Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
- Only about a quarter of Jeffrey Epstein’s fortune went to his sexual abuse accusers.
- New revelations about Epstein’s life and finances could unlock even more, a lawyer for victims says.
- A US Senator told BI that Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims deserve “much better compensation.”
In 2019, after Jeffrey Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, his estate was valued at over $630 million.
Only about a quarter of that fortune went to the women Epstein sexually abused.
The Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program — modeled on a system that had been used for victims of the 9/11 terror attacks and sex abuse in the Catholic Church — paid $125 million to 150 victims. Over the years, Epstein’s estate paid out over $45 million more to other victims, according to a Business Insider analysis of court records.
As of March, after paying off various taxes and other liabilities, Epstein’s estate still has more than $131 million left in assets. Much of it is set to become an inheritance for the people Epstein wanted it to go to, rather than his victims.
New revelations about Epstein — the high-flying trafficker who counted Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and several billionaires among his friends — may now offer a chance to bring a bigger slice of his fortune to his victims.
Over the past few months, as President Donald Trump’s administration has backpedaled on its assurance to release the government’s Epstein files, Congress has taken the initiative.
The House Oversight Committee has been reviewing Epstein’s bank records. Sen. Ron Wyden, on the Senate Finance Committee, has accelerated an investigation into his financial transactions. Bloomberg News obtained a trove of Epstein’s emails, which offer a startlingly open window into how his employees itemized cash payments to women and gifts to powerful people.
These new revelations have given Sigrid McCawley, a victims’ attorney who for a decade has litigated against Epstein personally and his estate, a new view into his finances, she told Business Insider. She said the federal government had even more records in the Treasury Department and elsewhere that would help the public understand Epstein’s finances.
“If you follow the money, you find the answers,” McCawley said. “The government has those records in Treasury, et cetera, that will tell the American public who was investing with Epstein, where his money was going, and what those transactions look like.”
Sen. Wyden told Business Insider that “a proper follow-the-money investigation, including into how Epstein’s estate is so well funded, is long overdue.”
“It’s almost unbelievable that the same people who handled Epstein’s money while he was trafficking all these women and girls are still handling his money years after his arrest and death,” Wyden said in an emailed statement. “There’s got to be a lot more accountability for the individuals overseeing Epstein’s estate and much better compensation of the victims of his horrific sex trafficking operation.”
Epstein victim lawyers say they’ve been misled in court
McCawley, who represented Virginia Giuffre, among other Epstein accusers, said she is examining whether Epstein’s estate executors made accurate representations about its assets while negotiating the compensation program, raising the possibility that victims could obtain more funds.
“It’s fair to say there were representations made as to what the assets were, and so I think that many of us would take issue with those underlying representations,” said McCawley, a managing partner at the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
On Tuesday, the House committee sent a letter to the Epstein estate demanding that it provide unredacted copies of his cash ledgers. Earlier this month, Wyden proposed a bill that would force the Treasury Department to hand over financial information for Epstein’s accountants, his web of companies, and for several billionaires whom he counted among his financial advisory clients.
According to McCawley, these lines of inquiry could shed more light on Epstein’s money, which could ultimately mean more compensation for victims.
“At the end of the day, those funds, to the extent the corpus has changed from what was originally indicated, should rest with the survivors and not with the individuals who participated or facilitated these crimes,” McCawley said.
McCawley told Business Insider she was “shocked” by some of the emails reported by Bloomberg News earlier this month, which show Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell discussing the details of his notorious 2008 Florida plea agreement, as well as strategizing about how to discredit one of their accusers.
Those emails had not emerged during the civil lawsuits she brought against Epstein and Maxwell on Giuffre’s behalf, McCawley said. Maxwell is now serving 20 years in prison for trafficking girls to Epstein and is appealing her conviction and sentence to the US Supreme Court.
McCawley said she is exploring whether lawyers for Maxwell and Epstein estate executors failed to comply with their discovery obligations by not turning over those emails, which could result in sanctions. She said it was “distressing” to have those emails “finally see the light of day” only after Giuffre’s death, earlier this year.
“It’s not lost on me that her trajectory, her life, her mission, would have been vastly different if she had had access 10 years ago to those communications,” McCawley said. “They verify every single thing she was saying was true.”
An attorney for Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, Epstein’s estate executors, said their legal team has always complied with all discovery obligations.
Edwards, who represented Giuffre — as well as scores of other Epstein accusers — said the emails “were intentionally and wrongfully withheld” during the discovery process for lawsuits against Epstein and Maxwell personally.
“You might expect that behavior from the criminals we sued, but not from the lawyers who represented them,” Edwards told Business Insider. “Deliberately concealing documents of this magnitude constitutes an undeniable ethical breach, every bit as serious as the public and media suspect.”
Jeff Pagliuca, an attorney for Maxwell in her criminal trial and civil cases, said his legal team’s representation was above board.
“Any suggestion that we withheld any discoverable evidence or acted unethically is false and defamatory,” he told Business Insider in an email.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post Newly revealed Epstein secrets could help victims get their hands on more of his fortune appeared first on Business Insider.
