NEW YORK _ A lawyer for the estate of accused sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said a lawsuit by the U.S. Virgin Islands is holding up a plan to compensate his alleged victims.
Liens placed on Epstein's estate by the territory's attorney general, Denise George, effectively freeze all its assets and delay a plan announced last year to set up an independent claims process, Bennet Moskowitz told U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman. The judge is overseeing 16 cases filed by women who claim to be Epstein's victims.
"The estate wants the program to go forward," Moskowitz said in a court hearing Tuesday. "The alleged victims want the program to go forward."
Epstein died alone in a federal jail cell about five weeks after he was arrested on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex. New York's chief medical examiner ruled that he hanged himself. George sued the estate last month seeking civil penalties, damages, forfeiture of his islands in the U.S. territory and restitution for his victims.
Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer representing some women with claims against the estate, told Freeman the compensation fund was set up unilaterally by the estate, without opportunity for the victims to provide input into the management of the program or the fees paid to its administrators.
"I can't do anything about the attorney general of the Virgin Islands," Freeman told the lawyers.
The judge set a schedule for pretrial evidence gathering in the case.
