By Jason Leopold, Ava Benny-Morrison, Jeff Kao, Dhruv Mehrotra, Surya Mattu, Harry Wilson and Max Abelson
Bloomberg
September 11, 2025 at 3:00 AM MDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025 ... UdwOvrfa4U
For years, Ghislaine Maxwell has tried to distance herself from Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, an effort that continued through her own criminal conviction and in a recent interview with federal law enforcement officials.
According to her telling, she was a onetime girlfriend turned property manager at Epstein’s luxury homes around the world, yet was not privy to the inner workings of his vast influence machine or sex-trafficking operation.
But hundreds of emails from Epstein’s personal Yahoo account, which haven’t been previously reported, shed new light on Maxwell’s partnership with Epstein. They also contribute to longstanding questions about her credibility, including her truthfulness in a two-day interview she had with officials from the Department of Justice this summer. (Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after a jury found in 2021 that she recruited and groomed women for Epstein to sexually abuse.)
The emails, part of a cache of more than 18,000 obtained by Bloomberg News, show that Maxwell and Epstein were closer, in many respects, than either publicly admitted. Maxwell opened at least one foreign bank account using one of his addresses, was a named director on one of Epstein’s main revenue-generating companies and traded stock in a company they were both invested in, details that haven’t been previously reported. The pair discussed undergoing a shared fertility procedure, long after Maxwell claims she largely disassociated from him. They corresponded about discrediting women who raised allegations against them, including in one exchange where Maxwell said she planned to circulate compromising information on one of Epstein’s sexual-abuse victims.
Circa 1990s: Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein had a brief romantic relationship, she has said. After that ended, she continued to work as his property manager. Source: SplashNews/Shutterstock
The emails include a spreadsheet itemizing nearly 2,000 gifts, luxury items and payments totaling $1.8 million, with notations indicating they were intended for Epstein’s friends, business associates and victims. The spreadsheet, which was created by one of Epstein’s accountants, includes a $35,000 watch that was earmarked for a former Bill Clinton aide; a $71,000 purchase at a Lexus dealership for one of Epstein’s lawyers; and other items, such as lingerie and chocolates, some for teenage girls who later lodged sexual abuse complaints against Epstein and Maxwell. The spreadsheet indicates that Maxwell helped Epstein arrange many of the items; it doesn’t specify whether the intended recipients were ever offered or actually accepted the gifts.
Maxwell has maintained she was kept in the dark about details of Epstein's initial sexual abuse case in the mid-2000s. Yet the emails demonstrate her deep knowledge of the legal jeopardy he faced and show how she helped him strategize over even the most consequential details.
“Question,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell on May 23, 2008. “Which one do you prefer,,, lewd and lscivious conduct ,, or procuring minors for prostituion.”
At the time, he and his star-studded team of defense lawyers were closing in on a generous plea deal with federal and state officials in Florida, and Epstein was trying to negotiate the state charges to which he’d plead guilty. Maxwell’s response was matter-of-fact:
From: gmax <gmax[REDACTED]>
To: J. Epstein <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, May 23 2008 3:22 PM
Subject: Re:
I suppose Lewd and lecivious conduct..I would prefer lewd and lescivious conduct w/a prositute if possible
A month later Epstein pleaded guilty to two Florida state charges: felony solicitation of prostitution and procurement of minors to engage in prostitution. He also registered as a sex offender.
Maxwell’s attorney, David Markus, did not respond to questions about his client’s email correspondence with Epstein, her facilitation of gifts and cash and some of the contradictions between her email exchanges with Epstein and her recent statements to the DOJ.
Over two decades, Epstein’s life story has spilled out in news reports, books and court records. The public knows he partied with royalty, dined with celebrities and socialized with future and past presidents. That he brokered multimillion-dollar investment deals with top bankers and business leaders, while leading a double life as a sex trafficker who abused more than 1,000 girls and young women, according to the US Justice Department. But much of that story has been told through witness testimony and retellings. Epstein himself never testified in a court of law.
