Controversial billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was arrested Saturday night in New York City for allegedly sex trafficking underage girls in New York and Florida, according to published reports. Two officials have reported that he was taken into federal custody.
By: JV Staff
Epstein, 66, has been embroiled in allegations of sexual abuse against minors for a number of years. A decade ago, the hedge fund manager received a lenient plea deal after being accused of paying girls for sexual massages in Florida, is expected to appear in a New York court on Monday, according to a Fox News report.
At one time, Epstein’s friends included President Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, and President Donald Trump.
An article in the Hollywood Reporter indicated that the latest charges against the money manager allege that employees and friends procured dozens of underage girls, as young as 14, for Epstein, who understood they were under 18. The charges claim that Epstein, between the years of 2002 and 2005 paid the girls in cash for “massages” but later sexually assaulted or abused them in his New York apartment and his Palm Beach residence. According to law enforcement, some victims of the scheme became recruiters in turn for Epstein.
The AP has reported that Epstein’s arrest comes amid renewed scrutiny of a once-secret plea deal that he entered into.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting and procuring a person younger than 18 for prostitution. He avoided federal criminal charges in 2007 and 2008 after agreeing to a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to states charges of soliciting prostitution and served 13 months in a Florida county and registered as a sex offender.
He could have faced life in prison.
The much-criticized deal allowed him to leave jail custody six days a week to work from his office.
In March of this year, it was reported by the Miami Herald that The public would finally be able to see the unsealed court documents from the case brought against Epstein after a New York federal court of appeals started moving to unseal some documents related to the case. The case, which was controversially settled, has come back into the spotlight after it became apparent that there was prosecutorial misconduct. Unsealed documents could help the public finally understand Epstein’s crimes and what the prosecutors potentially helped him hide.
“We’re grateful that the court ruled the summary judgment papers are open and they are moving to expedite having them unsealed,’’ Sanford Bohrer, the attorney representing the Miami Herald said. The Herald said it has the support of 32 other media companies, including the New York Times and Washington Post. There are only a few specific reasons for a case to be fully or partially sealed. On rare occasions, something will be improperly sealed, and it can be challenged in court.
The Miami Herald kept reporting on the story and digging deeper, even discovering that former Miami U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, who now heads the Labor Department of the whole country, was a part of the strange plea deal that happened without the knowledge of the victims. Some form of justice could finally be coming now that a federal judge declared that those involved with the plea deal broke the law by not letting the victims know about the circumstances.
The prosecutors did not follow the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which is the main charge against them. The act is the reason why what they did, not informing the victims of their full options and what was really going on, was a law-breaking action.
