EFTA00189907

EFTA00189907 is a two-page letter, Bates-stamped EFTA00189907 and EFTA00189908, in Data Set 9, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida to Michael R. Tein, Esq. of Lewis Tein, P.L., one of Jeffrey Epstein’s defense attorneys.¹² Dated July 22, 2008 and sent “VIA FACSIMILE,” it responds to “your letter of July 21, 2008” and states that “the United States Attorney has determined, based upon reliable evidence, that, during the period of the Non-Prosecution Agreement, Jeffrey Epstein has willfully violated the conditions of the Agreement.”¹ It closes: “Accordingly, the United States Attorney’s Office hereby provides notice of Mr. Epstein’s breach of the Non-Prosecution Agreement.”¹ This is the office’s assertion, made to the defendant’s own counsel; it is not a court ruling, and this page does not treat it as one. Under this wiki’s privacy rule, several individuals the letter identifies as victims are blacked out throughout this copy, and this page reports their number and status as stated in the letter without reproducing any name.³

What the office says Epstein did

The letter gives two grounds for the breach it declares. First, it says Epstein “has repeatedly denied that the victims named by the United States are not victims of an enumerated offense contained in Title 18, United States Code, Section 2255, and has attempted to stop those victims from pursuing their claims under that statute.”¹ As an example it quotes a statement it attributes to “Epstein’s publicist, speaking of behalf of Epstein” [sic], made the day before in response to a civil suit brought by three individuals against the United States: “The lawsuit has absolutely no merit. They’re just looking for money. These women have lied repeatedly, and in no way shape or form were they victims. They were at his place freely and voluntarily. And one of them showed Epstein a fake ID.”¹⁴ The letter attributes the quotation to a July 21, 2008 New York Post article, “Bid to Burn Epstein Plea.”¹ It then states that two of the three named individuals “are both listed in the United States’ July 10, 2008 ‘Final Notification of Identified Victims,’” that “Mr. Epstein was given more than a week to object to the names on the list and chose not to make any objections,” and that, “[a]ccordingly, pursuant to the terms of the Non-Prosecution Agreement as modified, Mr. Epstein and all of his representatives are required to treat” them “as ‘victims of an enumerated offense.’”¹ This page does not identify any of the three individuals, all of whom are blacked out in this copy wherever their names would appear.³

Second, the letter says Epstein was “frustrating the purpose of the Agreement with respect to the victims’ ability to obtain damages,” writing that his “waiver of liability regarding civil suits brought pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2255 was a key piece of consideration for the United States’ willingness to defer its prosecution to the State of Florida,” and that by “seeking to stay all civil litigation, during what you assert is the term of the Non-Prosecution Agreement, Mr. Epstein is avoiding that essential contractual term.”¹ This wiki’s page on the 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement describes Term 8 of that agreement as waiving Epstein’s right to contest liability and damages for any identified victim who proceeded under § 2255; this letter frames Epstein’s attempt to stay civil litigation as a breach of that same term, without this page independently re-reading the agreement’s text to confirm the cross-reference.

The signature block: redacted, not established either way

The letter’s closing reads “Sincerely, / R. Alexander Acosta / United States Attorney / By:” at the foot of page 1; the “By:” line carries no visible mark on that page.¹ Page 2, Bates-stamped EFTA00189908, opens with a solid black redaction bar directly above the printed line “Assistant United States Attorney,” and a separate redaction over the “cc:” line, followed by the unredacted word “Esq.”² This page reports only what is visible: a name is withheld above that title, and a name is withheld from the courtesy-copy line. It does not report the letter as signed or unsigned, because the redaction bar could conceal a printed name alone, a handwritten signature alone, or both, and nothing in the image resolves which.

A second, textually different letter of the same date

Two further items in the same production are dated July 22, 2008, addressed to the same recipient, on the same subject, and carry the same “R. Alexander Acosta / United States Attorney / By: [redacted] / Assistant United States Attorney” closing block: EFTA00215372 and EFTA00215384.⁵⁶ Their body text is not a copy of EFTA00189907’s. Instead of the publicist quotation, they quote the agreement’s own breach clause — “[a] ‘breach of any one of these conditions allows the United States to elect to terminate the agreement and to investigate and prosecute Epstein and any other individual or entity for any and all federal offenses’” — summarize the sentence the agreement called for, state that “several of the designated victims sought relief” and that “Mr. Epstein sought a stay of those proceedings based on the fact that an ongoing federal investigation exists,” and close: “the United States Attorney’s Office hereby provides timely notice of Mr. Epstein’s breach of the Non-Prosecution Agreement. Pursuant to the Agreement, the United States Attorney’s Office may initiate its prosecution within sixty (60) days of giving notice of the violation.”⁵⁶ That sixty-day provision does not appear in EFTA00189907. This page does not determine whether EFTA00215372/EFTA00215384 is an earlier or later draft of the same notice, a separate letter sent the same day on related grounds, or a revision that superseded EFTA00189907; it reports the two as textually distinct documents sharing a date, a recipient and a subject.

