Epstein Data Wiki

Operation Stolen Globe

Properties1
tagstopic, usao-sdfl, fbi, grand-jury, obstruction-of-justice, palm-beach, court-records, foia

54 min read

What the name belongs toA U.S. Attorney’s Office file and an FBI investigation opened in the Southern District of Florida in October 2009 into the obstruction of the earlier Epstein investigation by Alfredo Rodriguez12
Who named it, and whenAn Assistant U.S. Attorney in the office, by email of 23 October 2009: “I have come up with a name, ‘Operation Stolen Globe.’”3
U.S. Attorney’s Office fileUSAO number 2009R02690; the office’s own chronology enters “10/29/2009 — Open file and request USAO# (2009R02690, Operation Stolen Globe)“4
Recorded in LIONS as”Operation Stolen Globe”, per the prosecuting attorney’s own answer to a 2016 records request2
FBI case72-MM-113327, captioned “RODRIGUEZ, ALFREDO”; the closing communication gives “Full Investigation Initiated: 10/28/2009”5
Grand juryFGJ 08-1103 (WPB); the subpoena to the cooperating attorney is numbered osg-0016
Offences named on the office’s own form”False Statements to Federal Agent, Obstruction of Justice; Misprision of a Felony”; the crimes listed under investigation are 18 U.S.C. §§ 4, 402, 1001, 1501 and 151278
Authorised at Main JusticeCriminal Division, 5 November 2009, for the attorney subpoena only. The letter carries the printed name “Lanny A. Breuer / Assistant Attorney General” with no ink in the space above it at 400 dpi, and beneath it a solid black box over a second signature block’s printed titles9
FBI file closed20 December 2012, “The defendant/subject in this case has been sentenced and all prosecutorial matters have been resolved”5
Case files shipped to Washington4 March 2025, by FedEx to the Washington Field Office evidence room10

Operation Stolen Globe is the name a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida gave, in an email of 23 October 2009, to the federal investigation of Alfredo Rodriguez, Jeffrey Epstein’s former house manager, who had taken a bound book from the Palm Beach residence and tried to sell it.31 Six days later the office opened a file under it and requested the USAO number 2009R02690.4 The prosecution and sentence that followed are set out at Alfredo Rodriguez; this page is about the operation as an institutional object: how it was named and numbered, what authority the office sought before it could subpoena, what its grand jury was used for after the defendant pleaded, where its paper went, and what the office decided years later about the recording it made.

The investigation it grew out of is at Operation Leap Year. The office’s own prosecution memorandum states the relation in one line: “this investigation arises from obstruction of the Operation Leap Year investigation.”1

What this page withholds. The only people it identifies in its own voice are Alfredo Rodriguez and Jeffrey Epstein, and the two officials whose decisions it reports, Acting United States Attorney Jeffrey H. Sloman and Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer. Judges, court officers and others named on the face of court papers, correspondence and file titles are given as those papers give them. Every other person in this record (the Assistant U.S. Attorney who named and ran the operation, the FBI agents, the divisional chiefs to whom the memorandum was addressed, the office’s records staff) is left unnamed here, because this page does not complete an identification the producing party withheld. The attorney whose cooperation opened the case is a cooperating witness by the document’s own description, and this desk does not name cooperating witnesses: neither his name nor his firm’s is reproduced here, and nor is anything about his client. No telephone number, fax number, tracking number or other identifier appearing in these documents is reproduced.

The name, and the file it opened

The name was invented before there was a file to put it on. On Friday 23 October 2009, under the subject line “Meeting next week”, an Assistant U.S. Attorney writing from the office’s West Palm Beach address told a correspondent whose name is blacked out: “Still waiting to hear from the witnesses. I have come up with a name, ‘Operation Stolen Globe.’ Can you send me your file number as soon as you have a file open so I can open up our file?”3 The message header carries an explicit +0000 offset, so its 20:23 is 4:23 in the afternoon Eastern daylight time.3

Four days later the paperwork had still not caught up. On Tuesday 27 October, under the subject line “Op Stolen Globe”, the same signature block asks: “Were you able to open this file? I need to issue a few grand jury subpoenas today.”11 The reply, five minutes later, reports that someone “was awesome and did all the paperwork, however we still don’t have the required agency file number.”11 This thread is one of the release’s clean two-clock pairs: the reply’s own header reads Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:11:05 +0000 and the message it quotes is stamped “Tuesday, October 27, 2009 3:06 PM” by the sending client, which fixes the offset at four hours and the times as Eastern daylight time.11

