Background to the Hooplah about Prince Andrew & Indicted Pedophile Hedge Fund Billionaire Epstein

(NOTE: This is Investigative Reporting by the "Daily Beast" from 2010 when the story was HOT. Now, it's heated back up with new actions by the victims that broke in Great Britain over the past few days. This is a good background as to what it's all about and ties into how the 1% with Power and Influence always win...even though the Little People and Victims keep trying to throw rocks to thwart them)

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Billionaire Pedophile Goes Free
Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein becomes a free man today, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term.

Hedge fund mogul and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who went free this week, lived in a depraved world of thrice-daily massages, pornographic artwork, and hush money—that’s only now being revealed. Conchita Sarnoff follows up on her investigation of the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term and reports on the sordid details in part two of her exclusive exposé. Also:

• Palm Beach’s police chief objected to Epstein’s “special treatment” and gave The Daily Beast an exclusive look at his nine-hour deposition about the investigation.

• Earlier versions of the U.S attorney’s charges, including a sealed 53-page indictment, could have landed Epstein in prison for 20 years.

• Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

• The victims also alleged trips out of state and abroad on Epstein’s private jets, which would be evidence of sex trafficking—a much more serious federal crime than the state charges Epstein was convicted of.

• Epstein’s attorneys investigated members of the Palm Beach Police Department, while others ordered private investigators to follow and intimidate the victims’ families; one even posed as a police officer.

• Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told The Daily Beast that he “would have instructed the Justice Department to pursue justice without making a political mess.”

Film director Roman Polanski is not the only convicted pedophile to walk free this month and return to a life of privilege. On Wednesday, hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein completes his one-year house arrest in Palm Beach, which has been even less arduous than Polanski’s time at a Swiss ski chalet.

Watch Jeffrey Epstein Storm Out of a Deposition When Asked About His Penis

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day. Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.


With that, the known victims of Epstein’s sexual compulsion have been officially silenced, and the case against him is closed unless new ones come forward. According to banking sources, he has been moving assets out of the U.S. and may well follow Polanski into a luxurious exile.

But the question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections—former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets—allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers—Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them—to escape equal justice?

Michael Reiter, the former Palm Beach police chief, certainly thinks so. He gave The Daily Beast exclusive access to the transcript of his nine-hour deposition for the victims’ civil suits, in which he explained how the case against Epstein was minimized by the State Attorney’s Office, then bargained down by the U.S. Department of Justice, all in an atmosphere of hardball legal tactics and social pressures so intense that Reiter became estranged from several colleagues. At the time, Reiter, who retired in 2009 and now runs his own security firm, objected both to Epstein’s plea agreement and to the flexible terms of his incarceration in the county jail rather than state prison. Asked during the deposition whether he thought Epstein received special treatment, he answered “yes.”

Much More at:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/22/jeffrey-epstein-pedophile-billionaire-and-his-sex-den.html

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07.22.10

The Billionaire Pedophile's Sex Den
Hedge fund mogul and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who went free this week, lived in a depraved world of thrice-daily massages, pornographic artwork, and hush money—that’s only now being revealed. Conchita Sarnoff reports on the sordid details in part two of her exclusive exposé.

Hedge fund mogul and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who went free this week, lived in a depraved world of thrice-daily massages, pornographic artwork, and hush money—that’s only now being revealed. Conchita Sarnoff reports on the sordid details in part two of her exclusive exposé. Also:

• Nude images of young girls were scattered around the house and the bathroom soap was shaped like sex organs

• Staff trolled for fresh recruits to make sure Epstein had two or three massage appointments each day

• The house manager has been sentenced to a longer prison term than Epstein—for trying to sell notes regarding massage appointments

• Epstein gave $1 million to his friend Jean Luc Brunel when he was starting the modeling agency MC2

• According to a former bookkeeper, young girls were brought to the U.S. by MC2—often from Eastern Europe—then traveled on Epstein’s private jets

