Jeffrey Epstein
Perhaps the latest national pastime is pawing through the millions of documents that Congress forced the Trump Administration to cough up and put online concerning the long-running Jeffrey Epstein sexual abuse scandal. Anyone with an Internet connection, a high tolerance for mind-numbing detail and some time can partake.
That includes the staff at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters. But not, it seems, what’s left of the diminished Las Vegas or Nevada news media. None seems to have bothered taking the trouble to pursue the local angle and publish anything beyond wire-service reports.
’tis a pity. For as it turns out, there are simply thousands and thousands of documents referencing Las Vegas. Mainly collected or generated by the FBI, they range from the criminal to the mundane. Many names and institutions are identified. Reputations stand to be damaged.
This collectively makes some of the characters in the Epstein files terrific candidates for my long-running list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The criterion is simple: trouble elsewhere (in Washington, D.C., where the documents were released) for things that happened in that bug light of mischief called Las Vegas. It’s a firm rebuttal to that famous former Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.” You can see the list nearby.
From a printed-out July 12, 2019, email with no sender or recipient: “[Deleted] used to work near the Zorro Ranch owned by Epstein. She knew the foreman who used to work there, David Gonzalez (deceased). Gonzalez told [deleted] Epstein would fly girls in from Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas, NV to entertain at his parties.” Zorro Ranch was a 10,000-acre spread 30 miles east of Albuquerque, N.M. (where I lived for 12 years) with its own runway that Epstein had bought in 1993. FWIW, the email came a week after Epstein was arrested at a New Jersey airport and less than a month before he was found dead in a New York City federal prison cell in what authorities later ruled was a suicide.
Miroslav Lajčák, Slovakia’s representative to the United Nations and one-time president of its General Assembly, apparently accepted free tickets arranged by Epstein to see David Copperfield’s Las Vegas magic show. “Got the tickets. Thanks!,” Lajčák emailed Epstein on July 29, 2018. That was a full decade after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida to one count of felony solicitation of prostitution and one count of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution, but was sentenced to just 18 months and required to register as a sex offender. (The details of Epstein’s outrageously–for felonies–sweetheart deal didn’t become known until November 2018 through the dogged reporting of the Miami Herald‘s Julie K. Brown.) According to another email, Epstein played a role in getting MGM Resorts to comp Lajčák three tickets to the Michael Jackson One show at Mandalay Bay during the same trip. Lajčák last month resigned his post as a veteran Slovakian diplomat following the release of non-Las Vegas related documents suggesting he solicited Epstein for introductions to “young girls.”
Copperfield, whose ties to Epstein have received considerable unfavorable publicity for years, pops up in nearly 300 documents. After an October 19, 2007 search by the FBI of Copperfield’s Las Vegas warehouse in connection with an allegation of sexual assault, an email, apparently from one Department of Justice lawyer to another, called Copperfield “Epstein’s favorite cohort.” A year later, a September 5, 2008, email from an assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle to one in Miami said, “We’re still working on Copperfield — lots of acts but concerns about applicable law!” No charges were brought, then or since. Copperfield’s lawyers have denied any wrongdoing by their client but have acknowledged he knew Epstein. (In a November 29, 2015, email, Epstein bragged that Copperfield got engaged to model Claudia Schiffer “on my island.” The pair never married.)
According to a number of documents, one of Epstein’s m.o. in luring younger women was to gift them tickets to Copperfield’s magic show in Vegas and also Florida.
Epstein used Match.com to troll for women. One Match.com email to Epstein in 2012 listed a 26-year-old woman from Las Vegas and a 20-year-old from Reno.
It appears at least one Epstein victim lived in Las Vegas. A November 7, 2019, memo from the victim witness coordinator for federal prosecutors in Manhattan sought to book airfare from Las Vegas to New York and back for for a “fact witness:.”
According to recent news accounts, Jeffrey Epstein’s compound on his private island, dubbed “Lolitta Island” in the Virgin Islands, eerily contained a dentist’s chair in a room where the walls were decorated with multiple, identical masks of men’s faces.
The document releases are full of plane, hotel and entertainment itineraries in Las Vegas, although due to redactions it is not always clear who, why or what for. It appears Epstein or his staff spent a lot of time booking, and maybe even paying for, show tickets. Two tickets to hear Celine Dion in 2014. Three tickets to “Le Rêve–The Dream” at Wynn Las Vegas in 2015. Lots of tickets for Copperfield shows.
Some big hotels certainly treated Epstein’s very presence as a very big deal. Here is part of an email on August 2, 2013, from Caesars’s “Director VIP Operations” to an Epstein associate:
My colleague … will be here to meet and greet Mr. Epstein and party. He will have the tickets to the shows and the badges for the convention. He will also walk with one of the group members to show them where Nobu and Colosseum are located. He will also show them the front door where the car will be waiting for them at 9p to take them to Treasure Island for the Mystere show … I know this will be a very memorable for Mr. Epstein.”
A follow-up email from DVIPO asked, “By any chance, did Mr. Epstein comment on his weekend at Caesars?” Now remember, this was five years after Epstein pleaded guilty to sex felonies. (The DVIPO’s name wasn’t redacted in the release, but I am doing so here to spare some personal embarrassment.)
Clearly, Epstein seemed to be perceived as someone with clout in Vegas. A Stanford University professor in 2013 asked Epstein for help in getting his son a job with a Las Vegas casino hotel. Epstein’s emailed reply: “Have him write a cover letter explaining what he would like to do, why, and why Las Vegas. Leave off Eagle scout–don’t want people to think he’s gay.”
The files I saw suggest Epstein came here regularly for seemingly legitimate reasons: conferences, trade shows, investment seminars and perhaps to scope out possible personal investments in real estate products. Files contain business plans for a proposed 332-unit housing development in downtown Las Vegas, and what later became the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas.
A mysterious email dated September 2, 2011, with sender and recipient blacked out, states, “August 11, 2011: Wedding ring with Harry Reid for 2 weeks this Sat. Aug. 13.” At the time, Reid was a U.S. senator from Nevada and the Senate majority leader.
For years, Epstein’s Zorro Development Corp., presumably connected with his New Mexico ranch, made a number of annual payments in the $5,000-to-$6,000 range to something called Sierra Nevada Property Management LLC, listing a Las Vegas post office box, for “annual tower rental.” The payments seem connected with a communications link to Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.Nevada state business records in Carson City list a corporation with that same name as “dissolved.”
The mundane aspects of Epstein’s links with Las Vegas in the releases include telephone bills showing numerous Las Vegas numbers and credit card bills recounting numerous Las Vegas charges. An example: $10.11 spent at the Starbucks in the MGM Grand on January 9, 2014.
One of Epstein’s last trips to Vegas might have been in August 2018, a year before his arrest and death. An email by an associate headed “Jeffrey Schedule” listed a day trip via plane from his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico to Las Vegas and back. No reason for the travel was given.
I welcome comments, clarifications, denials or rebuttals to be posted below. In the searchable DOJ database there are 3,953 documents with a mention of Las Vegas. That’s not far behind the 4,731 mentioning Donald J. Trump, Epstein’s long-time running buddy in New York and Palm Beach (but not, it seems from the documents I reviewed, in Las Vegas, although Trump’s name graces the state’s tallest non-casino building just off the Strip). The Epstein-Trump a relationship has occasioned a fair amount of controversy.
But I only sampled the Epstein files about Las Vegas. There undoubtedly are other local treasures waiting to be uncovered. With my roadmap, perhaps other Nevada journalists can join the dig and unearth more gems.