What the wider record shows, and what this page does not claim

This wiki’s page on Marie Villafaña, the line Assistant U.S. Attorney on the investigation, records that during this period she “repeatedly recommended declaring Epstein in breach and proceeding with an indictment,” and that separate notices of breach followed in November 2008, over Epstein’s work-release placement, and in June 2009, each of which she describes as ending with the office allowing Epstein to “cure” the breach rather than indict him.⁷ Neither of those later notices is this letter, and this page does not identify who drafted, approved or transmitted EFTA00189907, or place it within that sequence beyond noting that it precedes both by several months.

A July 21, 2008 letter matching the one EFTA00189907 says it responds to has been identified, by convergence of date, correspondents and a single matching timeline-exhibit entry rather than by any cross-reference between the two documents. Michael R. Tein faxed a one-page letter to Ann Marie C. Villafaña the evening of July 21, 2008 — an internal USAO email the next morning describes it as received “at 6:30 last night”⁸ — Bates-stamped EFTA00190582-EFTA00190583. It replies to a USAO letter of July 17, 2008 that this page has not located, opening: “Thank you for your letter of July 17, 2008. In it, you ask whether Mr. Epstein ‘intends to fully abide by the Non-Prosecution Agreement.’ The answer is yes.” It goes on to state that “we are abiding by our ethical obligation to advise the Court of its statutory mandate under Section 3509(k),” a statute Tein describes as imposing “a mandatory obligation on federal district courts to stay certain civil cases.”⁹ The office’s own investigation-timeline exhibit records that same morning’s exchange as passing between Villafaña, Acosta, Jeff Sloman, Robert Senior, Karen Atkinson, E. Nesbitt Kuyrkendall and Jason Richards, without distinguishing addressees from copy recipients¹⁰ — the email itself, its To and Cc lines redacted except for Acosta, Richards and the first name “Karen,” describes Tein as claiming “it is his ‘ethical duty’ to stay the civil litigation” and asks how the office should proceed — the subject matter of the second ground EFTA00189907 gives for the breach, above.⁸ This page does not treat the two letters as covering the same ground throughout: EFTA00189907 also rests on the publicist-quotation and victims issue, which the July 21 letter does not address.

For a defense reply specifically to EFTA00189907, this page searched the full-text corpus for “your letter of July 22, 2008,” “notice of breach” paired with “Tein,” “Lewis Tein” paired with “breach,” “Michael R. Tein” paired with “August,” and Tein’s surname paired separately with “reply,” “breach” and “July,” and it checked an investigation-timeline exhibit — Exhibit A-1 to AUSA A. Marie Villafaña’s written response to the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, not a product of the office’s own file — whose pages cited here log correspondence and communications day by day from July 19 through November 2008; that exhibit’s entries for July 22 through August 13, 2008 record no letter or email answering this notice, though the exhibit does record other correspondence in that window, including the July 21 letter above.¹¹ None of these searches produced a defense reply to EFTA00189907. That is different from the November 2008 notice, where the page on Marie Villafaña records that defense counsel Roy Black replied acknowledging the underlying fact of the work release while denying any breach.⁷ This page reports that search and its result; it is not a claim that no reply exists, or evidence of how the office resolved this notice. Consistent with the case page’s own timeline, Epstein was not federally prosecuted following this notice; he completed his state sentence and was released to home detention on July 22, 2009 — one year, to the date, after this letter.¹²

Limits of this page

This page does not identify the three individuals the letter discusses as victims, does not identify the Assistant United States Attorney whose name is redacted above “Assistant United States Attorney” on page 2, and does not identify the redacted courtesy-copy recipient. It does not report whether the letter was signed. It does not resolve the relationship between this letter and EFTA00215372/EFTA00215384. The July 21, 2008 Tein letter this page identifies above as matching the one EFTA00189907 responds to rests on convergence of date, correspondents and a single timeline entry, not a cross-reference between the two documents; this page did not locate a defense reply to this letter beyond the search reported above.

Related

• Cases: 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement.
• People: Alex Acosta; Marie Villafaña.

