United States prosecutors and federal law enforcement spent over a year examining ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Customs and Border Protection officers stationed in the US Virgin Islands (USVI), according to documents recently released by the Department of Justice.
As The Guardian and New York Times have reported, emails, text messages, and investigative records show that Epstein cultivated friendships with several officers, entertaining them on his island and offering to take them for whale-watching trips in his helicopter. He even brought one cannolis for Christmas Eve. In turn, Epstein would bring certain officers his complaints about his treatment at the hands of other CBP and federal agents. Most of the interactions described in the records occurred years after Epstein pleaded guilty to charges of sex crimes in Florida in 2008.
The CBP officers were never charged for any crimes related to Epstein, and at least one later retired from the agency with a pension, suggesting that the government ultimately didn’t find any wrongdoing. The documents do, though, describe patterns of behavior—two of the officers referred to Epstein as a “friend”—that one government ethics expert described as inappropriate and possible violations of federal guidance. They also contain grand jury subpoenas that specifically name the officers and compel the recipients, which were largely financial services firms, to aid federal prosecutors who were looking into allegations of a conspiracy to defraud the US government.
CBP and the Southern District of New York US Attorney’s Office, which led the investigation into Epstein, did not respond to requests for comment.
For years, Epstein allegedly brought countless women and girls as young as 121 to his private island, Little Saint James, according to a 2020 complaint filed by the former USVI attorney general. Epstein would often fly in and out of USVI on his private jet.
In order to depart from USVI to other parts of the US, Epstein’s plane had to be cleared by CBP, according to a November 2020 FBI interview report with Epstein’s personal pilot, Larry Visoski.
Visoski told the FBI that some passengers were college students with letters from their schools explaining why they were traveling. Other times, according to the report on Visoski’s interview, Epstein traveled with a woman who had a foreign passport. If CBP officers started questioning these passengers, Visoski said, Epstein would intervene and start arguing with the officers.
Visoski, though, told the FBI that Epstein made an effort to be friendly with CBP officers, at times instructing Visoski to collect agents’ contact information. (In an email to one CBP officer, Epstein wrote, “as you know Im very respectful of people just doing their job.”) Over the years, emails and text messages show, various CBP officers would try to reach out to Epstein, either directly or through Visoski or other associates. Sometimes, Epstein would have the officers out to Little Saint James.
In May 2014, for example, Visoski emailed Epstein, “While going through customs in STT, our nice person gave me his cell contact.” The pilot added that the “nice person” would be available to visit Little Saint James that week. Visoski also attached the person’s contact information. The next day, Epstein’s island estate manager emailed Epstein to let him know the person, a CBP officer, would be picked up on Wednesday for lunch. (It’s unclear whether this lunch ever happened.)
Emails in 2015 and 2016 show that Epstein would have another officer, Glen Samuel, come to Little Saint James to perform steel pan drums—a side gig Samuel informally advertised at one point on his Facebook page. In a January 2015 email thread, Epstein asked an associate to clarify Samuel’s rate. The associate replied, “Mr. Samuel says he does not intend to charge you. He considers you a friend and was doing this for you. If you wish to give him something, he is appreciative, but there is no fee.” Samuel did not respond to a request for comment.
Epstein would also personally text and email with James Heil, a supervisory CBP officer stationed in USVI. According to an email, Heil initially offered to provide Epstein with Samuel’s personal contact information, and told Epstein that Samuel was cleared for outside employment. Heil did not respond to a request for comment, but told The New York Times that he interacted with Epstein in his capacity as a “professionalism service manager” for CBP.
Epstein would occasionally complain to Heil about issues with CBP. In March 2016, Epstein emailed Heil about a supervisor in Newark. Epstein claimed the official took several of his passengers, including a woman with a pending asylum application, to immigration to have their documents reviewed. Epstein also told Heil about an incident in which CBP officials there claimed there was a “glitch” in USVI. Heil said in response that he would follow up with the supervisor in Newark.
