Ron Eppinger

Full name	Ronald R. Eppinger1
Occupation	Ran an escort business in Miami, described in the released files as a modeling/escort agency called “Perfect 10”12
Died	Florida; a March 2011 background-check email gives the date as “11.08.2006,” without stating whether that is day-month or month-day order1
Federal case	A June 2022 court filing states he was “prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida and pleaded guilty to charges of alien smuggling for prostitution, interstate travel for prostitution, and money laundering,” citing United States v. Eppinger, No. 00 Cr. 131 (FAM) (S.D. Fla.); a contemporaneous 2001 news report preserved in the released files independently confirms the guilty plea, sentence and fine23
Miami-Dade case	A separate state case was filed June 29, 1999, charging 21 felony counts; the docket printout in Epstein’s files records every count disposed of by nolle prosequi, case closed August 7, 200145
In Epstein’s files	Subject of background-check correspondence between Epstein, his attorney and a private investigator in March 2011, and again in January 20156789

Ronald R. Eppinger, known in the released files as Ron Eppinger, ran an escort business in Miami in the late 1990s that the files describe as operating under the name “Perfect 10.”¹² He was dead by the time these documents were created: a background check Jeffrey Epstein commissioned in March 2011 reported that he had died in Florida in 2006.¹ Nothing in this record is a finding of wrongdoing beyond what a court or the documents below establish, and no response from Eppinger appears anywhere in it: he had already died before any of it was written.

Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell invoked Eppinger’s name repeatedly, in private in 2011 and 2015 and later to federal investigators, to attack the credibility of Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Where a document names her, this page does too; where a document redacts her name (the Department of Justice transcript and a 2022 court filing quoted below both do), this page keeps that redaction and does not fill it in. Her own account of the same episode, set out below beside Epstein’s, is consistent across a memoir and a sworn interview years apart; on the central point, that Eppinger ran a prostitution-trafficking operation, that is what his federal sentencing and a contemporaneous news report, set out below, document; it is not what Epstein’s own investigator turned up, which was limited to an arrest record and a court docket.

The federal prosecution

A sentencing submission that Ghislaine Maxwell’s counsel filed in her own federal criminal case, United States v. Maxwell, No. 20 Cr. 330 (AJN) (S.D.N.Y.), on June 24, 2022, argues in a footnote that a person whose victim-impact statement the government had submitted had not disclosed an earlier history with Eppinger.² The footnote states that this person, before ever meeting Epstein or Maxwell, “lived with Eppinger for approximately 6 months when he ran a front business for international sex trafficking known as the modeling agency ‘Perfect 10’,” and that “he was prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida and pleaded guilty to charges of alien smuggling for prostitution, interstate travel for prostitution, and money laundering,” citing United States v. Eppinger, No. 00 Cr. 131 (FAM) (S.D. Fla.).² The individual’s own name is blacked out throughout this footnote in the released copy.²

This page rests that account partly on Maxwell’s filing, which is an advocate’s characterization made in someone else’s sentencing dispute, not the indictment, plea agreement or judgment itself; this session could not reach a court-records service or PACER to check the docket, the plea or the sentence directly. That limitation is true of web access, not of the record: a contemporaneous news report, preserved in the released files themselves, independently confirms the substance of the federal case. A November 11, 2001 Sun-Sentinel wire item, printed inside an FBI investigative file that also collected press clippings related to the broader Epstein investigation (FBI file no. 31E-MM-108062), reports that “Ronald Eppinger had faced up to 10 years after pleading guilty this month to charges of alien smuggling for prostitution, interstate travel for prostitution and money laundering,” that he was “sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined $6,000 for recruiting Czech women to a prostitution ring with promises of modeling work,” that the women were “brought to the United States illegally from 1997 to 1999,” and that, after he “learned he was under investigation in June 1999 and moved from the United States to the Czech capital of Prague,” he was later “arrested in Germany” and extradited.³ A Miami Herald investigative story, reproduced as an exhibit to an unrelated 2019 federal complaint, separately describes Eppinger as “a 65-year-old sex trafficker” and states that he faced “indictment in 2000 on trafficking charges,” a year consistent with the case number given in Maxwell’s 2022 filing, “00 Cr. 131.”¹⁰

