The will of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was signed a mere two days before his sudden death inside his New York City prison cell, according to a report.
Court documents obtained by the New York Post shows Epstein’s will was filed in St. Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands and signed on August 8th. The will reportedly shows the disgraced financier had a net worth of $577,672,654, roughly $18 million more than he claimed during his failed attempt to obtain bail while awaiting a federal sex trafficker case. Epstein reportedly placed his entire fortune in a trust called “The 1953 Trust.”
“There are no details on the trust’s beneficiaries. The court papers note that Epstein’s only potential heir was his brother, Mark Epstein. But the will adds that Mark only had a claim to his brother’s extensive holdings if Jeffrey hadn’t left behind the document,” reports the Post.
Court filings show Epstein had $56,547,773 in cash, $112,679,138 in equities, and $194,986,301 invested in hedge funds and private equity funds. He reported a fixed income of $14,304,679. Of real estate, papers show Epstein valued his Manhattan mansion at $55,931,000, his New Mexico ranch at $17,246,208, and a Palm Beach, Flordia estate at $12,380,209. The 66-year-old also owned a house in Paris worth $8,672,823, as well as two private islands; Great St. James Island in the Virgin Islands worth $22,498,600, and Little St. James Island at $63,874,223. The additional $18,551,700 in Epstein’s will accounts for his “aviation assets, automobiles and boats.” The Post further notes Epstein’s “fine arts, antiques, collectibles, valuables,” has yet to be appraised.
Epstein, 66, was found dead at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 10, touching off outrage that such a high-profile prisoner could have gone unwatched at the Manhattan federal lockup where infamous inmates Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff came and went without incident.
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson said in a statement that she made the suicide determination “after careful review of all investigative information, including complete autopsy findings.”
Sampson’s announcement came as a Justice Department official told The Associated Press that some prison staffers believed to have relevant information aren’t cooperating with investigators.
Epstein, arrested July 6th and jailed since, was found dead with a bedsheet around his neck less than 24 hours after more than 2,000 pages of documents were made public from a since-settled lawsuit against an ex-girlfriend alleged to be his aide-de-camp.
Epstein was facing charges of sex trafficking that stemmed from activities over a period of three years in the early 2000s. He served a 13-month prison sentence in Florida in 2008 after he was charged with similar offenses and was forced to register as a sex offender. Federal prosecutors in New York are pursuing a parallel investigation into whether any of his associates will face charges for assisting him in what authorities say was his rampant sexual abuse of girls as young as 14.
News of Epstein’s will came hours after Attorney General William Barr removed Hugh Hurwitz, the acting director of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
A statement from Barr gave no specific reason for the reassignment. However, Barr said last week that officials had uncovered “serious irregularities” and was angry that staff members at the jail had failed to “adequately secure this prisoner.”
He ordered bureau last Tuesday to temporarily reassign the warden, Lamine N’Diaye, to a regional office and the two guards who were supposed to be watching Epstein were placed on administrative leave.
Jail guards on Epstein’s unit failed to check on him every half hour, as required, and are suspected of falsifying log entries to show they had, according to several people familiar with the matter. Both were working overtime because of staffing shortages, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they lacked authorization to publicly discuss the investigation.
Epstein had been placed on suicide watch last month after he was found on his cell floor July 23rd with bruises on his neck. Days later, he was reportedly removed from the watch list.
Cameron Lindsay, a former warden who worked at three separate federal jails, said he was stunned to learn of Epstein’s removal from the suicide list. “For them to pull him off suicide watch is shocking. For someone this high-profile, with these allegations and this many victims, who has had a suicide attempt in the last few weeks, you can take absolutely no chances. You leave him on suicide watch until he’s out of there,” Lindsay told NBC. “It’s too early to say what I think should happen, but if this did occur as we believe that it did, some staff are going to have some hard questions to answer.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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