Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine announced Wednesday that it had punished a senior administrator for helping the last girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, gain admission into an advanced dental residency program in 2023.
The demotion of the administrator, Dr. James Fine, who oversaw all postdoctoral programs at the dental college, follows the disciplining of two other Columbia dentists in February for their roles in admitting Karyna Shuliak, Mr. Epstein’s girlfriend, to the dental school in 2012. Columbia has acknowledged that admission had been an “irregular process.”
It adds to the growing fallout rippling through the worlds of academia, business, politics and beyond with the release of millions of pages of files related to Mr. Epstein.
Dr. Fine, a periodontist, first met Ms. Shuliak through his connections to Mr. Epstein. He repeatedly treated Mr. Epstein as a patient at the Columbia-affiliated private practice on West 51st Street in Manhattan where he worked with Dr. Thomas Magnani, a prominent alumnus of the school who was also Mr. Epstein’s dentist, the Epstein files show.
In 2012, Mr. Epstein asked for Dr. Magnani’s help in securing a spot at the dental school for Ms. Shuliak, then a 22-year-old dental student from Belarus whose initial application had been rejected. A text message chain between Dr. Magnani and Mr. Epstein indicates that Dr. Fine met Ms. Shuliak in the dental college lobby in March 2012 and brought her upstairs to make introductions.
Dr. Fine also appeared to provide information to inform Ms. Shuliak about what would be on her April 2012 admissions exam. “I just spoke to Jim Fine he will know tomorrow what they will test her on,” Dr. Magnani wrote to Mr. Epstein in a 2012 text, telling him not to worry.
Dr. Magnani and Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn, the vice dean for academic affairs at the time, were disciplined in February for their roles in Ms. Shuliak’s 2012 admissions process.
But Dr. Fine, who appeared to play a less central role in that process, was not punished then. Instead, the demotion announced Wednesday relates to an investigation into Ms. Shuliak’s admission into a one-year residency program in 2023, four years after Mr. Epstein’s death and eight years after she completed her dental degree. Ms. Shuliak needed to complete such a residency to get her New York dental license.
Dr. Fine, Dr. Magnani and Dr. Moss-Salentijn did not return requests for comment.
Columbia’s internal investigation into Ms. Shuliak’s 2023 admission “did not reveal an improper admission,” the official statement released Wednesday said. “The candidate for admission did meet the qualifications and standards for admission to the postgraduate program,” the statement said.
“However, separate concerns were raised regarding Dr. James Fine’s involvement during the application process given his role as a senior administrator,” the statement added.
Internal admissions files provided to The New York Times offer more detail. In 2023, Dr. Fine arranged for an unorthodox “faculty internship” for Ms. Shuliak at the dental office he shared with Dr. Magnani, even though, as senior associate dean for postdoctoral academic and student affairs, he oversaw the residency program to which she was applying.
Both he and Dr. Magnani gave Ms. Shuliak their highest recommendation for the prestigious Advanced Education in General Dentistry residency program, which was tuition-free and came with a stipend. A third Columbia dentist who had helped to advise Ms. Shuliak in 2015 also recommended her. The Columbia Spectator first reported on the internal admissions files.
Dr. Fine will remain a member of the faculty and director of the faculty dental practices at the College of Dental Medicine, a role that does not involve interacting with students, the university said. Columbia said that its investigation into Ms. Shuliak’s 2023 admission had concluded.
Ms. Shuliak met Mr. Epstein in 2011 and was the last person he spoke with on the phone before his apparent suicide in a Manhattan prison in August 2019. She is the main beneficiary listed in his will and stands to potentially inherit millions of dollars once all the lawsuits filed by his victims against his estate are resolved.
The admission files include a personal statement from Ms. Shuliak, who is now 36, in which she explains that being a dentist had been her lifelong dream. The statement does not mention Mr. Epstein explicitly.
“After my graduation, I decided to go directly into private practice in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” she wrote. “I returned to New York after the pandemic, where I have been associated with two wonderful mentors, Dr. Thomas Magnani and Dr. James Fine.”
Sharon Otterman is a Times reporter covering higher education, public health and other issues facing New York City.
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