The office’s own file was opened two days after that. The 51-page “EPSTEIN INVESTIGATION TIMELINE” compiled as Exhibit A-1 to an Assistant U.S. Attorney’s 2019 written response to the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a subject attorney’s document rather than the office’s and described at EFTA00224943, carries one row for the operation and no more. Its To and From columns are empty and its Exhibit # column is blank; the entry reads, in full: “Open file and request USAO# (2009R02690, Operation Stolen Globe)”, against the date 10/29/2009.4 The next row in that chronology jumps to 9 December 2009.4

That the number and the name belong together is confirmed more than six years later by the attorney who prosecuted the case, answering an office-wide records enquiry on 16 March 2016: “The Alfredo Rodriguez case that I prosecuted was 10-80015-Cr-Marra. It was opened in LIONS as Operation Stolen Globe.”2

The FBI’s parallel file is 72-MM-113327, captioned “RODRIGUEZ, ALFREDO”. Its closing communication records “Full Investigation Initiated: 10/28/2009”, which is the day before the office’s file number was requested and the day the prosecution memorandum below is dated.5

The prosecution memorandum of 28 October 2009

The memorandum survives inside a twenty-eight-page run whose other pages are ordinary criminal-case papers in United States v. Alfredo Rodriguez, No. 10-80015-CR-Marra/Hopkins: a status-conference order and a standing discovery order of February 2010, and two copies of the January 2010 Information, certificate of trial attorney, penalty sheet and waiver of indictment.1213 The memorandum, the Departmental request form, the subpoena and the authorising letter occupy its last ten pages.

The memorandum is on Department of Justice memorandum letterhead. Its subject line reads “Prosecution Memorandum / In re Operation Stolen Globe: Request to Issue Subpoena to Cooperating Attorney”, it is dated October 28, 2009, and its “To” block is a five-name list of which only the first survives: “Jeffrey Sloman / Acting U.S. Attorney”, followed by four blacked-out names against the titles “Acting First Assistant U.S. Attorney”, “Acting Chief, Criminal Division”, “Deputy Chief, Criminal Division”, and a fifth whose title is itself broken by a further black box between “Chief,” and “Northern Division”. A second title is broken in the same way: on the third of those lines the printed text stops inside the word “Chief” and a solid black box begins at that point, running to the right and down past the line below it, with the rest of the title, “Criminal Division”, clear beneath. The “From” field is a solid black box above the words “Assistant U.S. Attorney”. Handwritten marks sit beside the “From” box and beside two of the redacted recipient lines; at 400 dpi one of them is blue and the others render dark grey. What they are, the page does not say.1

The request is narrow and the memorandum says so. It seeks permission to issue a grand jury subpoena to an attorney for three categories of record, and records that the attorney is willing to hand them over anyway: “For liability reasons, his firm prefers that we issue a subpoena. Likewise, I would prefer to proceed by subpoena to maintain the formality and secrecy of the grand jury procedures.”1

Under the heading “Background of the Investigation” the memorandum sets out the office’s own account of how the case arose. “As I have previously discussed with some of you, this investigation arises from obstruction of the Operation Leap Year investigation.” Rodriguez “was considered a significant witness in that investigation”; he “had been employed by the target of the Operation Leap Year investigation and had worked in the home in Palm Beach where the criminal sexual activity had taken place”; he “admitted seeing underage girls in the home, paying money to them, and delivering flowers to girls at one of the local high schools”; he “was interviewed by the Palm Beach Police Department and was asked to produce documents” and “turned over some documents”; and, when the case was adopted federally, “he was interviewed again by the FBI in January 2007. He was cooperative with the agents and was not, therefore, subpoenaed to the grand jury.”1

The next page states, as the office’s own summary of why the earlier case ended as it did: “As you all know, the Operation Leap Year investigation ended with the Non-Prosecution Agreement between Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. No federal charges were filed against Epstein or any of his co-conspirators. While there were a multitude of reasons for that decision, one sentiment was that federal nexus was not as strong as it normally is because there was no evidence of e-mail contact or interstate travel by victims.”14 That sentence is the hinge of the memorandum: what Rodriguez was said to be holding went to precisely that gap. He was reported to have claimed “a list of more than 500 names of young girls who had been to Epstein’s houses in Palm Beach, New York, Paris, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands” and to have “claimed to have emails and evidence that the girls had been transported interstate by Epstein”. The memorandum’s own conclusion follows immediately: “If Rodriguez does have this evidence, it would have been relevant and highly material to the Operation Leap Year grand jury investigation.”14 A footnote on the same page carries the author’s own caveat on that comparison: “From the description, it appears that he disclosed far more during the deposition than he did to the Palm Beach Police and the FBI, but I cannot make that determination without reviewing the actual deposition.”14 The non-prosecution agreement is covered separately.

The memorandum gives the deposition dates as “July 29 and August 7, 2009”, which is a fourth set of dates for that series of sessions; the FBI affidavit filed with the criminal complaint gives 27 July and 9 August 2009, the transcript in the release is dated 7 August 2009, and a later filing gives 29 July 2009.14 The page does not resolve them.