Epstein’s inbox, which contains messages from 2002 through 2022 but is most active between 2005 through 2008, provides an entirely different vantage point. It is a window into the life, mind and relationships of a serial sex abuser whose impact on US politics has only grown in the six years since he was found dead in a New York City jail cell. It tells the story of Epstein in Epstein’s own words.
Riddled with typos, unfinished thoughts and missing punctuation, the emails are hardly the final word on Epstein. They do not provide complete answers for some of the most persistent questions surrounding his case, including how Epstein amassed his fortune, and no evidence that prominent public figures were sexually abusing minors. There are indications that many of the emails were deleted. Also, this Yahoo account is one of multiple email accounts Epstein used for different purposes. Nevertheless, this particular trove contains revelatory, often disturbing, details about the intricate facets of Epstein’s life. It offers new insight into how he leveraged his wealth and powerful social network, which stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Westminster, to beat back grave criminal allegations. And it showcases Epstein’s idiosyncrasies, his indignation as he’s being investigated, and his callousness toward the young women, many of them teenagers, who entered his world.
One moment, Epstein is musing about the “genetics of beauty” with a respected neuroscientist, or showering praise on the women in his life. “YOu are the most important person to me,” he wrote to one of his assistants, Nadia Marcinkova, whose lawyer has said she was a victim of Epstein’s sexual abuse. The next, he is berating the same woman in a 425-word diatribe for her reluctance to dance, work out, engage in “fun sex things,” and manage his stress—“you should be ashamed of yourself”—or registering displeasure after receiving a photograph of a 21-year-old woman from one of his female contacts asking “what do you think”: “fat and asian sorry,” he replied.
Details of his life, by turns mundane and chilling, emerge from the cache: He purchased more than 600 items on Amazon, including an FBI agent costume, teeth whitener, a leather bullwhip, a pair of size 12 Crocs, a prostate massager, girls school uniforms and a box of Nabisco Nilla Mini Wafers.
Except for three minor instances, the emails do not mention President Donald Trump, who has said that his friendship with Epstein ended before Epstein was charged with sex crimes. Maxwell, who has appealed her conviction to the US Supreme Court, told Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a July interview that she never saw Trump act inappropriately with Epstein. That interview took place after the Trump administration sought to quell an uproar over its refusal to release the “Epstein files,” which encompass documents from the FBI’s investigation.
“President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” she told Blanche, according to the transcript, which was released last month. Trump has told reporters that while he’s “allowed” to pardon Maxwell, “right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it.”
February 2008: Maxwell sent Epstein photos from her travels, the emails show, including this marine expedition to Panama.
Epstein and Maxwell, the Oxford-educated daughter of one of Britain's most storied media tycoons, exchanged at least 650 emails in all. The emails range over a wide variety of topics, from how to move a 40-pound tortoise to and from Epstein’s private Caribbean island to the filing of an insurance claim for a missing crystal chandelier to her travel to exotic places–Bhutan, Panama, Kiribati. Several show how Maxwell nurtured Epstein’s ties with political figures, celebrities and tech billionaires by, say, offering a visit to the island or a seat aboard his jet.
Maxwell has said her work for Epstein “lessened considerably” after around 2003. In her interview with Blanche she described her role in his life as “very, very diminished” by the time he went to jail in June 2008. Yet, an analysis of the emails shows that the pair exchanged at least 203 messages in the first six months of that year, at a rate of more than one a day.
About a month before Epstein was to begin serving his jail sentence in the private wing of a Palm Beach County jail, Maxwell took pains to comfort and protect him as his lavish life was collapsing around him.
From: Gmax <gmax[REDACTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue Jun 24 2008 8:02 PM
Subject:
I'm devastated
I can't even process
I know this does not help so I'll stop now
Lady Ghislaine
Maxwell gained entry to a rarified world through her father, Robert Maxwell, the wealthy owner of British media concern The Mirror Group. He died in 1991 after falling from his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, off the Canary Islands. In the wake of his death, the Maxwell family fortune was largely wiped out after it was revealed that Robert Maxwell had misappropriated hundreds of millions of pounds from the Mirror Group’s pension fund.