The Miami-Dade case

A Florida criminal-history and court-docket printout that Epstein’s investigator forwarded to him on March 17, 2011 (discussed further below) shows an earlier, separate state prosecution. In a case filed June 29, 1999 in Miami-Dade County, before Judge Bronwyn C. Miller and assigned to the State Attorney’s Office’s Organized Crime trial unit, with Guy Singer recorded as both intake attorney and trial prosecutor, Eppinger was charged with 21 felony counts: four of child abuse without harm, ten of engaging a child in familial sexual activity, six of lewd and lascivious assault on a child, and one of custody interference.⁴⁵ The printout records every one of the 21 counts as disposed of by nolle prosequi, and gives a case-closed date of August 7, 2001.⁵ It does not explain why the case was closed in that way two years after it was filed; one possibility is that federal prosecutors took over the same underlying conduct, since the federal case described above proceeded during the same period, but the record here does not establish that connection directly.

The same printout shows an unrelated 1988 Broward County Sheriff’s Office arrest for dealing in stolen property and four counts of grand larceny, and a separate February 6, 1999 Miami-Dade Police Department arrest for a municipal-ordinance prostitution violation, disposed of April 29, 1999 by a plea of nolo contendere with adjudication withheld.¹¹¹ It also shows a July 23, 2003 Broward County arrest on 21 felony counts of failure to appear, tied to what it calls an “out of county hold”; the printout does not identify which case’s court dates these counts concern.¹¹

Epstein orders a background check, March 2011

On March 10, 2011, Epstein emailed his investigator, William Riley of the Miami firm Riley Kiraly, with a copy to his attorney Martin Weinberg, in a message the release timestamps “10:53 AM” with no time zone given: “i need to totally discredit virgina roberts„ this is for english law claim, her boyfriend was tony figueora„ we need to find him„ when virginia was 15 or 16„ she worked for an older guy who got busted for underage prostitution. she was one of his girls.. he was in miami. you should take instructions from martin weinberg to maintain the privledge.”⁷ “Virgina roberts” is Virginia Roberts Giuffre; the name is not redacted in this email.

Riley replied, in a message also timestamped without a zone: “Let me know what you want me to do as it relates to Roberts - as I have some ideas as well. I will forward all of our reports to you under the privilege.”⁶ Weinberg then wrote to Riley: “Bill - For now, my advice is background investigation only rather than any initiatives that would enable her - or others - to say JE once again is unleashing armies of investigators. Once the background is over we can assess options. MGW”⁶ Epstein replied: “ron eppinger„ was her pimp i beileve in 98 0r 99„ i think he was busted for traffiking, she is totally full of shit.”⁶ Riley answered that he would “look into him and see what I find.”⁶ (The messages quoted above carry clock times with no time zone stated, and the order in which they are nested in the release does not resolve cleanly against those printed times; this page does not assert a precise sequence among them beyond what each message says it is replying to.)

The next message in the same chain carries this exchange’s one explicit, zoned timestamp, “Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:24:13 +0000.” In it, Epstein wrote: “have we found the mother.”⁶ On March 17, Riley sent Epstein and Weinberg, under the subject line “Eppinger,” the criminal-history and court-docket printout described above.¹¹¹⁴⁵ Riley’s covering note read: “The only Eppinger I could find with a 98 or 99 prostitution charge was Ronald R. EPPINGER. He was born [redacted in the source] but he died in Florida on 11.08.2006 … He also had a 1999 arrest as noted below in Miami-Dade County. Seems to fit the guy you might have been looking for - except he is dead.”¹¹¹ Epstein replied that same day, in a message the release timestamps “11:25 AM” with no zone given, reading in full: “Ron Eppinger was [REDACTED] pimp, he went to jail„” (a single word is blacked out in the released copy between “was” and “pimp”). The surrounding exchange concerns Giuffre throughout, but this page does not fill in the word the source itself withholds.¹²

Giuffre’s own account

Epstein called her “totally full of shit”; the record also carries her own account of Eppinger, given more than once, years apart, and largely consistent with what Riley’s background check found.

