MIAMI — The attorney general of the Virgin Islands late Wednesday sought to amend her civil enforcement action against the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to include new allegations of forced marriages for immigration fraud, using the U.S. territory to hide assets owned on the mainland and participation of his legal team in the criminal enterprise.
Attorney General Denise George also announced in a news release that she’d added as defendants to her January 2020 civil racketeering case the co-executors of the Epstein estate — attorney Darren K. Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn. The attorney general provided new details about the complex financial web that enabled Epstein’s alleged abuse.
George last year had deemed the estate as an ongoing criminal enterprise, but Wednesday upped the stakes.
Naming the two close Epstein associates as defendants, she said, was “based on newly obtained information revealing their involvement as ‘captains’ of Epstein’s criminal enterprise. This includes their direct participation in virtually all of the business operations and financial activities of Epstein’s trafficking network, including facilitating forced marriages among Epstein’s victims to secure their immigration status.”
A lawyer for the estate fired back at George.
“The Co-Executors of the Epstein Estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, categorically reject the allegations of misconduct made for the first time today by the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands regarding their purported roles in the so-called ‘Epstein Enterprise.’ The facts are clear: neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn had any involvement in any misconduct by Mr. Epstein of any kind, at any time,” said Daniel H. Weiner, on behalf of the estate.
The original complaint last year had alleged that female children as young as 13 were trafficked, raped, sexually assaulted and sometimes held against their will on Little St. James, one of the two islands owned by Epstein.
“Despite the estate’s continual refusal to cooperate with discovery, documents and information obtained from third parties, my office has uncovered extensive evidence about the lengths that Epstein and his co-conspirators went to conceal and protect their long-running sex trafficking operation, and many other fraudulent actions,” George said in a statement Wednesday. “This new filing lays out some of the additional information the Attorney General’s Office has learned through its investigation. My office is taking every step under the law to ensure the victims, our Government, and our residents obtain the answers they deserve.”
The filing comes as the Epstein estate went after George in a filing to a probate judge in the Virgin Islands, where Epstein’s estate is being settled. Lawyers for the estate accused George of hampering their ability to sell assets so the estate can fulfill its promises to pay into the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund created last June. It was a charge repeated by the estate Wednesday night.
“If the Attorney General actually had in mind the best interests of Mr. Epstein’s victims, she would grant the Co-Executors’ repeated requests that she immediately release her liens on the two Virgin Islands properties owned by the estate and allow the Co-Executors to sell those properties to fund the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program,” Weiner said.
The estate announced in an accounting report last week and a court filing that it had paid $190 million in U.S. estate taxes and routed $87 million to the fund and that more than $50 million had already gone out to victims. The administrator of the fund, Jordana Feldman, announced last week that she was temporarily halting the processing of new complaints because the estate had not replenished funds that have already been awarded.
In its filing Wednesday, the estate said it wants to sell the two island estates — Little St. James and Great St. James — but cannot do so until George lifts liens imposed on the estate as part of her enforcement action. The estate alleges that George’s case is hurting Epstein’s victims, something she denied.
In her filing late Wednesday, George’s motion to amend the original complaint spelled out new allegations.
“The Epstein Enterprise forced at least three separate arranged marriages, in each case requiring American female victims to marry foreign victims to avoid their deportation,” George wrote. “The victims were coerced into participating in these arranged marriages, and understood that there would be consequences, including serious reputational and bodily harm, if they refused to enter a marriage or attempted to end it.”
Longtime attorney Indyke and accountant Kahn facilitated these fraudulent, coerced marriages and performed the legal and accounting work needed for Epstein to control and abuse his victims, George alleged.
The attorney general cited a particular forced marriage where Indyke and a New York immigration lawyer allegedly prepared the victim for communications with U.S. immigration officials right after the alleged sham wedding.
“Defendant/Co-Executor Kahn provided a letter of reference for the immigration proceedings,” George’s motion said, adding that Indyke allegedly tried to talk her out of a divorce from the other woman and threatened that she would lose Epstein’s and his associates’ protection.
The proposed amended complaint, which must be accepted by the Superior Court, mentioned another victim brought to Little St. James more than 50 times during the years 2000 to 2002, when she was 17 to 19 years old. The victim said she was required to have sexual relations with “guests” of Epstein “and was subjected to sexual abuse virtually every day, and on some days, multiple times a day by Epstein or his guests.“
The victim said there were a large number of young women and girls around Epstein at Little St. James, many of them non-English speakers, “which was Epstein’s preference since they spoke less,” the motion alleged.
The proposed complaint also provided more details on Epstein’s finances in his final years and the web of shell companies that he used to hide his wealth.
Epstein and the companies he owned held at least 140 different bank accounts, according to the amended complaint, many of which were used solely to transfer funds between his companies. A number of his U.S. properties, including his New York and Palm Beach mansions and his New Mexico ranch, were held by shell companies registered in the Virgin Islands to prevent them from being seized in potential legal actions, but Epstein lied about the holdings in his filings to the Virgin Islands government.
The complaint indicates Epstein’s Southern Trust Company, which he pitched as a data mining company, fraudulently obtained $80 million in tax incentives from the Virgin Islands and was funded entirely by a single source who provided the company with $158 million between 2013 and 2017, the exact amount billionaire Leon Black reportedly paid Epstein for help minimizing taxes.
Southern Trust, in turn, was the primary source of funding for Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise in that time period, according to the complaint.
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