Jeffrey Epstein Joins ‘El Chapo’ in Notorious Jail as Inmate 76318-054
Epstein Joins ‘El Chapo’ in Notorious Jail as Inmate 76318-054
(Bloomberg) -- Bernie Madoff did time there. So did John Gotti Jr. Paul Manafort is currently in residence. Jeffrey Epstein -- inmate 76318-054 -- just moved in.
The hulking Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan is several miles and worlds away from the mansion near Central Park that Epstein may have been planning to head for when he was arrested by the FBI after touching down at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on July 6. Among his new neighbors is the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who has been holed up in the federal jail’s notorious 10 South wing for more than two years.
One of Guzman’s lawyers, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he was astonished to see Epstein two days after his arrest wearing a jail-issued uniform in a holding cell next to a conference room on 10 South where lawyer meetings typically occur.
“There he was, sitting there, all alone,” Litchtman said. “This unit is completely isolating.” If Epstein is there full-time right now, “he won’t have any contact with others.”
Bureau of Prisons authorities confirmed Epstein is being held at the facility but said they generally don’t share information on the condition of specific inmates for “privacy and safety and security reasons.”
Epstein’s lawyers didn’t answer emails seeking comment about where their client is being held.
A registered sex offender facing new sex-trafficking charges, Epstein could get permission to leave the MCC as early as July 15, when he is scheduled for a bail hearing. What conditions might U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman require to release him?
Possibly a “substantial” cash amount (guesstimates are in the tens of millions of dollars), a home-confinement mandate and an electronic-monitoring device strapped to one of his ankles, said Brandon Sample, a defense attorney and sentencing-reform advocate who served more than 11 years in federal prison after he and others bought postage stamps with counterfeit and stolen checks and resold them.
In the meantime, Epstein -- who has access to two private planes and owns a private island in the Caribbean -- will be doing what has been described as fairly hard time. Certainly relatively hard time. The contrast between his recent gilded existence and his life at the MCC is like “night and day,” said Alan Ellis, a consultant and criminal defense lawyer who wrote a guidebook on federal prisons. “And that would be understating it.”
Epstein, 66, probably has been assigned to a room no larger than 100 square feet equipped with only a bed, a toilet with an attached sink and a wedge of a desk, Sample said. For reference, Epstein’s Manhattan home is 50 feet wide and, according to the government’s detention memo, is worth more than $77 million.
If in fact he is still in 10 South -- the special unit where alleged terrorists and other high-profile inmates are held, sometimes for their own protection -- he is spending 23 hours a day confined to his cell and allowed out for one hour to exercise alone, said Sam Schmidt, a criminal defense lawyer in New York who’s represented al-Qaeda operatives who’ve been held there.
Indoor Cage
That one hour of daily recreation is in an indoor cage, and the privilege can be denied. Cell windows are frosted -- the only fresh air comes in through a window in the cage -- and inmates are strip-searched every time they go to court.
The brown Brutalist building is adjacent to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a cluster of buildings that includes New York Police Department headquarters, two federal courthouses and the Church of St. Andrew, which dates to the days when the area was known as the Five Points, the slum depicted in the movie “Gangs of New York.”
At dusk and into the night, rats scurry in the alley between the church and the jail, darting under doorways and into sewer drains. According to inmates, rodents are inside, too.
While the jail has a reputation for being secure, it has been plagued by allegations of corruption: Two guards pleaded guilty in the past year to accepting bribes to smuggle in cell phones and alcohol.
During the trial of a Turkish banker in 2017 on charges of aiding Iranian sanctions evasion, the government’s star witness, Reza Zarrab, admitted he received contraband and testified that he was threatened with a knife by a fellow inmate who wanted to kill him for cooperating with the U.S. In 2016, a guard was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to raping a female inmate in a hallway while she was mopping the floor.
The conditions are a far cry from the last time Epstein was incarcerated. After pleading guilty in Florida to state felony prostitution charges in 2008, he was sentenced to serve 18 months in the Palm Beach County jail. During that time, he was permitted to hire his own security detail and even then didn’t spend much time locked up: According to the Miami Herald, he was allowed to work at his West Palm Beach office for as many as 12 hours a day for up to six days a week.
To contact the reporters on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net;Chris Dolmetsch in Federal Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net;Christian Berthelsen in New York at cberthelsen1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Heather Smith at hsmith26@bloomberg.net, Anne Reifenberg, Melinda Grenier
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