In a manuscript headed “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club,” filed as a court exhibit in her defamation case, Giuffre wrote that in the summer of 1997, when she was thirteen and living on the street in Miami Beach, a man got out of a limousine and “introduced himself immediately as Ron Eppinger, a businessman and owner of a successful modeling agency, called ‘Perfect 10.’” She wrote that “what he didn’t tell me to begin with was that his modeling agency was only posing for an undercover trade,” and that “his business was really an illegal immigrant trafficking ring of young women mostly consisting of underage girls that he was using as escorts to make him uber rich.”¹³

In a separate telephone interview conducted by Bradley Edwards’s office and later filed as a court exhibit in more than one case, Giuffre said: “A close family friend has sexually abused me, and I was on the streets at 13 years old. I was picked up by a 67 year old man named Ron Eppinger who did exactly what Jeffrey did with me abuse and violate my youthfulness & I was with him for 6 months.” She went on: “Jeffrey actually knew Ron, which was quite weird when I told Jeffrey the story about Ron, and Jeffrey had actually met him.”¹⁴ That claim, that Epstein had already met Eppinger, is hers alone. Nothing in Epstein’s own 2011 or 2015 correspondence, quoted above, confirms or addresses it; there, Eppinger is someone Epstein has his lawyer and investigator research, not someone he says he already knows.

The copy of this interview transcript that this page could render and check at the image level redacts Giuffre’s name throughout, including in its own title. This page names her anyway, under the general rule for a survivor who has come forward publicly, independent of any single copy’s redaction state, and consistent with the rest of this page and with her own wiki entry.¹⁴

The January 2015 emails

Nearly four years later, on January 6, 2015, Maxwell emailed Epstein: “[REDACTED] boyfriend/pimp was Ron eppinger. 67. Have your guy look for his record plae” (a name is blacked out in the released copy at the start of that line; the message ends on that word, as written, in the source; the exchange concerns Giuffre).⁸ Epstein replied, “That’s it.”⁸

On January 18, 2015, Epstein wrote to Weinberg: “now that vr is claiming I need 7 girls a day some as old as 12 … she worked as an escort for ron eppinger in 97 . two women busted with him for traficking hes dead.”⁹ “Vr” is Epstein’s own shorthand for Virginia Roberts, unredacted in this email. This page omits several further sentences in the same email describing Giuffre’s family and personal history, which are not about Eppinger.

Maxwell’s account to the Department of Justice, 2025

On July 24, 2025, Ghislaine Maxwell was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, with Diego Pestana, Acting Associate Deputy Attorney General, FBI Special Agent Spencer Horn, and Deputy U.S. Marshal Mark Beard present for the government, and David Markus, Leah Saffian and Melissa Madrigal for Maxwell.¹⁵ Asked why she believed Epstein’s conduct toward masseuses began around 2000, Maxwell said she believed it began in December 2001, when Epstein met a woman the transcript does not name.¹⁶ She said: “the reason I believe that, so this — she — she was a self-confessed having been sexually abused as a young girl, and was trained — her words I’m quoting now, not mine, in all the arts of whatever that is, the sex program by a man called Ron Eppinger, who was her pimp from when she was 14, I believe, or 15, I don’t know.”¹⁶ The transcript redacts the woman’s name throughout this exchange, including a further redaction of her boyfriend’s surname elsewhere in the same interview.¹⁶ This page does not fill in that redaction.

What this page leaves out

The released files include further material about Giuffre beyond her account of Eppinger: an FBI interview summary describing the same period, further pages of Maxwell’s 2025 interview describing what Maxwell says happened afterward, and material from the 2016-17 trial of Giuffre v. Maxwell about her later psychiatric history. This page does not quote, summarize, or characterize any of that beyond what appears above in Giuffre’s, Epstein’s, Maxwell’s, or Riley’s own words on the specific subject of Eppinger, because more would mean retelling a survivor’s broader account rather than reporting what institutions and the people involved said about Eppinger. That is a limit this page keeps deliberately, not an oversight.