It also records what the office told the attorney when he first raised the matter as a hypothetical in mid-August 2009: “I told him that, if the witness really had withheld that information, it was obstruction of justice and we would want to do an undercover operation to obtain the evidence and prosecute him for obstruction.” The attorney “said that he would think about it and get back to me, but I never heard any more”, and came back on 22 October.15 On the day the memorandum was written, the operation had already begun: “FBI agents who were not involved in Operation Leap Year and I met with [the attorney], his investigator, and another attorney from their firm and did a debriefing. Today, [the attorney] made a controlled call to the target and introduced the undercover agent.”15

The subpoena sought three things: the subpoena duces tecum served on Rodriguez in the civil case; “the videotape of the deposition, transcript, and documents produced in response to the subpoena”; and the email correspondence between the attorney and Rodriguez.15 The stated purposes are evidentiary and defensive: the first two “to determine what was asked for and received and to see whether Rodriguez made statements contrary to what he told federal agents”, and the correspondence “to see the beginning of the contact … and to defeat any claim of ‘entrapment.’”16 The memorandum then works through privilege category by category and closes: “For the foregoing reasons, I recommend the issuance of the attached subpoena.”16

The request to Main Justice, and Breuer’s authorisation

Subpoenaing an attorney required Departmental approval, and the run carries the form for it. Pages 23 to 26 are the “Resource Manual No. 264 Form — Request for Authorization To Issue A Subpoena To An Attorney for Information Relating To Representation of a Client”, addressed to the Criminal Division at 1301 New York Ave, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, with both the sender and the addressee names blacked out.7

The attorney witness’s name is not reproduced here. The form carries a note in bold capitals: “PLEASE NOTE: THE ATTORNEY IS COOPERATING WITH THE AUTHORITIES IN INVESTIGATING A CRIME THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE A CLIENT AND HE IS WILLING TO PRODUCE THE REQUESTED ITEMS. HIS FIRM HAS REQUESTED THAT WE PROCEED VIA SUBPOENA.”7 It gives the district as the Southern District of Florida, the date by which the subpoena was needed as “October 30, 2009”, the nature of the subpoena as Grand Jury, the name of the case or investigation as “Operation Stolen Globe”, and the nature of the case as “False Statements to Federal Agent, Obstruction of Justice; Misprision of a Felony”.7

Item 8, “Relationship of attorney witness to subjects or defendants or targets”, is answered “None.”8 Item 10, the summary of the case, sets out the plan in the present tense, “We are arranging to make controlled calls with the target and plan to do a meeting to do an undercover ‘purchase’ of this evidence”, and lists the crimes under investigation as “18 U.S.C. §§ 4, 402, 1001, 1501, and 1512.”8 Item 14 explains why the office had not gone to alternative sources: the other holders of the deposition papers “would be other attorneys in the same set of civil lawsuits”, and “disclosure to them could compromise the undercover operation”; as for the target’s own copy, “providing him with a subpoena would inform him that he is the subject of an investigation and disclose the undercover operation.”17 Item 15 records that the firm’s own concern was liability: “The attorney’s firm is concerned about liability issues and feels that the most prudent approach is to produce the documents in response to a subpoena.”18

The subpoena itself is page 27 of the run: an AO 110 grand jury subpoena from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, headed **FGJ 08-1103(WPB) osg-001, returnable in the grand jury room at 701 Clematis Street, West Palm Beach at 10:30 a.m. on 5 November 2009, signed by a deputy clerk over the court’s seal and dated 10/22/2009. It commands production of every civil subpoena duces tecum issued to Alfredo Rodriguez in any civil suit against Jeffrey Epstein in that court, all recordings and transcripts of his depositions in such suits, all documents he produced in response, and all correspondence between the attorney and Rodriguez. The Assistant U.S. Attorney’s name is blacked out in the issuing block; the office address, 500 South Australian Avenue, Suite 400, West Palm Beach, is not.6

The authorisation came from Washington on the return date itself. Page 28 is a letter on Criminal Division letterhead, date-stamped NOV - 5 2009 and transmitted by fax at 14:24 that afternoon, addressed to “Jeffrey H. Sloman / Acting United States Attorney / Southern District of Florida” with an “Attention:” line blacked out above the words “Assistant United States Attorney”. Its subject line names the subpoena. The operative sentence is one: “I received your request to issue the above-referenced subpoena related to Operation Stolen Globe. After review, I authorize you to issue the subpoena as set out in your request in this matter and in any further proceedings resulting therefrom or ancillary thereto as outlined in U.S.A.M. 9-13-410.” Below “Sincerely,” the printed name reads “Lanny A. Breuer / Assistant Attorney General”; no ink signature is visible in the space above it at 400 dpi. Beneath that sits a second block: a solid black box over the printed titles “Deputy Assistant Attorney General / Criminal Division”.9

