FBI Obstruction of Justice Investigation — Alfredo Rodriguez (Miami / West Palm Beach)

Case 72-MM-113327 was opened by the FBI Miami Field Office's West Palm Beach Resident Agency on October 28, 2009, against subject Alfredo Rodriguez, who had served as the house manager and butler at Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach residence during the period covered by the predicate child-exploitation file 31E-MM-108062. Rodriguez had been interviewed in 2005 by the Palm Beach Police Department and again by federal agents during the 2006-2008 federal investigation. Internal FBI Electronic Communications in the corpus describe the obstruction predicate plainly: during the civil litigation that followed Epstein's 2008 state plea, Rodriguez 'came into possession of an address book containing names and telephone numbers of what are believed to be additional underage victims of EPSTEIN that were previously unknown' and 'attempted to sell the address book to a UCE [undercover employee] rather than turn it over to law enforcement or attorneys in response to federal subpoenas issued during pending civil litigation' (EFTA00108813, EFTA00270281, EFTA01326119).

The sting was set up after Rodriguez approached attorney Bradley J. Edwards, who at the time represented multiple Epstein civil plaintiffs and who had subpoenaed Rodriguez in that civil litigation. The file shows the FBI Miami squad PB-2/Palm Beach County RA seeking SAC authority on November 5, 2009 to use a non-Bureau-certified undercover employee to meet Rodriguez (EFTA01326085), and separately requesting $50,000 in 'show money' from FBIHQ to support the operation (EFTA01326082). Rodriguez was interviewed under Miranda waiver on December 2, 2009 in Boca Raton (Sentinel serial 22, EFTA01326054), and the case file's evidence inventory includes the bound black address book itself, two staples of handwritten yellow-legal-pad documents, seven discs of consensually monitored phone calls between Rodriguez and Edwards, FD-26 consent-to-search and FD-395 forms signed by Rodriguez, and his two passports, Florida driver's license, and resident-alien card (EFTA00129645).

Rodriguez was charged in the Southern District of Florida with selling stolen property in interstate commerce, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison; corpus material confirms a magistrate-judge conference call in March 2016 in which the court placed on the record that he had 'previously represented Alfredo Rodriguez, an employee of JE who was prosecuted on a charge of selling an address book' and that 'Mr. Rodriguez had passed away' (EFTA00800957, a separate file). The Miami obstruction case file remained open administratively for years afterward: serials in the WIC report run through at least 2013 (return of property), and on March 4, 2025, FBI Miami packed the entire 72-MM-113327 case file — including 1A evidence — and shipped it via FedEx to the FBI Washington Field Office Evidence Room (EFTA00108909). Two weeks later, on March 17-18, 2025, NYO agents at WFO began an ELSUR (electronic surveillance) review of 1D evidence items from 72-MM-113327 alongside the parallel Epstein case files 50D-NY-3027571, 31E-MM-108062, 90A-NY-113327, 90C-NY-3154599, and 9A-NY-3144791 — with one agent noting that 'UCE' had been changed to 'CHS/Source' on the 72-MM line items 'after further examination of the Elsur File' (EFTA01649068).

The corpus contains 271 EFTA documents and 311 emails carrying the 72-MM-113327 case identifier, drawn primarily from FBI investigative work product produced in the January 2026 DOJ release. Document types in the sample include FD-1057 Electronic Communications opening the obstruction case in October 2009 and authorizing the undercover/show-money operation against Rodriguez (EFTA01326082, EFTA01326085); Sentinel 'physical 1A/1C cover sheets' cataloguing seized evidence packages — the case's 1A inventory includes the address book itself, consent-to-search forms, FGJ subpoena returns, and seven discs of consensually monitored calls with Rodriguez (EFTA00108618, EFTA00129645); FD-1057 ECs requesting and recording the Federal Grand Jury subpoena for Rodriguez's phone number 305-302-5548 and other targeted numbers (EFTA00108660); FD-302 interview reports and Sentinel serial pages including the Robert Couturier interview at his New York design studio (Sentinel serial 53), the November 2010 BOP-records interview re: Steven Hoffenberg, and a follow-up interview of Hoffenberg himself memorialized on FD-302 (EFTA00270335); a routine letter to BOP Office of General Counsel requesting custody and assignment information on Hoffenberg and a co-inmate (EFTA00108874); a Baleen Sweep Document Conversion Laboratory request submitting telephone records associated with the Rodriguez address book for OCR and ingestion into the Bureau's Telephone Application database (EFTA00108813, EFTA00240016, EFTA00270281, EFTA01326119); and California DMV record returns providing CDL photographs of subjects identified through the address book (EFTA00108707).

A significant secondary thread visible in the corpus is the 2010 attempt to develop information from Hoffenberg — then serving a 20-year sentence at FCI Fort Dix for the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme — about Epstein's possible involvement in the mid-1980s Columbus, Ohio homicide of attorney Arthur Shapiro. A telephonic FBI interview of a Columbus, Ohio police detective on October 26, 2010 (Sentinel serial 57, EFTA01250227) recorded the detective's conclusion that the investigation 'has revealed no connection between the homicide of Shapiro and Jeffrey Epstein to date.'

The corpus also documents the case file's 2019-2025 administrative life. A July 2011 ICRC FOIA-processing memo (EFTA00173172) confirms the file was still 'pending' for FOIA exemption purposes more than a year after Rodriguez's prosecution, and asks the case agent whether disclosure would jeopardize ongoing work. June 2019 emails (EFTA00147781) show SDNY prosecutors coordinating the shipment of 'approximately two boxes from FBI case file 72-MM-113327 and the remainder from FBI case file 31E-MM-108062' to the FBI's DocLab for full-scale scanning ahead of the Maxwell prosecution; a follow-up exchange (EFTA00013245) documents that DocLab flagged certain 1A files that had been lost between 2013 and 2015 digitization passes and recovered them from the local network, and that 'pornographic images of young girls' encountered during scanning were marked DO NOT SCAN per protocol and left in their original physical location. The corpus does not contain Rodriguez's underlying FD-302, the consensually recorded phone calls, the SDFL plea or sentencing transcript, or the substantive content of the address book itself.