Footnotes

1. William Riley to Jeffrey Epstein and Martin Weinberg, “Eppinger,” Mar 17, 2011, with an attached Florida Department of Law Enforcement criminal-history search. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01159195 p.1 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. Ghislaine Maxwell, sentencing submission by the Law Offices of Bobbi C. Sternheim, United States v. Maxwell, No. 1:20-cr-00330-PAE, Document 672, Jun 24, 2022, pp.5-6 and footnote 2. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02838430 pp.5-6 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. “Prostitution Ring Leader Sentenced To 21 Months,” Sun-Sentinel, Nov 11, 2001 (staff report), printed copy preserved in an FBI investigative file that also collected press clippings related to the broader Epstein investigation (FBI file no. 31E-MM-108062). https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01072646 p.147 ↩ ↩²

4. Same email chain, Miami-Dade County case docket printout. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01159195 p.3 ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. Same email chain, continued. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01159195 p.4 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. William Riley, Martin Weinberg and Jeffrey Epstein email exchange, Mar 10-11, 2011, forwarded under “Re: ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE.” https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00906588 p.1 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

7. Same exchange, originating message, Jeffrey Epstein to William Riley, cc Martin Weinberg, Mar 10, 2011, 10:53 a.m. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00906588 p.2 ↩ ↩²

8. Ghislaine Maxwell to Jeffrey Epstein, Jan 6, 2015. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00867212 p.1 ↩ ↩² ↩³

9. Jeffrey Epstein to Martin Weinberg, Jan 18, 2015. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00866258 ↩ ↩²

10. Julie K. Brown, “Even from jail, Jeffrey Epstein manipulated the system,” Miami Herald, Nov 28, 2018, reproduced as Exhibit 1 to Giuffre v. Dershowitz, No. 1:19-cv-03377 (S.D.N.Y.), Document 1-1. The document is HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017800 p.1. It is in the released corpus and its text was read there, but it is absent from this site’s image store, so no link is given and the quotation could not be checked against the page image as the rest of this page has been. ↩

11. Same email chain, continued. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01159195 p.2 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

12. Jeffrey Epstein to William Riley, Mar 17, 2011, 11:25 a.m. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01159195 p.5 ↩

13. Virginia Giuffre, “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club” (unpublished manuscript), pp.1-2, filed as Exhibit to Document 1090-26, Giuffre v. Maxwell, No. 1:15-cv-07433-LAP (S.D.N.Y.), filed Jul 30, 2020. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02782530 p.2 ↩

14. “Edwards adv. Epstein,” telephone interview, transcript p.4 of 23, filed as an exhibit in Edwards v. Dershowitz, No. CACE 15-000072 (Fla. 17th Cir.); this page rendered and checked this copy at 400dpi, and the interviewee’s name is redacted in the header there. A Notice of Filing in a separate case, Epstein’s own Palm Beach Circuit Court suit against Scott Rothstein, Bradley Edwards and L.M., Case No. 502009CA040800XXXXMBAG (Fla. 15th Cir.), names Virginia Roberts in its extracted text as the subject of the same transcript (stamped HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012103, and duplicates); this page could not render those HOUSE_OVERSIGHT-prefixed copies to check that text at the image level (repeated fetch attempts returned HTTP 403), so it is not relied on for the naming above. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01116468 p.55 ↩ ↩²

15. Interview of Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. Department of Justice, Jul 24, 2025, appearances page. This page rendered and checked EFTA02846943 at the image level. Also filed as https://epstein-data.com/DOJ-OGR-00022393 p.1; this desk could not render that copy locally to check it at the image level (repeated fetch attempts returned HTTP 403), so EFTA02846943 was rendered and checked instead. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02846943 p.1 ↩

16. Same interview, transcript pp.94-95 (PDF sheet 25 of the condensed transcript). https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02846943 p.25. Also filed as https://epstein-data.com/DOJ-OGR-00022393 pp.93-94; this desk could not render that copy locally to check it at the image level (repeated fetch attempts returned HTTP 403), so EFTA02846943 was rendered and checked instead. ↩ ↩² ↩³