An Ivy League dental school has reprimanded two staffers after they were found to have helped Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend secure admission.
Columbia University announced on Monday that it was severing ties with Dr. Thomas Magnani and revoking administrative duties from Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn, who will remain at the dental school as a tenured faculty member, according to the New York Times. Others implicated in the scheme are no longer at the university, the Times reported.
The repercussions follow revelations in the Department of Justice’s latest tranche of Epstein files detailing how the sex offender helped his then-girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, now 36, gain admission.
Shuliak was a dental student in Belarus before she moved to the United States at age 20. (Epstein was 56 at the time.) Two days before the multimillionaire’s death in 2019, she was reportedly named as a beneficiary to receive $100 million from his trust.
In February 2012, Epstein exchanged several emails with the admissions office at Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine after Shuliak was denied admission. After making a sizeable donation, Shuliak was admitted as a transfer student to the dental school on May 3, 2012.
The Ivy League acknowledged in a statement on Wednesday that it admitted a student to its dental school “through an irregular process,” while emphasizing that those involved are no longer in positions of influence.
“In short, a student was admitted to the dental school through an irregular process, coinciding with fundraising solicitations by former academic and alumni leadership of the school,” a spokesperson for Columbia wrote in a statement.
Records show that Epstein made donations to the College of Dental Medicine (CDM) between 2012 and 2014, including a $50,000 wire transfer in Shuliak’s name, which his employee confirmed via email to a Columbia email address.
A Columbia spokesperson also said on Monday that the school would be donating $210,000 in donations from entities “related” to Epstein to two New York nonprofit organizations that support survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking, the Times reported.
Magnani, Epstein’s dentist, was the force behind securing Shuliak’s admission, records show. Messages from February 23, 2012—shortly after Shuliak’s rejection—show a redacted sender asking Magnani, a Manhattan dentist and Columbia Dental graduate of 1980, to give Shuliak’s transcript to the dean after the sender requested on Epstein’s behalf that he “look at Karyna’s classes and determine how much credit she could be afforded.”
In January 2018, Magnani wrote to Epstein to inform him that the school’s new dean, Moss-Salentijn, “did the most to help her get in and finish up dental school.”
Magnani then asked Epstein for a $450,000 donation to the school. “I think you should do this for Dr. Salentijn and the school,” he wrote.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the university for comment, Magnani, and Moss-Salentijn for comment.
Columbia isn’t the only elite university Epstein was tied to. Just last week, Yale University removed a prominent computer science professor from teaching duties while it investigates his conduct after Justice Department documents revealed a six-year correspondence between him and Jeffrey Epstein.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers also stepped back from his teaching duties at Harvard University last year after emails released showed him in regular contact with Epstein through 2019—the same year Epstein died while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges—trading notes on donations, introductions, and personal matters, including women.
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