October 1984: Maxwell and her father, Robert, watch a soccer match. Source: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy
Ghislaine Maxwell decamped to New York, where she became a fixture among the East Coast elite. She appeared in Washington at a party celebrating Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. She was spotted with Prince Andrew, the second son of the late Queen Elizabeth, at an S&M-themed Halloween party hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum. (Neither Prince Andrew nor Klum responded to requests for comment.)
Maxwell said during her July interview that she met Epstein, who was running a wealth-management firm, in 1991 through a mutual female friend. Following her father’s death, she said, he asked her to help him find and decorate a house in Manhattan. Not long after, they began a brief romantic relationship. After that ended, Epstein kept her on his payroll as a property manager, overseeing operations at his homes in New York, Paris, New Mexico and Palm Beach, where he’d purchased a $2.5 million waterfront compound about two miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Epstein later bought a 70-acre private island in the US Virgin Islands, called Little St. James, and a seven-story townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Circa 1990s: Maxwell and Epstein in one of dozens of photos that prosecutors submitted in connection with her sex-trafficking trial. Source: PLF/Capital Pictures/MEGA Agency
Throughout the 1990s Epstein, who’d left a stint at the investment bank Bear Stearns amid allegations of financial impropriety, positioned himself as an adviser to the ultra-wealthy. He earned millions in fees and by the mid-2000s, he was also juggling his own investments, worth tens of millions of dollars, in a pair of hedge funds.
Maxwell’s job was to ensure that his environs ran smoothly. She hired the decorators, gardeners and chefs to staff Epstein’s homes and the builders and architects who worked on properties under construction. She would also remind Epstein about his assistants’ birthdays or to pay his butler’s Christmas bonus, the emails show. Staffers who wanted to take vacation went to Maxwell for approval; she’d send requests up the chain to Epstein, who’d sign off with simply “yes” or “fine.”
February 2000: Donald Trump, Melania Knauss, Epstein and Maxwell pose together at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Source: Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
From the late 1990s through the early 2000s, Maxwell and Epstein’s social circle sometimes included Trump. A 2003 New York Magazine article recounted a dinner arranged by Maxwell at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse, which was attended by “a group of barely clad models” who interacted with high-profile guests, including Trump, Clinton aide Doug Band and media magnate Mort Zuckerman.
One of the emails’ few references to Trump came on Sept. 14, 2006, two months after Epstein was charged in Florida with solicitation of prostitution. It includes a list of 51 politicians, business executives and Wall Street powerbrokers. The list includes people who’ve previously been linked to Epstein, including Jimmy Cayne, former chief executive of Bear Stearns; Jes Staley, who would later be named the CEO of Barclays; and Trump. Cayne died in 2021. Staley did not respond to a request for comment.
“Plse review list and add or remove peeps,” Maxwell wrote.
“Remove trump,” Epstein responded. The pair discussed additions to the list and at least one other deletion.
Bloomberg was unable to determine the meaning of this list. The email has no subject line or additional commentary, so it’s impossible to know whether they were planning an event, preparing a holiday card list or something else.
Trump’s name surfaced again around the time Epstein was making an intense backchannel lobbying effort to get federal prosecutors to drop their case against him. It was in an email dated Aug. 23, 2007, a month before Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida that ended the federal component of the Epstein investigation.
From: Gmax <gmax[REDACTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Aug 23 2007 5:31 PM
Subject:
You have to assume they went to donald trump then, gossman, the docs in wpb, paschow etc
G
PS My e mail has changed to gmax[REDACTED] - plse make a note
The emails indicate that Maxwell may have been referring to a team of reporters covering Epstein who she expected would be seeking information from Trump; from Abe Gosman, the late healthcare magnate whose palatial property sold to Trump for $41 million after a heated bidding war with Epstein; from court documents in West Palm Beach; and from Joel Pashcow, the Palm Beach police and fire foundation board member who’d traveled on Epstein’s private jet. Pashcow did not respond to a request for comment.