So the sequence on the face of the papers is: subpoena dated by the clerk 22 October, memorandum to the U.S. Attorney 28 October, Departmental form asking for authority by 30 October, undercover purchase 3 November, subpoena returnable 5 November, and Main Justice’s written authorisation issued on 5 November.6179

After the purchase: December 2009 and the question of a new Epstein investigation

The undercover purchase from Rodriguez took place on 3 November 2009 and is set out at Alfredo Rodriguez. On the evening of the next day a three-message exchange ran under the subject line “Op stolen globe”, every correspondent blacked out, opening “I have seen the Holy Grail. Can we talk tomorrow morning?” “Holy Grail” is the phrase the memorandum attributes to Rodriguez himself for what he was selling.1914

A month later the operation had produced a question larger than itself. On 3 December 2009 an email headed “Op Stolen Globe Meeting” told an FBI correspondent that “The First Assistant ([redacted]), the Criminal Chief ([redacted]), the head of the Child Exploitation Section ([redacted]), and I are meeting on Thursday, December 17th at 10:30 at the USAO in Miami to discuss Op Stolen Globe and how we will handle a potential new investigation against Jeffrey Epstein or others. We would like to have FBI present for the meeting. I don’t know if you want the SAC to attend, or your ASAC, or whomever, but certainly whichever agent(s) would be potentially handling such an investigation should be there.”20 The writer adds: “I am still in South Carolina and then will be in Colombia, back in West Palm Beach on the 9th. Please just let me know whom to expect so I can let the bosses know.”20 A forwarded copy of the same message in a second run stamps it “Thu Dec 03 12:44:32 2009” in local time against the production header’s 17:44:32 UTC, fixing the offset at five hours and the time as Eastern standard time.21

On 16 December an email under the subject “Are you in the office tomorrow?” records: “We are having a conference call about ‘Op Stolen Globe’ at 1:00.”22 What was decided at either the call or the 17 December meeting, the release as searched here does not show; the searches run are set out at the foot of this page.

January to March 2010: the charge, the press, other districts, and telephone records

On 26 January 2010 the operation’s papers went up the office. An email attaching Stolen_Globe_Information.pdf reads: “here is the draft information. I am going to submit the packet to my superiors tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any concerns. The plea agreement will follow shortly.”23 The Information charging Rodriguez under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) was filed on 29 January 2010 and is reproduced twice in the same run as the prosecution memorandum.13

The same morning the case reached the newspapers, and the office noticed: at 10:20 a.m. Eastern on 26 January an email headed “Press Coverage re Op Stolen Globe/Epstein” circulated a Palm Beach Post article and, in the same message, asked a recipient “Can we set up the meeting with the AUSAs in California and New Mexico some time soon?”; a week later a second article went round the same list, with the body “Just FYI.”2425

The request for a meeting with prosecutors in other districts drew a reply on 28 January whose sender the production withholds. It names recommended Assistant U.S. Attorneys for “LA” and “New Mexico”, both blacked out, and asks “What about New York, [redacted]? Have they been approached? What district?” It continues: “As we’ve discussed, I think they AUSAs will want as much information from [redacted] as they can get – on all aspects of the case. I’m not sure whether an individual or group approach is best, but I leave that decision to USAFLS. We are happy to facilitate and participate in any phone meetings that are called, but, as I said at our meeting, we can’t get involved substantively in the investigation.”26 Whose office the writer spoke for, the page does not establish; the production redacts every header field.

Two months after that, and three months before Rodriguez was sentenced, the office was proposing to work Epstein’s telephone traffic through the operation. On 22 March 2010 the Assistant U.S. Attorney forwarded an FBI message of 12 March listing telephone numbers and their carriers, with a spreadsheet attachment, and asked: “Can you prepare grand jury subpoenas in the Operation Stolen Globe matter for these numbers?”27 The release contains subpoenas of exactly that kind issued from the same grand jury on the same day: one, dated by the deputy clerk 3/22/2010 and returnable 8 April 2010, commanded a cellular carrier’s custodian of records to produce subscriber, detailed billing and payment information for a single telephone number over 2004 to 2006, which this page does not reproduce.28

This page does not assert that those telephone subpoenas were Stolen Globe subpoenas, and the numbering is the reason. The attorney subpoena carries the control number #OSG-001 under grand jury FGJ 08-1103, read at 400 dpi on a clean scan. The telephone subpoenas and their custodian certifications, under the same grand jury, carry numbers of the form 067-001 (AT&T), 067-002 (YMAX Communication), 067-003 and 067-013 (Verizon Wireless) and 067-009 (Verizon California). Only one of those is on an undamaged scan, the AT&T certification, and there the three characters before the hyphen were enlarged at 400 dpi and read as the digits 0, 6 and 7, in the same forms as the digits of 08-1103 on the same line.293028 What connects them to this operation is the email above, the date, the grand jury and the subject matter, not the number.

