges Epstein used an international modeling agency to traffic girls from Europe, Ecuador, and Brazil to house and use for his own sexual gratification.

Despite the vast scale of the abuse, Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to just two prostitution-related charges in state court and was jailed for just 13 months in the Palm Beach, Florida, county jail. (Critics have pointed out that girls below the age of consent cannot be considered prostitutes but victims of trafficking.) Epstein was housed in a private wing of the jail and was allowed to leave six days a week for 12 hours at a time to work out of one of his comfortable offices. (Per sheriff’s department rules, sex offenders do not qualify for work release, the Herald noted.) He did register as a sex offender and was ordered to pay restitution to the three dozen victims who had been identified by the FBI at that point, but the victims’ payments came “only after Epstein’s attorneys exposed every dark corner of their lives in a scorched-earth effort to portray the girls as gold diggers,” the Herald reported.

To make matters worse, the plea deal he accepted effectively shuttered an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were other victims or guilty parties—it’s possible other powerful and wealthy people were involved—and the victims themselves were intentionally kept in the dark about the criminal proceedings against Epstein.

Acosta’s role in the case as a U.S. attorney placed him in the position to hold Epstein to account for the trauma he inflicted. Armed with an abundance of evidence and victim testimony, legal experts familiar with the case told the Herald, Acosta could have ensured Epstein was convicted on federal criminal charges and sent to prison for the rest of his life.

But instead, on one morning in 2007, he meet one of Epstein’s attorneys for breakfast at a Marriott 70 miles away from the prosecutor’s headquarters in Miami. The attorney was a former colleague of Acosta’s, and the two struck a deal that morning that ultimately arranged for Epstein and four of his accomplices to plead just to state charges and receive immunity from all federal criminal charges—along with “any potential co-conspirators.” The agreement that resulted was sealed until after it was approved by a judge, the Herald reported. As a result, no victims or victims’ advocates were aware of the agreement and given the opportunity to object. According to the Herald:

In email after email, Acosta and the lead federal prosecutor, A. Marie Villafaña, acquiesced to Epstein’s legal team’s demands, which often focused on ways to limit the scandal by shutting out his victims and the media, including suggesting that the charges be filed in Miami, instead of Palm Beach, where Epstein’s victims lived.

“On an ‘avoid the press’ note … I can file the charge in district court in Miami which will hopefully cut the press coverage significantly. Do you want to check that out?’’ Villafaña wrote to [one of Epstein’s lawyers] in a September 2007 email.

The Herald reported that Epstein provided “valuable” information to federal investigators, and while the nature of that information is not known, the Herald speculated that it could have something to do with Epstein’s role as a witness against two Bear Stearns executives accused of corporate securities fraud at the time of the 2008 global financial crisis. (They were later acquitted.)

Acosta himself said he was pressured by Epstein’s team of lawyers, which included, among other prominent names, Jay Lefkowitz, a senior domestic policy adviser in the Bush administration; Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz; and former Clinton-era special prosecutor Ken Starr. When Trump nominated Acosta to become labor secretary in 2017, he was questioned about the Epstein case at the Senate confirmation hearing but argued that the plea deal had been necessary to ensure Epstein go to jail. “At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally, and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,’’ he said.

A lawsuit in South Florida contends that Acosta and other federal prosecutors broke the law in not notifying the victims of court proceedings or allowing them the opportunity to appear at their abuser’s sentencing, in violation of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act. One police sergeant reported that FBI agents believed they had enough evidence to prosecute Epstein but were “overruled” by Acosta.

As Jordan Weissman noted for Slate in February 2017, Acosta is considered an accomplished and respected legal and political figure. While working for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in the Bush administration, he worked to combat anti-Muslim bigotry and is the only Hispanic member of Trump’s Cabinet. Notably for those who would defend him against accusations of giving Epstein a cushy deal, he prosecuted corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff while working in Miami. Compared with Trump’s other Cabinet members, Acosta has managed to largely keep his head down and manage his vast department without attracting scandal.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... abuse.html
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They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby chump » Fri Nov 30, 2018 12:30 pm



The story behind a Palm Beach sex offender’s remarkable deal

Miami Herald
Published on Nov 29, 2018

Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a free man, despite sexually abusing dozens of underage girls according to police and prosecutors. His victims have never had a voice, until now.
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:46 pm

Vic Berger IV


THE REAL PIZZAGATE

Mike Cernovich teamed up with Alan Dershowitz, now a credibly accused pedophile, to try to take down a victim of Jeffrey Epstein & Derschowitz.

Mike @Cernovich has been working to help protect one of the largest pedophile rings in history. Let that sink in.
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"The pedophile Alan Dershowitz is not my friend and I am not a pedophile.” - @Cernovich

The rapist doth protest too much, methinks.

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https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/ ... 1198855168
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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seemslikeadream
 
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Re: Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 03, 2018 12:48 pm


1. UGH


Alan Dershowitz: Yes, I Am Still Jeffrey Epstein’s Lawyer

89084220
John Lamparski
Lawyer Alan Dershowitz has said that he still represents convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty to soliciting underage sexual partners whom he initially recruited as masseurs. Dershowitz, 80, told Axios that Epstein “has called me a couple of times about legal issues, because I’m still technically his lawyer,” adding, “I haven’t had any social, or any other kind of contact [but] you never stop being a person’s lawyer.” Dershowitz told Axios that Epstein lent his family his Palm Beach, Florida, house and that he received a “therapeutic massage with an old old Russian” there, but he’d had no idea “anything improper had even taken place in that house.” While he was allegedly raping teenage girls, Epstein cultivated relationships with a global elite: Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” numerous times; Prince Andrew’s ex-wife borrowed money from him; and Donald Trump praised him as a “terrific guy.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/alan-ders ... ins-lawyer
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

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