Jeffrey Epstein , 66, was arrested Saturday night in New Jersey as he arrived from Paris and now faces sex trafficking charges alleging he abused dozens of underage girls in Florida and New York in the early 2000s
Convicted pedophile and billionaire Jeffery Epstein, who is now facing sex-trafficking charges in New York, allegedly paid $350,000 to two potential witnesses against him, a federal prosecutor claimed on Friday.
Epstein is said to have sent the money to the believed witnesses between late November and early December last year – just after an article was published in the Miami Herald detailing a deal he struck with authorities in Florida to avoid federal charges.
The US attorney’s office in Manhattan unveiled the allegations in a court filing in which prosecutors requested Epstein be denied bail while he awaits trial, citing the reported payments as evidence that he may try to influence other witnesses if not detained.
To their client’s defense, Epstein’s attorneys say he is innocent and has been a law-abiding citizen for the last 14 years, since his aforementioned guilty plea for soliciting an underage girl for sex in Florida, in which he served just a 13 month sentence.
But the prosecution say otherwise, suggesting that Epstein is ‘unrepentant and unreformed’, actively conspiring to cover the tracks of his criminal misdeeds by paying significant amounts of money to buy the silence of close associates of his who could later testify against him at trial.

The indictment filed in New York accuses Epstein of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Palm Beach, Florida, and New York from 2002 through 2005. The charges carry the potential for up to 45 years in prison
They claim he wired $250,000 to one of his employees, and a separate payment of $100,000 was made to a second person – both of whom, though unnamed, were identified as possible co-conspirators.
Assessing both the size of the payments and the timings in which they were sent, prosecutors believe he was ‘trying to influence co-conspirators’ who could provide information against him in relation to the charges highlight by the Herald.
Also on Friday, prosecutors revealed that the girl who reported Epstein in 2005 said she received a warning from someone claiming to be in contact with the financer.
The victim claims she was told she would be paid cash if she agreed to not comply with the authority’s investigation, adding ‘those who help him will be compensated and those who hurt him will be dealt with,’ the accuser’s statement reads.
The accuser’s claims come as one of many made by other accusers and witnesses, who also say they were incentivized to remain silent with cash, or to otherwise fear the consequences of failing to comply.
Epstein as charged on Monday by the US Attorney’s office in New York for sex trafficking minors. He has pleaded not guilty and faces a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison if found guilty.
But for the past decade the billionaire has been investigated allegations of sexual misconduct.

Prosecutors accuse Epstein of abusing girls as young as 14 in a ‘vast network of underage victims’. At least 14 new women have come forward to accuse him of sexual abuse – including at least five who were minors at the time of the allegations
During the probe, police say three private investigators were hired by Epstein to track down accusers and other potential witnesses to the alleged attacks.
The three men are said to have sat in black SUV’s outside the accusers’ homes, questioned relatives and loved one, even chasing one parent’s car off the road in a particular incident, authorities and a lawyer for three of Epstein’s accusers say.
Reid Weingarten, Epstein’s attorney, denied in a court Thursday court filing that the car chase ever too place, and even if it did, it wasn’t under the instructions of Epstein.
‘It was incredibly intimidating,’ Spencer Kuvin, an attorney for three accusers, told CNN. ‘You have to remember these girls were 14 and 15 (years old) when this was happening.’
The father of one of the accusers told authorities that one of the investigators was ‘photographing his family and chasing visitors who come to the house’.
He also claimed that ‘as he drove to and from work and running errands throughout the county, the same vehicle was behind him running other vehicles off the road in an attempt to not lose sight of [his] car.’
It was later confirmed that the car the man had sighted following him was the same car that allegedly ran a woman off the road, belonging to one of the investigators.

The three men are said to have sat in black SUV’s outside the accusers’ homes, questioned relatives and loved one, even chasing one parent’s car off the road in a particular incident, authorities and a lawyer for three of Epstein’s accusers say
But the intimidating acts of aggression weren’t limited to just witnesses or accusers, court filings suggest, attorneys and prosecutors too were subjected to the tactics.
In 2008, prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, then led by Alex Acosta, considered charging Epstein with witness intimidation, court documents show.
Acosta detailed that his office were subject to a ‘year-long assault on the prosecution and prosecutors’ in a letter written in 2011.
‘I use the word assault intentionally, as the defense in this case was more aggressive than any which I, or the prosecutors in my office, had previously encountered,’ Acosta continued.
He added that not all of Epstein accusers were willing to testify when approached by authorities, after ‘folding under the pressure’.
No obstruction or witness tampering charges were brought aainst Epstein by Acosta’s prosecutors.
Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges of solicitation of prostitution in 2008, serving 13 months of an 18 month sentence.
During that time, Epstein was allowed to leave the facility for 12 hours a day, six days a week, and continued to run is financial business.