“This is just more stupid, fake news playing into the hands of the Democrat Hoax trying to link President Trump and Epstein,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in response to questions about the reference to Trump in the emails.
Pressed earlier this summer about his history with Epstein, Trump said they fell out after Epstein “stole” an employee from Mar-a-Lago. That was an apparent reference to Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most outspoken accusers who later claimed that Maxwell recruited her from Trump’s resort to work as Epstein’s masseuse.
The rich and famous
In early 2005, Epstein’s world began falling apart. It began when a 14-year-old girl confided in her parents: A school friend had taken her to the home of a local Palm Beach man she knew only as ‘Jeff’ one afternoon that winter. The girl was giving Epstein a massage when he touched her inappropriately, she said. Her parents reported the incident to the Palm Beach Police Department, which opened an investigation.
After interviewing victims and witnesses, Palm Beach detectives learned that young girls were paid between $200 and $1,000 to give Epstein massages inside a bedroom on the second floor of his mansion. Many were asked to undress and engage in sex acts. On Oct. 20, 2005, police showed up at his home with a search warrant.
Epstein’s home in Palm Beach in 2021. Source: Damon Higgins/Palm Beach Daily News/USA Today Network
Just days after the raid, Maxwell sent Epstein detailed instructions on a sperm donation for a shared fertility treatment. “You can do the sample at home,” she directed, before adding that it “has to be within 90 mins of my procedure” and that “all the ejaculate must be collected.”
Eight months later, he credited Maxwell with helping him at his New Mexico ranch during a medical emergency. “I was very ill.. I almost feinted today,,I needed oxygen Ghislaine came to help,” he wrote to an assistant.
On July 19, 2006, he was indicted for soliciting prostitution. Four days later he was arrested in Palm Beach. Soon his arrest was all over the news, including in the New York Times and the local Florida press. By late 2006, the probe snowballed into a federal sex crimes investigation.
May 2008: Maxwell sent Epstein this photo from the set of the movie Amelia in Dunnville, Ontario, Canada, the emails show.
Even after Epstein’s state indictment, the emails suggest that Maxwell leveraged her own high-society ties to try to help him expand his network of academics, politicians, actors, bankers and heads of state. She told Epstein that she was passing on greetings from designer Tommy Hilfiger and Martha Stewart. Separately, she gushed about visiting the set of director James Cameron’s Avatar and was photographed on the set of another movie, Amelia, about aviator Amelia Earhart. (Representatives for Hilfiger, Stewart and Cameron did not respond to requests for comment.)
And when Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his then-girlfriend Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder of genealogy database 23andMe, were in the Caribbean for New Year’s Eve in 2006, Maxwell encouraged Epstein to play host.
“be v nice to her not stupid - she is interested in mapping DNA etc ..she is key
” Maxwell wrote on Dec. 29, 2006. In an email to an assistant a few days later, Epstein wrote that he was on the island with Brin. Representatives for Brin and Wojcicki did not respond to requests for comment.Around the same time, the emails show, the office of Bill Richardson, then the governor of New Mexico, asked if Richardson could use Epstein’s private jet for an upcoming peace mission to Sudan.
“Ghislaine - Half the price of a charter plane to Khartoum would be around $183,000. Is this possible?” Richardson’s scheduling director asked. After Maxwell forwarded the request to Epstein, he replied “have him call me today!!”
The request by Richardson’s office has not been previously reported. According to a 2007 Washington Post article, Richardson used Slimfast magnate S. Daniel Abraham’s private jet instead. A victim of Epstein would later allege that Maxwell instructed her to have sex with Richardson, who denied the allegation. Richardson died in 2023.
Bill and Hillary Clinton were two other influential figures who interacted with Epstein, partly through Maxwell’s networking. It’s been previously reported that former President Bill Clinton traveled on Epstein’s private jets several times and that Epstein made donations to both Bill and Hillary’s election campaigns. The emails include references to three meetings Maxwell had with “Clinton” between 2006 and 2008. They also show that Maxwell promoted her own ocean conservation nonprofit, TerraMar Project, through the Clinton Global Initiative; and maintained close connections with the family’s inner circle, including Band, the architect of Clinton’s post-presidency.