The operation’s paper

Two undated inventories headed “EPSTEIN BOX INVENTORY” list the office’s boxed files. They are indexes: each names a folder and, sometimes, what was inside it, and they are evidence that a file existed under a given title, not evidence of what the instrument inside it said. The two are not the same list: they use different box labels, they are redacted to different standards, and they do not carry the same entries.

The version whose boxes are numbered lists, under Box 8, in this order: “Green file folder with Grand Jury Subpoena Log – Operation Stolen Globe”; a 12/19/07 letter marked “to be produced after stay is lifted”; “2009R02690 Criminal Complaint folder for Op. Stolen Globe”; an “Empty redwell – Additions to Items to be Produced after stay is lifted from privileged items”; “Op Stolen Globe (redwell)”; and, in the same box, “4/29/2008 Grand Jury Presentation for Operation Leap Year with Indictment” and an “OLY cd”.31 The two operations’ papers were boxed together.

The version whose boxes are lettered lists Box H with the Stolen Globe subpoena log, the Op Stolen Globe redwell and the Leap Year grand jury presentation, but not the 2009R02690 criminal complaint folder and not the empty redwell; it adds eight items the numbered version does not carry, including a 10/21/2009 letter, a 12/9/2009 letter, an “Epstein redwell with correspondence” and an “Index of Victim Notification Letters”.32 Its Box M lists a “Redwell – Stolen Globe folder with draft indictment and documents from case; copies of phone number lists; copies of case law; green folder with attorney notes”, beside an “Operation Leap Year composition book with notes”.33 Rodriguez was charged by complaint and then by Information on his waiver of indictment, so what the drafted indictment was for, and whether it was ever presented, the index does not say and this page does not infer.

The FBI’s own materials carry the name too. The itemised list of what FBI Miami shipped to Washington in March 2025 records, inside a red wallet in the 72-MM-113327 case file, a “Loose Document File with sticky labeled Disco Conf: Stolen Globe on Disco ‘Original’”, among manila folders labelled “Cell data”, “Phone subscriber info”, “Plea agreement”, “FD-302” and “Phonebook/ handwritten Docs”.34

The operation’s FBI case agent is identified by role, in a list of Bureau personnel connected with the Epstein matter, in the 58-page written statement an Assistant U.S. Attorney gave the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility in 2019. The entry blacks out the agent’s name on both of its occurrences and records that the person it names “was the case agent on Operation Stolen Globe, which involved the investigation of Alfredo Rodriguez (Jeffrey Epstein’s butler), who tried to sell evidence to” the attorney.35 That statement is a subject attorney’s own defence document in an inquiry into that attorney’s conduct, and its account of who did what is the attorney’s own.

2016: the records request, the boxes, and the recording

Two separate things happened to the file in 2016, six weeks apart, and both are institutional decisions.

On 16 March 2016 the office circulated a message to the whole district, addressed “To: USAFLS-ALL”, reading: “A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has been made for records regarding Alfredo Rodriguez, (date of death: December 28, 2014)”, with a link to an article about him on the Mirror’s website, an instruction to make contact “if you are in possession of any documents, files, e-mails, or electronic records”, and, in bold, “Please do not destroy or purge any records related to Alfredo Rodriguez.”36 Within twenty minutes the attorney who had prosecuted the case answered with the case number and the operation’s name.2 A reply the same day identified the requester, “the requesting party is a news site by the name of MuckRock”, and reported a problem: “The case that you prosecuted in 2010, appears complete in LIONS but not in the close file room. Do you have this file or know where it may be?”37

The file was found four and a half months later. On 4 August 2016 a member of the office wrote: “I looked through 27 boxes and finally found the stuff. Do you want me to send you the originals or copies? It is about ½ a box.” The next paragraph is a caution about what was in it: “The information contains the identification of numerous minor sex trafficking victims so please advise how it will be reviewed and stored.”38 Between March and August the chain records two chasers, one on 6 June, “I don’t think I have received this file, please let me know the status”, and one on 2 August: “EOUSA is requesting a status update, please let me know the status.”38

The second decision concerned the tape. On 27 April 2016 at 5:19 p.m. Eastern daylight time the Assistant U.S. Attorney wrote to two FBI correspondents under the subject “Inquiry regarding an old case”:

