A federal judge denied bail Thursday for Jeffrey Epstein, meaning the jet-setting financier and accused child sex trafficker will remain behind bars likely for many months while awaiting his trial.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who is presiding over the case, shot down the defense’s request that Epstein be allowed out on house arrest inside his Manhattan mansion, citing the possible danger that Epstein posed and agreeing with prosecutors that Epstein was a significant flight risk.
“I find that the government has established danger to others and to the community by clear and convincing evidence,” Berman said in his ruling. “I doubt that any bail package can overcome danger to the community.”
Epstein has been in jail since he was arrested by authorities at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on his way home from Paris earlier in July. The 14-page indictment alleges he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations” between 2002 and 2005. Epstein, already a registered sex offender, pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors at a bail hearing on Monday contended Epstein should be kept behind bars while awaiting trial rather than being allowed out on house arrest in his Manhattan mansion, as the defense preferred. Investigators argued on Tuesday that Epstein’s vast wealth totaling over $500 million combined with his access to international travel, his alleged history of intimidating possible witnesses and paying off possible co-conspirators, and his foreign passport made him a “significant flight risk.”
Prosecutors also revealed on Thursday that Epstein possessed an Austrian passport with a fake name that he’d used “to enter France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s”, raising concerns about whether Epstein has dual citizenship and slapping down claims from the his attorneys that the passport had never been used. The passport was found in a locked safe inside Epstein’s home along with “$70,000 in cash” and “48 loose diamond stones” all of which prosecutors argued are “are consistent with the capability to leave the jurisdiction at a moment’s notice.”
Epstein’s attorneys previously proposed what they called “stringent” conditions for his release, including home detention, electronic monitoring, no seeking a new passport, consent to U.S. extradition from any country, a bond secured against the mortgage on Epstein’s $77 million home and against Epstein’s brother’s own large fortune, an agreement to ground his infamous “Lolita Express” jet and to deregister his vehicles, giving the government random access to his residence, only allowing Epstein and his attorneys into his residence without permission from the government, daily phone check-ins, and a live-in trustee to ensure he’s following the rules.
But prosecutors said that Epstein should not be allowed to stay in a “gilded cage” and said that it was an “obvious fact that the defendant should be housed where he can be secured at all times: a federal correctional center.”
The judge agreed with the government.
Epstein’s attorneys filed a brief financial disclosure earlier this week revealing that Epstein claims to be worth $559 million, with nearly $57 million in cash available and more than $14 million in annual income.
Prosecutors had claimed Epstein is a flight risk and poses an “ongoing and forward-looking danger,” pointing to the “substantial collection of photographic trophies of his victims and other young females in his mansion” uncovered during the search of his home.
Bank records suggest Epstein “already earns at least $10,000,000 per year” while living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, traveling around the world, and residing part-time in Paris, prosecutors said. They worried that “there would be little to stop the defendant from fleeing, transferring his unknown assets abroad, and then continuing to do whatever it is he does to earn his vast wealth from a computer terminal beyond the reach of extradition.”
The source of Epstein’s wealth has long been a mystery, but perhaps the oddest claim about where some of Epstein’s fortune came from actually originated with Epstein himself, who reportedly bragged to friends back in the 1980s that he was acting as a global “bounty hunter” for unspecified governments.
This is the second time Epstein has been investigated for sex-related crimes. Alex Acosta, the outgoing Labor Secretary and former U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, reached a controversial agreement in 2008 with Epstein’s attorneys where Epstein was allowed to plead guilty to two state-level prostitution solicitation charges related to a 17-year-old girl. Epstein served just 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail with work release, paid some restitution, and registered as a sex offender. The secret agreement was reportedly struck before investigators finished interviewing all the alleged victims, and it included protections for some of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators.