September 1993: Epstein and Maxwell speak with then-President Bill Clinton during an event for donors to a White House restoration project. Source: William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum
A spokesperson for Bill Clinton said the Clintons “knew nothing about” Epstein’s “horrific crimes” and “learned about them when the rest of the world did.”
Eager to find a flight for a last-minute dash to Indianapolis for a basketball game in early 2006, Band reached out to Maxwell. She offered him a free flight, but Band turned that down. When Maxwell later shared the request with Epstein, he told her they should pay for Band's flight.
In a flurry of emails in December 2005, Maxwell and Epstein discussed a $35,000 Audemars Piguet watch that they wanted to give to Band.
Four days before Christmas, Maxwell told Epstein she’d made the purchase.
From: J. Epstein <[email protected]>
To: <gmax[REDACTED]>
Date: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 4:34 PM
Subject: Re:
good..make sure he gets it for xmas
--- Gmax <gmax[REDACTED]> wrote:
> Bought the watch for Doug for 35 - wiring the money
> today
>
> G
>
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Later that day, Maxwell asked Epstein for guidance on how best to present the watch to Band.
“What do you want the note to say,” Maxwell inquired. “Is it from you, from me, from us?”
Epstein replied: “us”
A spokesperson for Band said, “He did not charter Maxwell’s plane nor did he receive an Audemars Piguet watch from her. Band did however issue a directive to remove her from the former president’s orbit when he became aware of the accusations against Maxwell.”
Lingerie and chocolates
Epstein regularly showered friends and women with gifts, which Maxwell helped distribute, the emails show. A spreadsheet attached to an accountant’s email in 2007 details about $1.8 million in gifts and payments between 2003 and 2006.
One entry detailed a $71,000 purchase at Lexus of Watertown in Massachusetts for then-Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who was part of the legal team involved in Epstein’s plea negotiations at the time.
Dershowitz told Bloomberg that the car was for his wife, who often picked up Epstein when he visited them in Martha’s Vineyard, and was considered a part of his legal fees.
An $11,000 Rolex watch was itemized in August 2003 as a gift for Tom Barrack, the wealthy real estate investor and longtime friend of Trump who’s now the US ambassador to Turkey. Three years later, in May 2006, Barrack’s assistant sent an email to Epstein’s assistant requesting a time change to a scheduled meeting between Barrack and Epstein because of “something urgent” that had come up.
“Tom would be willing to meet him at his home or office, whatever works,” Barrack’s assistant wrote. Epstein suggested they meet at his home.
A representative for Barrack declined to comment about the meeting, but said Barrack “has never received any gift ever from Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, let alone a watch.”
Epstein’s Gifts and Payments
A spreadsheet that was enclosed in an accountant’s email shows how Maxwell helped Epstein offer gifts and payments to friends, associates and victims.
Note: The record doesn’t indicate whether the gifts were accepted by every intended recipient. Source: Bloomberg reporting
Another line on the spreadsheet, dated Dec. 21, 2005, logged a $35,000 watch for “DB.” That is the same price of the Audemars Piguet watch that Maxwell and Epstein discussed giving Band in the emails on that same day. Other entries include purchases from all-terrain vehicle retailers valued at more than $130,000 that were itemized for Les Wexner, a longtime wealth-management client of Epstein’s and the billionaire businessman behind such brands as Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works. A lawyer for Wexner declined to comment. A gift of a Steinway piano valued at $47,000 was logged for an unnamed individual.
Maxwell herself received gifts, according to the spreadsheet: a $60,000 diamond necklace and “ear clips” from Sotheby’s went to her in December 2005, it says.
Other intended recipients, according to the 2007 spreadsheet, were dozens of women, many of whom were referred to only by their first names. Some entries had memos like “gifts for the girls” or “JE gifts girls.” Many of the women named in the spreadsheet later testified that they were victims of Epstein–and Maxwell.
