A glaring mistake in the Epstein court files has recently come to light, suggesting that government lawyers once claimed his attorneys funneled over $400,000 to ‘young female models and actresses’ to hide his illegal activities.
Web users on Reddit and TikTok pointed out how easy it was to expose the redacted details by simply copying and pasting the blacked-out phrases into another document.
CNN confirmed that errors exist in at least one of the published documents.
This mishap impacts a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of documents released by the Justice Department recently due to a new transparency law related to Epstein. Interestingly, this redaction blunder wasn’t the Justice Department’s fault; it occurred when the Virgin Islands’ attorney general’s office initially uploaded the court filing to a public record back in 2021.
The post quickly went viral, amplifying issues the Justice Department has faced about how far they went with redacting sensitive information—sometimes not enough to protect victims and in other cases overly blanket shielding.
The erroneous redaction traces back to a civil racketeering lawsuit filed in 2020 in the Virgin Islands.
The Virgin Islands’ attorney general took legal action against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, various companies, and his lawyers, including long-time attorney Darren Indyke. The suit alleged that they had fraudulently gained over $80 million in tax incentives while managing a ‘sex trafficking network.’
In February 2021, the Virgin Islands attorneys submitted an updated lawsuit that included new allegations hidden by messy redactions. This document later became part of a related case involving Epstein’s estate in March 2022, carrying the error with it.
The Justice Department published this entire case docket on its newly launched “Epstein Library” webpage last Friday, which included the botched court document.
The problematic redacted section indicated that Indyke managed Epstein’s charitable foundation based in the Virgin Islands. Between 2015 and 2019, he allegedly signed checks from the foundation totaling over $400,000 payable to young female models, including one former Russian model who reportedly received more than $380,000 in monthly payments over several years.
Another section concealed the claim that Indyke authorized a payment to a lawyer involved in what was said to be ‘one or more forced marriages’ among Epstein’s victims to secure their immigration status, with a memo on the check allegedly referencing the last name of the former Russian model.
Indyke’s representatives have denied the claims made in the Virgin Islands lawsuit. Indyke’s attorney, Daniel Weiner, stated on Tuesday that Indyke never socialized with Epstein and was oblivious to Epstein’s actions while providing legal services.
Weiner asserted, “No woman has ever accused Mr. Indyke of sexual abuse or any observation of abuse, nor claimed to report any such issues to him regarding Mr. Epstein’s actions.” He noted that no judge has found Indyke guilty of any wrongdoing in any court.
Touching on the topic of forced marriages, Weiner clarified, “Two women marrying each other—a practice legal in this country—does not equate to evidence of forced marriage,” and added that there’s no proof Indyke had knowledge of any non-consensual elements regarding those marriages.
Interestingly, the Virgin Islands attorney general settled with Epstein’s estate in 2022 for over $105 million.
CNN has reached out to the Virgin Islands attorney general’s office and several officials listed on the 2021 court document featuring the errors.
This report includes contributions from CNN’s Julie In.
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