On one occasion, Epstein texted Heil complaining that Heil’s “guy” was “nasty” and that he asked for a complaint card. Heil responded a minute later and told Epstein that he would speak to him.
On Christmas Eve in 2016, Epstein texted Heil that he had “just landed with your xmas cannolis” and asked Heil for an address so he could have his driver deliver them to him. A few hours later, Heil texted, “Thank you, old friend, the family’s thrilled! (Including the mother-in-law!)” There is no indication of government ethics violations by Samuel or Heil.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies government ethics, tells WIRED that while federal ethics rules can be technical and have an exception for gifts under a certain amount of money—around $20—the ethics rules are fundamentally about preventing situations where someone would question an employee’s impartiality or integrity.
Following Epstein’s death in 2019, a CBP supervisor in Charleston filed a report about a CBP agricultural specialist named Tim Routch, in which an associate of Routch made two complaints about the agent to law enforcement.
That October, someone with “FBI New York” in their email signature, whose name the DOJ redacted in its release, said they were opening a preliminary investigation based on the report. Records show that in May 2020, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena to TransUnion seeking information about Routch. Other records dated around that time naming Routch include Google subscriber information, which is normally returned in response to a government request, along with Equifax and Experian credit reports.
One of the reasons the FBI interviewed Visoski was to understand Routch’s relationship with Epstein, including why his contact information was found on Visoski’s phone, according to email correspondence between the DOJ and Visoski’s attorneys.
Notes found in a July 2020 email from someone with “Assistant US Attorney, Southern District of New York” in their signature (the name was redacted) said that Visoski didn’t recall Routch, but did remember three other CBP officers. The notes said that Epstein was friends with Heil, and that while some CBP inspectors would delay Epstein, Heil and another CBP officer “wouldn’t give him a hard time.” The notes also mentioned Samuel, the customs officer who played the steel drums, was the third CBP officer.
Documents show that in August 2020, the DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena to TransUnion seeking credit reports, fraud alerts, and other documents related to the three CBP officers that Epstein’s pilot named. Both the TransUnion subpoena related to the three men and the subpoena about Routch commanded the company “to testify and give evidence in regard to alleged violations of federal criminal law,” and cited the statute for conspiracy to defraud the US government and other fraud-related charges. None of the four CBP officers were ever formally charged.
The FBI eventually interviewed Routch in 2021 along with a representative from the Department of Homeland Security’s office of the inspector general. According to an FBI memo documenting the interview, Routch said he had never participated in any wrongdoing with Epstein, and wasn’t actually friends with him.
Speaking with WIRED by phone, Routch says he had only ever visited Little Saint James once, to inspect palm trees for potential mites. One part of Routch’s professional responsibilities at CBP was to prevent invasive species, and he told WIRED he volunteered to do it. Routch says he traveled to Little Saint James on Epstein’s boat.
Routch says he remembers telling a supervisor about the palm inspection, but didn’t seem certain about whether he had done it in his professional capacity. He says that if he had been doing it “on business,” he should’ve had a CBP boat take him over.
“I think I did what I did for the right reasons, but I might not have done it exactly by CBP protocol,” says Routch.
After he inspected the palms, Routch says, he had something to eat at Epstein’s tiki bar. According to the FBI notes, Routch “thought it was ‘pretty cool’ to have lunch at the home of a billionaire” and estimated the meal he had was under $25.
“To talk about whether the sandwich was less than $20 misses the point,” says Clark, the government ethics expert. “The point was that it was a way for [Epstein] to ingratiate himself with them, making them feel good about him.”
She says that Epstein’s talent as a master manipulator who found ways to reduce friction and scrutiny is “how he got away with” trafficking children.
Routch says nothing happened after the FBI interview (besides accidentally going on a blind date several months ago with the mother of one of the FBI agents that interviewed him) and that he turned to writing novels after he left CBP. “He was polite, he was a nice guy, he was easy–well that’s the facade,” Routch says of Epstein. “That’s how, you know, dangerous people are. They put this facade about them.”
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