Prosecutors and victims’ attorneys said Maxwell recruited and groomed young girls for Epstein. Evidence presented during her criminal trial showed that in the 90s, she recruited teenagers into his orbit, offering them scholarships and shopping trips. In the 2000s, prosecutors alleged, Maxwell encouraged the girls who massaged Epstein to bring their friends, too. As the operation grew, Maxwell assumed an oversight role in the recruitment scheme, directing a team of personal assistants who acted as recruiters and schedulers for Epstein’s massages, according to prosecutors.
Circa late 1990s: Maxwell managed Jeffrey Epstein’s households, which included sites in New York, Paris, New Mexico, Palm Beach, Florida and his private Caribbean island. Source: Shutterstock
Victims’ attorneys have described over the years how Epstein weaponized his wealth to emotionally control and manipulate his victims.
The spreadsheet contains more than 80 entries amounting to just over $75,000 in gifts for one victim, who asked that Bloomberg withhold her identity for fear of being subjected to additional abuse and trauma. Those entries include payments for a study abroad program, Thai massage lessons, a laptop and five Western Union wire transfers. Some of those entries include the annotation, “GM,” Maxwell’s initials. The “GM” annotation accompanied more than 250 of the spreadsheet’s nearly 2,000 entries. About half of the entries carry no initials and are simply recorded as numeric codes or “Wire.”
Type / Date / Num / Name / Memo / Amount
Check 2003-09-17 Cindy [REDACTED] food for Cindy $505.00
Check 2003-09-17 Food Food for AM for 7,8,9/2003 $1,057.37
Check 2003-09-17 Alana [REDACTED] Gift $38.02
Credit Card Charge 2003-09-17 GM Amazon.com JE gift for [REDACTED] $43.90
Credit Card Charge 2003-09-17 GM Amazon.com JE gift for [REDACTED] $38.51
Credit Card Charge 2003-09-17 GM Big Planet Adventure Outfitters JE gift for Catherine [REDACTED] $110.00
Check 2003-09-17 AA Engravers Engraving JE gift Harney Weinstein $30.00
Credit Card Charge 2003-09-17 GM Amazon.com Massage for Dummies $52.14
Credit Card Charge 2003-09-17 GM Amazon.com Massage for Dummies $32.76
Check 2003-09-17 Barnes & Noble Massage book $37.95
Check 2003-09-17 Sharper Image Gifts $162.78
Check 2003-09-17 Steps Ballet class - Andrea $13.00
Check 2003-09-17 Steps Ballet class - Andrea $13.00
“Jeffrey Epstein was all about control,” said the woman, who explained the manipulative nature of the gifts and payments she received. “First, complete isolation. Once he was in control of my location, he had control of everything. Everything from finances to belief systems to even more perverse things like attire, vocabulary, exercise routine and all other daily activities. The manipulation was endless, instilling fear from all angles.”
In 2004, according to the spreadsheet, $10,000 was listed for the father of Johanna Sjoberg. Sjoberg said in a 2016 deposition that she was a college student when Maxwell recruited her as an assistant. She then learned the job was to perform sex acts with Epstein. Sjoberg also said in the deposition that Prince Andrew groped her when she was at Epstein's Manhattan townhouse with Maxwell. A person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named to discuss a sensitive issue, said Epstein’s payments to victims’ family members were part of a pattern of manipulation to prevent the women from leaving. Sjoberg’s father declined to comment.
Another Epstein victim, Carolyn Andriano, testified that Maxwell arranged her sexual encounters with Epstein, touched her breasts, told her that she “had a great body for Mr. Epstein” and on occasion personally handed her $300 in cash. The spreadsheet recorded a gift from lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret to Andriano on Jan. 6, 2003. She would have just turned 16 at the time. Andriano died of a drug overdose in 2023, two years after she testified at Maxwell’s trial. Her lawyer, Jack Scarola, said the details in the spreadsheet “are in conformity with all information available to me.”