Jeffrey Epstein’s loyal friends say that his prosecution was unduly harsh, rather than outrageously lenient. They insist that his sexual habits, although obsessive and unusual, were mostly legal and essentially harmless. As the police records attest, the girls brought to El Brillo Way were routinely told they could “say no” at any time during a massage as Epstein escalated contact in a step-by-step assault that was remarkably similar in every victim’s statement: First she would be asked to remove her shirt, then her pants. He would attempt to fondle her buttocks and breasts as he masturbated, then bring out a large vibrator. There was sometimes digital penetration, and the more willing girls were lured into full-blown sexual relations with both Epstein and Nadia Marcinkova, who was referred to in press accounts and police reports as Epstein’s live-in “sex slave.”

A former bookkeeper in the Miami office, who also arranged visas for girls traveling to the U.S., confirmed that MC2 girls became frequent guests on Epstein’s private jets.

It’s true that some underage girls may have lied about their age, and some came to the house voluntarily several times—although, according to Florida statutes, none of that has any bearing on the criminality of the contact, particularly if the girl was 16 or younger. But what is particularly disturbing about this case—judging by arrangements at the Palm Beach house—is that Epstein, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, organized his life around this sexual compulsion in an open and methodical way that suggests he felt he was beyond the law.

According to police who executed a search warrant, the house was decorated with large, framed photos of nude young girls, and similar images were found stashed in an armoire and on the computers seized at the house (although police found only bare cables where other computers had been). Some bathrooms were stocked with soap in the shape of sex organs, and various sex toys, such as a “twin torpedo” vibrator and creams and lubricants available at erotic specialty shops, were stowed near the massage tables set up in several rooms upstairs.

Epstein also enlisted his staff in the predatory activity, and four—Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, and Marcinkova—figured in the FBI investigation. The Non Prosecution Agreement stipulated that they would not be charged. According to police reports and sworn statements in the civil suits, all four women, among their other duties, worked to ensure that an appointment book for twice- or thrice-daily “massages” was stocked with fresh recruits. Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late Czechoslovakian-born press baron Robert Maxwell, who was for many years Epstein’s live-in partner, also recruited young girls.

Since his 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by underage girls. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million—an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

The victims told police they waited in the kitchen to be called upstairs for a massage, and the house chef often gave them a bite to eat. House manager Alfredo Rodriguez said in his sworn statement that a maid named Lupita, who was a devout Catholic, wept when she complained to him about cleaning up after the massage sessions, picking up soiled towels and putting away the sex toys. And she was upset that a photo of Epstein with the pope hung next to one of him with a young girl.

Ironically, Rodriguez, who ran the house on El Brillo Way in 2004 and 2005, ended up being sentenced to more jail time than his boss as a result of the complex investigation into Epstein’s activities. He was fired, he says, for inadvertently drawing police attention to one of the girls when she arrived at the house unannounced to collect money. He saw an unfamiliar “beater” in the driveway one evening and called 911. When he left Epstein’s employ, Rodriguez took away some notes and emails about massage appointments as “protection” against his own prosecution, and failed to produce them during the Palm Beach Police Department’s initial investigation.

Unable to get work as a house manager elsewhere in South Florida, he says, Rodriguez later tried to sell this “golden nugget”—his term—for $50,000, to be used in the victims’ civil suits. Unfortunately, he made the offer to an undercover cop, and was subsequently charged with “obstruction of official proceedings” for withholding information that could have advanced the criminal investigation of Epstein—which by that point had been settled in a plea deal. Rodriguez was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison (Epstein was allowed to serve 13 months in the Palm Beach county jail), and now awaits an additional sentence on Aug. 24 in federal court in Miami for transporting firearms, another deal he says he made to pay the bills after he lost his job.

Much More at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/07/22/jeffrey-epstein-pedophile-billionaire-and-his-sex-den.html