We are trying to settle the “Jane Doe” litigation and the attorneys in the case are trying to get a copy of the undercover recording in “Operation Stolen Globe,” which was the investigation of Epstein’s former butler (Alfredo Rodriguez) who tried to sell the piece of evidence that he stole from Epstein’s house. I explained that we can’t turn over that evidence; the attorney would have to make a FOIA request to the FBI; but I agreed to find out whether the tape still exists. Can you find out whether FBI still has custody of the tape? If you do have it, please maintain it until a FOIA request is made and FOIA counsel can determine whether or not it needs to be produced.39

The 5:19 p.m. is Eastern daylight time, fixed by the arithmetic between the message’s own +0000 header and the client stamp on the copy quoted in the reply chain, whose “(GMT-05:00)” label names the base zone rather than the offset in force that day.3940 Twenty minutes later an FBI correspondent answered: “I will check with ELSUR tomorrow to see if we are still in custody of the recording.”39

The answer came the next morning, at 10:33 a.m. Eastern: “It looks like Miami is still maintaining the recordings. On a side note Alfredo died in Dec. 2015.”40 Two minutes later the Assistant U.S. Attorney replied: “Thank you. Yes, I know he died. That is one of the reasons why they want the recording. I will pass the info along.”40 The death date in the Bureau’s message is a year later than the one the office’s own records notice had circulated six weeks earlier, which gives 28 December 2014; the reply does not correct it.3640 The 2014 date is the one the live page Alfredo Rodriguez carries, from a Palm Beach Post report preserved in the release.

The office’s position, on the face of these messages, was that it would not hand the recording to civil litigants, that the route was a Freedom of Information Act request to the Bureau, and that the Bureau should preserve the tape until FOIA counsel had ruled on it.39 What became of the recording after that, these documents do not say.

Closing, and the 2025 transfer

The FBI closed its file on 20 December 2012. The closing electronic communication, serial 62 of case 72-MM-113327, gives as its Details, in full: “Request captioned case be closed. The defendant/subject in this case has been sentenced and all prosecutorial matters have been resolved. Request case be closed.” Its separate Synopsis field repeats the first of those three sentences. Its contact, approving and drafting names are blacked out.5

Twelve years later the paper moved. Serial 64, dated 7 March 2025, records that “On 3/4/2025, the items were shipped via Fedex to the Washington Field Office Evidence room”, enclosing an itemised list of files and a FedEx tracking receipt. The tracking number is not reproduced here.10 The itemised list is the one that names the Stolen Globe disc.34

What this page does not establish

  • What was decided at the December 2009 meeting and conference call. The 3 December email says the meeting was to discuss “a potential new investigation against Jeffrey Epstein or others”; the 16 December email records a conference call at 1:00. Searching pages_fts for the exact phrases "Operation Stolen Globe", "Stolen Globe" and "2009R02690" returns fifteen, forty and three pages respectively; every one was opened, and none reports an outcome. Four further probes were run against the same index for shapes the extraction might have broken: "Operation Stolen", which adds only pages about an unrelated Homeland Security operation; "Stolen Globe grand jury", which returns nothing; "OSG-001", which returns nothing, the text layer rendering that string as #0SG-001 and #08G-001 on the two copies of the subpoena; and "08-1103", the grand jury number, which returns twenty-two pages. Of those twenty-two, twelve bear a subpoena control number, and six of the twelve are cited above; the other six are the certification matching a cited subpoena, three further copies of certifications already cited, the second copy of the attorney subpoena mentioned above, and one certification bearing a control number in the same series that the list above does not carry. Four are pages of two AT&T California returns of April 2010 to the FBI in West Palm Beach citing “CASE NUMBER: 08-1103” and a control number of AT&T’s own, with no subpoena control number on the face of the covering sheet.41 Five are pages of an iMessage extraction on which the string is not a case number at all but a date and a time, “2018-08-11 03:16:15”, closed up by the extraction into “2018-08-1103:16:15”. The twenty-second is a page of call detail from a telephone bill, where a date and a clock time run together in the same way. That is a statement about those seven searches, not about the release.
  • Whether the March 2010 telephone subpoenas belong to this operation. The numbering says they belong to a different series; the email, the date and the grand jury point the other way. Both are set out above and neither is resolved here.
  • The identity of the attorney’s client. Nothing about that person appears on this page.
  • What became of the undercover recording after April 2016.
  • The grand jury subpoena log itself. Both box inventories list a “Grand Jury Subpoena Log – Operation Stolen Globe” as a physical green file folder. The log is not among the documents found by the searches above, so the series’ length and its other recipients are unknown here. For the comparable Leap Year log, which is in the release, see Operation Leap Year.