Names of Epstein’s assistants, many of whom have since described themselves as victims, also appear in the spreadsheet as intended recipients. One, Nadia Marcinkova, told Epstein she would send a photo of a Swedish woman she met. “She says she can do Thai massage. She is not cute enough for anything else (19).” Epstein replied “the swede doesn’t look so fat.”
“Jeffrey Epstein was a master manipulator,” said Erica Dubno, Marcinkova’s attorney. “He physically, sexually, and emotionally abused, dehumanized, and completely controlled her for years. He coerced Nadia and referred to her as his ‘sex slave.’”
Another woman, Natalya Malyshev, sent Epstein at least 20 emails with first names and ages of women in the subject line. “My new friend…17,” she wrote in one, attaching photographs of a girl described as a Russian model. Malyshev did not respond to a request for comment.
In another email, Malyshev forwarded Epstein a description of a young woman who could potentially “be rewarded” for recruiting others on a New York City college campus. (Bloomberg is withholding details about the woman’s identity.)
From: Irina <[REDACTED]@yahoo.com>
To: Natasha <[REDACTED]@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Jul 1 2006 12:24 PM
Subject: Irina - [REDACTED]'s picture
Ok, this is [REDACTED], can you please forward Jeffrey info about her...
- She is 19yo, Russian, from Odessa, came here with parents when she was 1.5, lives in Brooklyn...
- i met her in [REDACTED] when i went to admission office there. She is not a big girl but a little curvy (5'8''; 130lbs), pretty face, long brown hair, hazel eyes...
AND very important that she knows everybody in [REDACTED] - she studies there (public affairs) AND she works in freshmen office and guides all [REDACTED]'s freshmen. And she knows many girls in Brooklyn as well (she is very friendly). AND i already told her that she could be rewarded for help with her girlfriends and she said that she can do it. But at first "needs to try herself to see what is it".
- wants to be model and actress (as she told me) ... )
- nice personality, easy-going.....................
- what else... she doesnt smoke...
---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
Epstein replied: “she is too big,, however if you thinkit important I can do it one time in the afternoon,, tell her no nail polish.”
A letter to friends
By the summer of 2006, in July, the Palm Beach Police referred the Epstein matter to federal law enforcement authorities. The following month, Maxwell received an email from one of Epstein’s pilots notifying her that he’d been contacted by the FBI. She forwarded the message to Epstein, asking, “What would you like me to tell him?” He replied, “any message? phone contact?” before instructing her to have the pilot call his personal lawyer.
A month later, Epstein sent an email directing Maxwell to distribute an enclosed, 11-page letter to their social network. The letter, a draft of which appears over Dershowitz’s name, characterized the sexual abuse allegations as “highly fictionalized” and described the Palm Beach Police investigation as “raw sewage.”
“You need to review,, and then organize to help distribute...thanks,” Epstein wrote to Maxwell. Dershowitz told Bloomberg that he doesn’t recall the letter.
By mid-2007, Epstein’s lawyers entered a high-stakes, secret negotiation with prosecutors. The talks culminated in a non-prosecution agreement in September of that year that would save him from federal charges and remain under seal for two years. Throughout the negotiation, Epstein kept Maxwell in the loop, the emails show.
When prosecutors offered a deal that carried two years of prison time, Epstein updated Maxwell: “did not go well ..2 years.” Two weeks later, on Sept. 24, 2007, Epstein entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors that reduced his sentence to 18 months (he ended up serving 13 months). That same day, Maxwell sent an emotional email to Epstein. “I'm sad scared and depressed ..I can't shake it,” she wrote.
In the days before Epstein signed the agreement, he and Maxwell discussed another fertility procedure. By now, she was in a relationship with tech billionaire Ted Waitt. During the Blanche interview in July, she pointed to that relationship, which she said stretched from 2003 to 2010, as evidence that she’d separated from Epstein. Waitt did not respond to a request for comment.
