The raid of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's palatial New York City residence uncovered a now-expired passport issued in the 1980s by a foreign country with Epstein’s picture but with a different name on it and his residence listed as Saudi Arabia.
Prosecutors said during Epstein's bail hearing Monday the passport was in a locked safe that was also filled with "piles of cash" and "dozens of diamonds."
Epstein is a flight risk and poses an “ongoing and forward-looking danger,” prosecutors claimed, pointing to the "substantial collection of photographic trophies of his victims and other young females in his mansion”[.]
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Investigators also allege that Epstein attempted to pay off possible witnesses against him with hundreds of thousands of dollars when media scrutiny began to ramp up in late 2018.
The source of Jeffrey Epstein’s wealth, which prosecutors recently pegged at north of $500 million during bail proceedings , has long been a mystery and the subject of rampant speculation. But perhaps the oddest claim about where some of Epstein’s vast fortune came from actually originated with Epstein himself, who reportedly bragged to friends back in the 1980s that he was acting as a global bounty hunter for unspecified governments.
The allegedly falsified foreign passport that prosecutors recovered a week ago does match this timeframe.
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Prosecutors said they examined bank records which suggest Epstein “already earns at least $10,000,000 per year… while living in the U.S. Virgin Islands, traveling extensively abroad, and residing in part in Paris, France.” They suggested that, even though Epstein’s source of wealth remains a mystery to them, “there would be little to stop the defendant from fleeing, transferring his unknown assets abroad, and then continuing to do whatever it is he does to earn his vast wealth from a computer terminal beyond the reach of extradition.”
Image: AP
Dead Gov Bruce King, a DEM, as if we couldn't have guessed:At the center of Jeffrey Epstein's secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago — complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot (372-square-meter) courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway.
Known as the Zorro Ranch, the high-desert property is now tied to an investigation that the state attorney general's office says it has opened into Epstein with plans to forward findings to federal authorities in New York.
Epstein, who pleaded not guilty this week to federal sex trafficking charges in New York, has not faced criminal charges in New Mexico.
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In a 2015 court filing in Florida, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Epstein said she had been abused at several locations, including the New Mexico property.
Records show Epstein purchased the ranch, valued by county officials at over $12 million, from the family of former Gov. Bruce King, who died 10 years ago. A 1995 Santa Fe New Mexican story about his plans to build a mansion on the property said the home would be 26,700 square feet (2,480 square meters) with a 2,100-square-foot (195-square-meter) living room.
Aerial images of the property show an airplane hangar and landing strip. Closer to the east edge of the property, several structures that appear to serve as small homes and stables stand in public view.
The King family still owns land surrounding much of Epstein's ranch near the town of Stanley, a rural outpost on the plains that stretch east of the Sandia Mountains.
Gary King, the son of the former governor, was the state attorney general from 2007 to 2015, and was among a handful of candidates in the state who returned Epstein campaign donations.
King had received $15,000 from Epstein in 2006 during his first-bid for attorney general, and then received $35,000 from firms linked to Epstein in 2014.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson donated $50,000 in 2006 gubernatorial campaign contributions from Epstein to charity.
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ABC New Mexico story Archived.
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