Epstein estate agrees to $35 million settlement with victims

MANHATTAN (CN) ­— The estate representatives of the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein agreed on Thursday evening to a class action settlement that could pay out up to $35 million to women who were trafficked and abused by Epstein between 1995 and his jailhouse death awaiting trial in 2019.

While the settlement still needs to be approved by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, the executors of Epstein’s estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, consented to a proposed settlement agreement that would resolve a 2024 civil class action by paying out $35 million if there are 40 or more eligible victims.

The settlement would pay $25 million if there are less than 40 qualified class members.

Per the proposed agreement, the settlement would bar Epstein’s victims from "asserting, commencing, instituting, prosecuting, continuing to prosecute, or maintaining in any court of law or equity, arbitration tribunal, or administrative forum any and all" of the discharged claims against Indyke and Kahn — Epstein's longtime lawyer and accountant, respectively — who were accused in the underlying class action of facilitating and concealing Epstein's sex trafficking operations for their own financial gain.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, the Joe Biden appointee who presided over the criminal sex trafficking trial of entertainment mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs last summer.

The underlying civil case, filed in 2024 by the Boies Schiller firm, accused Indyke and Kahn of being “personally essential to the Epstein Enterprise’s success,” by, among other things, structuring Epstein’s bank accounts and cash withdrawals to give him and his associates access to large amounts of cash in furtherance of sex trafficking.

The firm claimed the accountant and lawyer personally assisted with creating the complex financial infrastructure of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation using dozens of bank accounts at various banking institutions, many of which were held in the name of corporate entities with no legitimate business purpose.

“For many years, Indyke and Kahn intentionally concealed the extent of their personal involvement in the sex trafficking venture including specific false denials of their role in the Epstein enterprise, making themselves out to be mere outside advisors to Epstein — but … Indyke and Kahn have since been exposed as part of Epstein’s inner most circle, and key facilitators of sex trafficking,” the women wrote.

The accountant and lawyer were also accused in the complaint of helping Epstein evade banks running diligence reports on him in an attempt to protect Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.

The settlement agreement was made public on Thursday evening, the same day that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — formerly known as Prince Andrew — was arrested in the United Kingdom on suspicion of misconduct in public office as officials investigate his relationship with Epstein. Earlier this week, Epstein’s longtime financial advisory client, the billionaire Les Wexner — whose name appears over 1,000 times in the recently released Epstein files — testified before members of Congress that he was “duped by a world-class con man.”

The executors of Epstein’s estate previously agreed to a $290 million settlement in 2023 resolving a class action brought by a Jane Doe victim, on the same day in June 2023 that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff granted her class standing, granting future awards to her and other victims.

Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Epstein’s convicted in 2021 for her leadership role in the sex trafficking ring, was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

At trial in the Southern District of New York, prosecutors documented how Maxwell earned some $30.7 million by facilitating, as well as sometimes participating in, Epstein’s abuse of girls and young women.

In August 2021, the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program announced it had awarded nearly $125 million to approximately 150 eligible claimants, roughly one year after the program launched on June 25, 2020.

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