From: Gmax <gmax[REDACTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, Sep 19 2007 1:37 AM
Subject:
Your cup + instructions are in the oval room... The sample has to be dropped off at 10 + you HAVE to fill out the forms - I would have filled them for you but I was not sure what you wanted to put on them
Let me know if you need/want me to do anything
G
PS My e mail has changed to gmax[REDACTED] - plse make a note
As Epstein prepared for his time behind bars, Maxwell helped wind down his empire. Should they sell his Bentley? His Sikorsky helicopter? Who on staff should she fire? What about the apartment in Paris? Maxwell also sought advice on how to handle her shares in Bear Stearns, which were starting to teeter as the 2008 financial crisis loomed. (The firm ultimately collapsed in March 2008 and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co.)
A day before he started his 18-month sentence, beginning June 30, 2008, Maxwell offered a motherly suggestion.
From: Gmax <gmax[REDACTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, Jun 29 2008 12:51 PM
Subject:
You should consider taking metamucil with you if you can...you don't need to be any unhappier than necessary
‘Slim shred of a life’
The email traffic between Maxwell and Epstein that’s in the cache tailed off after he went to jail. (He was released in 2009.) It wasn’t until late 2014, as Maxwell began facing her own serious legal scrutiny, that she reappeared in his Yahoo inbox.
The tone of her emails had changed, along with her circumstances. On April 4, 2014, The Daily Mail in London published a story citing a legal document that said Maxwell participated in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. The allegations were brought by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre (At the time, her name was Virginia Roberts). Three days later, Maxwell sent Epstein a request: “Can you send me the file on Virginia that your lawyers have or what ever info you have on her.”
That December, Giuffre joined a victims’ rights lawsuit that accused federal prosecutors in Florida of failing to notify Epstein’s victims before signing off on his plea deal. In it, Giuffre, who was identified as Jane Doe 3, said Epstein trafficked her for “sexual purposes.” She then publicly identified Maxwell as “one of the main women whom Epstein used to procure under-aged girls for sexual activities and a primary co-conspirator in his sexual abuse and sex trafficking scheme.”
Maxwell went on the offensive, the emails show. In one, dated Jan. 3, 2015, she circulated a two-decade-old report from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office stamped confidential. The 20-page report recounted how Giuffre, at the age of 15, had accused two male acquaintances of rape. The document said the complaint had been dropped due to “the victim’s lack of credibility.” Maxwell wrote to Epstein, citing the police report.: “...Virginia’s mother refs her drug use and possible involvement in witchcraft.”
January 2015: Maxwell outside her Manhattan townhouse. Source: Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
Over the next two weeks, she peppered Epstein with additional emails.
“Pls call me back,” she asked.
On Jan. 13, 2015 Maxwell forwarded Epstein an email chain between her lawyer and Epstein’s lawyer that discussed, in part, how Giuffre’s allegations could prompt a new police investigation into Maxwell in the UK.
From: G Maxwell <GMax[REDACTED]>
To: J Ep <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Jan 13 2015 6:01 PM
Subject: FW: Attorney Privileged Communication - subject to mutual interest privilege [IWOV-Matters.FID782702]
See bellow
I guess they are fishing to see if I can have allegation against me…this would take what ever slim shred of a life I have after this mess and kill it..
By early 2015, she told Epstein in an email that she planned to distribute the Giuffre dossier to others. She asked him if he had “anything else to add.” If Epstein responded, that’s not reflected in the email cache.
The next month, the New York Daily News published an article with the headline: “EXCLUSIVE: Alleged ‘sex slave’ of Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew accused 2 men of rape in 1998, but was found not credible.” The story cited “records obtained by the Daily News,” which Giuffre’s attorney characterized at the time as “sealed juvenile records.”
Giuffre later sued Maxwell for defamation for calling her a liar in a public statement. That case was settled out of court.
In June 2020, Maxwell was indicted on federal sex-trafficking charges. After her conviction, in December 2021, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In April this year, Giuffre died by suicide, her family said.
Next month, Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, is scheduled to be published posthumously.
Edited by Lauren Etter and John Voskuhl
Designed by Chris Nosenzo
Produced by Emily Engelman, Thomas Houston, Eugene Reznik and Margaret Sutherlin
Data visualization by Christopher Cannon
Photos edited by Jane Yeomans
