Columbia University has punished two people affiliated with its dental college after documents released by the Justice Department revealed that they had bypassed the normal process to help Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend gain admission.
The actions taken against the two people, Dr. Thomas Magnani and Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn, add to the fallout rippling through the worlds of academia, business, politics and beyond with the release of millions of pages of files related to Mr. Epstein.
The documents shed light on communications between Mr. Epstein and College of Dental Medicine representatives that Columbia officials knew about as of 2019, the university said in a statement on Friday.
As a result, Columbia said it was cutting all ties to Dr. Magnani and stripping Dr. Moss-Salentijn of her administrative duties at the dental college, where she remains a tenured faculty member. Several other people implicated in the episode had already ended their affiliations with the school, the statement said.
Dr. Magnani and Dr. Moss-Salentijn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The university also said it had identified $210,000 in donations from “entities related to” Mr. Epstein, and would be donating that amount, split between two New York nonprofit organizations that support survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking.
“In short,” the university said, “a student was admitted to the dental school through an irregular process, coinciding with fund-raising solicitations by former academic and alumni leadership of the school.”
Although not named in the statement, the student in question was Karyna Shuliak, the last person Mr. Epstein spoke to by phone before his death by suicide in a Manhattan prison cell in 2019 while facing federal sex-trafficking charges. He paid for Ms. Shuliak’s dental school tuition and other courses. In his will, he left her $100 million.
Ms. Shuliak graduated from the dental college in 2015. She is now 36 and believed to be living in New York. A lawyer who has represented her, Maurice H. Sercarz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Shuliak was 22 when her initial application to the dental college was rejected in 2012. After Mr. Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution in Florida four years earlier, said he was considering a donation to the school, several influential people there moved to ensure she got in.
The dean of the dental college contacted the medical school in Ms. Shuliak’s native Belarus, where she had nearly finished her dental studies, to ask for her records. The adult dentistry chair sent Ms. Shuliak study guides and an outline for Columbia’s entrance exam. After Ms. Shuliak’s admission, Dr. Moss-Salentijn, the vice dean for academic affairs at the time, helped develop a personalized plan of study for Ms. Shuliak because she had joined Columbia later than usual for a dental transfer student.
Mr. Epstein subsequently gave $100,000 to a public health project run by the dean of the dental college at the time, Dr. Ira B. Lamster, and $50,000 to the dental school’s annual fund in Ms. Shuliak’s honor, the Justice Department documents show.
Dr. Magnani, Mr. Epstein’s dentist, was the point person for the effort to secure Ms. Shuliak’s admission, arranging a tour of the college and helping to revive her application, the Justice Department documents show. On the eve of her entrance exam, he resisted when Mr. Epstein suggested delaying the test a week so that he could visit the college first.
“He says not to rock the boat,” Mr. Epstein’s assistant, Lesley Groff, told her boss in an April 2012 email, referring to a call she had just had with Dr. Magnani.
“She is with the most powerful people there who are already meeting halfway and moving things around to accommodate her,” Ms. Groff told Mr. Epstein.
Later, in January 2018, Dr. Magnani encouraged Mr. Epstein to donate to the dental college, the Justice Department files show. He wrote to Mr. Epstein that he had just had dinner with the school’s new dean and Dr. Moss-Salentijn, whom Dr. Magnani said “was Karyna’s mentor and did the most to help her get in and finish up dental school.”
Dr. Magnani said that it would be appreciated if Mr. Epstein would donate $450,000 to a high-tech dental training initiative that Dr. Moss-Salentijn was involved with, the files show. Months later, Dr. Moss-Salentijn sent along a funding proposal, and a dinner with Mr. Epstein was planned, the files show. The donation was never made, Columbia said. (Campus Reform, a conservative news site, first reported the exchange.)
The university said in its statement that Dr. Magnani, a 1980 graduate of the college, had not taught there since 2017 and had previously stepped down from the college’s board of advisers. Because of the revelations in the Justice Department files, the university said it had removed him from the admissions review committee and his volunteer leadership roles, including the presidency of an organization for major donors to the college.
Dr. Magnani’s voluntary faculty appointment and an affiliation agreement with his private dental practice had also been terminated, the university said. On Monday, the website for his practice continued to list him as an assistant clinical professor at the Columbia dental school and a member of the admissions committee.
Sharon Otterman contributed reporting.
Ed Shanahan is a rewrite reporter and editor covering breaking news and general assignments on the Metro desk.
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