Footnotes

1. EFTA00189907, p. 1 of 2 (header; “VIA FACSIMILE,” addressee, “Re: Jeffrey Epstein”; opening paragraph declaring the willful violation; the publicist-quotation paragraph and its example; the “Final Notification of Identified Victims” paragraph; the § 2255 waiver paragraph; the closing notice-of-breach sentence; “Sincerely, / R. Alexander Acosta / United States Attorney / By:”). Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00189907 p.1. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. EFTA00189907, p. 2 of 2, Bates-stamped EFTA00189908: a redacted line above the printed title “Assistant United States Attorney,” and a redacted “cc:” line followed by “Esq.”; no other text on the page. Confirmed at 600 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00189907 p.2. ↩ ↩²

3. Same page, read at 400 dpi: the three individuals named in the publicist-quotation paragraph, and the two of them the letter says are listed on the July 10, 2008 “Final Notification of Identified Victims,” are blacked out throughout this copy; this page does not reproduce them. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00189907 p.1. ↩ ↩²

4. Same page: “speaking of behalf of Epstein” appears exactly as printed in the letter, confirmed at 400 dpi and reproduced [sic]. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00189907 p.1. ↩

5. EFTA00215372 (Data Set 9), a single-page letter dated July 22, 2008 to Michael R. Tein, Esq., textually distinct in its body from EFTA00189907; closing block and “cc:” line redacted in the same pattern. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00215372 p.1. ↩ ↩²

6. EFTA00215384 (Data Set 9), a further copy of the same letter as EFTA00215372, its redacted line above the printed title “Assistant United States Attorney” and its redacted “cc:” line both legible in this scan. Confirmed at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00215384 p.1. ↩ ↩²

7. As recorded on the Marie Villafaña page: OPR Report narrative p. 148, on her repeated recommendation to declare Epstein in breach (https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02830776 p.174); the November 24, 2008 notice of breach over work release and Roy Black’s November 26 reply denying breach, OPR Report narrative p. 115 (https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02830776 p.141); and her own statement to OPR describing the June 2009 notice of breach and Epstein again being allowed to “cure” it, Villafaña statement p. 3 of 58, page stamp EFTA00225485 (https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00225378). ↩ ↩²

8. EFTA00190318 (Data Set 9), p. 264, Bates-stamped EFTA00190581: internal USAO email from Villafaña, subject “Letter from Michael Tein,” Tuesday, July 22, 2008 9:30 AM, forwarding the July 21 Tein letter and stating that Tein claims “it is his ‘ethical duty’ to stay the civil litigation” and asking “how you would like to proceed.” The To and Cc lines are redacted except for “Acosta, Alex,” the first name “Karen,” and “Richards, Jason R.”; the sender’s own printed surname is likewise partly redacted in the signature block. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00190318 p.264. ↩ ↩²

9. EFTA00190318 (Data Set 9), pp. 265-266: a one-page letter from Michael R. Tein, Lewis Tein, P.L., to Ann Marie C. Villafaña, dated July 21, 2008, Bates-stamped EFTA00190582, and its facsimile cover sheet, Bates-stamped EFTA00190583. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00190318 p.265. ↩

10. EFTA00224943 (Data Set 9), p. 41 of 51, Bates-stamped EFTA00224983, “Epstein Investigation Timeline”: its 7/22/2008 row records “Emails between A. M. Villafaña, A. Acosta, J. Sloman, R. Senior, K. Atkinson, E. Nesbitt Kuyrkendall, and J. Richards regarding 7/21/2008 letter from M. Tein announcing plan to stay the civil suits against J. Epstein and notification that B. Reinhart is counsel of record for S. Kellen in civil suits.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00224943 p.41. ↩

11. EFTA00224943 (Data Set 9), p. 41 of 51, Bates-stamped EFTA00224983, “Epstein Investigation Timeline,” Exhibit A-1 to the written response of AUSA A. Marie Villafaña to the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, transmitted 10 May 2019 — the exhibit carries no author, addressee or date of its own and is identified from the exhibit index at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00225378 p.44. The page cited here covers July 19 through November 2008, in Date / To / From / Re columns: its 7/21/2008 row lists “Villafaña” under “To,” “Tein” under “From,” and “Letter in response to 7/17/08 letter from Villafaña” under “Re”; its rows for 7/22/2008 through 8/13/2008 record no letter or email from Tein, Goldberger, Lefkowitz or Black replying to this office’s July 22, 2008 notice of breach. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00224943 p.41. ↩

12. As recorded on the 2008 Non-Prosecution Agreement page: OPR Executive Summary, p. iii, on Epstein’s release to home detention on July 22, 2009. https://epstein-data.com/DOJ-OGR-00002533 p.5. ↩