Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is expected to be charged with having operated a sex-trafficking ring in which he sexually abused dozens of underage girls, allegations that have circulated around the politically connected financier for years, a law enforcement source tells CNN.
An indictment expected to be unsealed Monday will allege that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein ran a trafficking enterprise in which he paid hundreds of dollars in cash to girls as young as 14 to have sex with him at his Upper East Side home and his estate in Palm Beach, worked with employees and associates who would lure the girls to his residences and paid some of his victims to recruit other girls for him to abuse.
Epstein, 66, was arrested Saturday and is expected to appear in Manhattan federal court on Monday. Prosecutors are set to charge him with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.
The hedge fund manager previously evaded similar charges when he secured a non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors in Miami. Instead of facing federal charges, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state prostitution charges in 2008 and served just 13 months in prison. He also registered as a sex offender and paid restitution to the victims identified by the FBI.
That arrangement has since come under intense public scrutiny as the result of a Miami Herald investigation that examined how it was handled by then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta, who now serves as labor secretary in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. In February, a federal judge in Florida ruled that the Department of Justice broke the law by failing to confer with his victims.
The source says the indictment will describe a predatory pattern in which girls were taken to a room in Epstein’s New York mansion, where they were instructed to give him a massage, during which he would escalate his physical contact with his alleged victims — at times groping and fondling their genitals.
CNN has reached out to Epstein’s lawyer.