Footnotes

  1. Prosecution Memorandum, subject “Prosecution Memorandum / In re Operation Stolen Globe: Request to Issue Subpoena to Cooperating Attorney”, dated October 28, 2009, EFTA00179447, p. 19. Addressed at the image to “Jeffrey Sloman / Acting U.S. Attorney”, followed by four solid black boxes against the titles “Acting First Assistant U.S. Attorney”, ”, Acting Chie[f] … Criminal Division”, ”, Deputy Chief[,] Criminal Division” and ”, Chief[,] … Northern Division”; on the third of those lines the printed text stops inside the word “Chief” and a solid black box begins there, measuring 794 by 419 pixels at 600 dpi against a line pitch of 144 to 150 pixels in that block, its top edge just below the preceding line and its foot below the line that carries “Criminal Division”; the “From” field is a solid black box above “Assistant U.S. Attorney”. Handwritten marks are visible beside the From box and beside two of the redacted recipient lines; at 400 dpi one is blue and the others render dark grey, and at 600 dpi the blue one is partly visible at the left edge of that box, where a strip along the edge yields 2,294 colour-bearing pixels averaging RGB (87, 102, 167) against zero colour-bearing pixels in the printed text of the same block. Quoted: “For liability reasons, his firm prefers that we issue a subpoena. Likewise, I would prefer to proceed by subpoena to maintain the formality and secrecy of the grand jury procedures.”; “As I have previously discussed with some of you, this investigation arises from obstruction of the Operation Leap Year investigation.”; “was considered a significant witness in that investigation”; “had been employed by the target of the Operation Leap Year investigation and had worked in the home in Palm Beach where the criminal sexual activity had taken place”; “admitted seeing underage girls in the home, paying money to them, and delivering flowers to girls at one of the local high schools”; “was interviewed by the Palm Beach Police Department and was asked to produce documents”; “turned over some documents”; “he was interviewed again by the FBI in January 2007. He was cooperative with the agents and was not, therefore, subpoenaed to the grand jury.” The attorney witness’s name is not reproduced here. Read from the page image at 400 dpi, and at 600 dpi for the broken title and the marks. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  2. Email of Wednesday, March 16, 2016 11:23 AM, quoted in the chain at EFTA00211150, p. 2: “The Alfredo Rodriguez case that I prosecuted was 10-80015-Cr-Marra. It was opened in LIONS as Operation Stolen Globe.”; and “I have a recollection that Mr. Rodriguez was also prosecuted by the Miami office ([redacted]) on a firearms charge.” The sender’s name is blacked out where the message begins. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Email, subject “Meeting next week”, header Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:23:08 +0000, EFTA00212671, p. 1: “Still waiting to hear from the witnesses. I have come up with a name, “Operation Stolen Globe.” Can you send me your file number as soon as you have a file open so I can open up our file?” The header fields and every name in the message are redacted; the signature gives the office as “Assistant U.S. Attorney / 500 S. Australian Ave, Suite 400 / West Palm Beach, FL 33401”. The explicit +0000 offset, against Eastern daylight time four hours behind, is how the 4:23 p.m. Eastern reading in the body text is derived. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. “EPSTEIN INVESTIGATION TIMELINE”, EFTA00224943, p. 49, last row: date “10/29/2009”, To and From columns empty, “Re:” reading “Open file and request USAO# (2009R02690, Operation Stolen Globe)”, Exhibit # column empty. Page footer: “Privileged Confidential / Page 49 of 51 / Contains 6(e) Material”. The row immediately above it is dated 10/21/2009 and the first row of the following page is dated 12/9/2009. This exhibit is a compiled chronology attached to a subject attorney’s written response in a professional-responsibility inquiry, not a U.S. Attorney’s Office record; see the document page. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. FBI Electronic Communication, FD-1057, “(U) Closing EC”, 12/20/2012, case ID 72-MM-113327, “(U) RODRIGUEZ, ALFREDO - SEE SUB”, EFTA00129637, p. 1: “Full Investigation Initiated: 10/28/2009”; “Request captioned case be closed. The defendant/subject in this case has been sentenced and all prosecutorial matters have been resolved. Request case be closed.” The Contact, Approved By and Drafted By fields are blacked out. The page header stamp reads “72-MM-113327 Serial 62”. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  6. “Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury”, form AO 110 (Rev. 04/07), United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, headed “FGJ 08-1103(WPB) osg-001”, EFTA00179447, p. 27. Place: “United States District Court / 701 Clematis Street / West Palm Beach, Florida 33401”; courtroom “Grand Jury Room”; date and time “11/5/2009 10:30 am”. The four commanded categories are: “All subpoenas duces tecum issued by any party to Alfredo Rodriguez in connection with any civil suit pending against Jeffrey Epstein in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”; “All recordings of the deposition(s) of Alfredo Rodriguez … including transcripts, videorecordings, and audiorecordings.”; “All documents produced by Alfredo Rodriguez in response to all subpoenas duces tecum or other verbal or written requests …”; and a fourth calling for all email or other correspondence between the attorney and Rodriguez. Signed by a deputy clerk in ink over the court’s seal and dated “10/22/2009”. Neither the addressee block nor the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s name is reproduced here; the office address “500 South Australian Avenue, Suite 400 / West Palm Beach, Florida 33401-6235” is given as it appears. The “#OSG-001” reading was taken at 400 dpi. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. “Resource Manual No. 264 Form — Request for Authorization To Issue A Subpoena To An Attorney for Information Relating To Representation of a Client”, EFTA00179447, p. 23. The To and From name lines and both telephone and fax lines are blacked out; the visible address is “Criminal Division / 1301 New York Ave, N.W. / Washington, D.C. 20005” and the From block shows “Southern District of Florida” beneath a black box. Neither the attorney witness’s name nor his firm’s is reproduced here. Item 1 is followed by: “PLEASE NOTE: THE ATTORNEY IS COOPERATING WITH THE AUTHORITIES IN INVESTIGATING A CRIME THAT DOES NOT INVOLVE A CLIENT AND HE IS WILLING TO PRODUCE THE REQUESTED ITEMS. HIS FIRM HAS REQUESTED THAT WE PROCEED VIA SUBPOENA.” Items 2 to 6 read “Southern District of Florida”; “October 30, 2009”; ”( ) Trial (X) Grand Jury”; “Operation Stolen Globe”; “False Statements to Federal Agent, Obstruction of Justice; Misprision of a Felony”, marked “(X) Criminal”. Nothing on the form concerning the attorney’s client is reproduced here. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  8. Same form, EFTA00179447, p. 24, printed “2”: item 8, “Relationship of attorney witness to subjects or defendants or targets”, answered “None.”; item 10, “The investigation arose from the tip received from the attorney. We are arranging to make controlled calls with the target and plan to do a meeting to do an undercover “purchase” of this evidence.”; “The target never produced this information to law enforcement. The information also was called for by the federal civil subpoena duces tecum and was not produced. Crimes under investigation are 18 U.S.C. §§ 4, 402, 1001, 1501, and 1512.” Matter on the same page concerning the attorney’s client is not reproduced here. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Letter, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, Office of the Assistant Attorney General, Washington, D.C. 20530, date-stamped “NOV - 5 2009”, EFTA00179447, p. 28: addressed “Jeffrey H. Sloman / Acting United States Attorney / Southern District of Florida / Miami, Florida 33132”; “Attention:” followed by a solid black box above “Assistant United States Attorney”; a “Re:” line, which is not reproduced here; “I received your request to issue the above-referenced subpoena related to Operation Stolen Globe. After review, I authorize you to issue the subpoena as set out in your request in this matter and in any further proceedings resulting therefrom or ancillary thereto as outlined in U.S.A.M. 9-13-410.” Below “Sincerely,” the printed name “Lanny A. Breuer / Assistant Attorney General”; the space above that printed name shows no ink at 400 dpi. Beneath it a solid black box sits above the printed titles “Deputy Assistant Attorney General / Criminal Division”. The sheet carries a fax header dated NOV-05-2009 at 14:24 from “CRM DIV KEENEY”; the fax number in that header is not reproduced. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  10. FBI Electronic Communication, FD-1057, “(U) Transfer of case files”, 03/07/2025, case ID 72-MM-113327, EFTA00129637, p. 4: “The purpose of this electronic communication is to document the transfer of case files in the captioned investigation, to include 1A files. On 3/4/2025, the items were shipped via Fedex to the Washington Field Office Evidence room.” Enclosures listed as “(U) Itemized list of files” and “(U) FEDEX Tracking”. Header stamp “72-MM-113327 Serial 64”. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2

  11. Email chain, subject “Op Stolen Globe” / “RE: Op Stolen Globe”, EFTA00212008, p. 1. The reply’s own header reads Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:11:05 +0000 and its text is “[redacted] was awesome and did all the paperwork, however we still don’t have the required agency file number. Thanks.”; the message it quotes is stamped by the sending client “Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 3:06 PM” and reads “Were you able to open this file? I need to issue a few grand jury subpoenas today.” The arithmetic between those two stamps fixes the offset at four hours and the zone as Eastern daylight time. The header fields are redacted. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  12. “Order Re: Status Conference, Speedy Trial and Pretrial Matters”, United States of America v. Alfredo Rodriguez, Case No. 10-80015-CR-Marra/Hopkins (S.D. Fla.), dated at West Palm Beach 1 February 2010 over the printed name “ANN E. VITUNAC / UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE”, EFTA00179447, pp. 1-3; the Standing Discovery Order in the same case begins at p. 5. Cited only to establish what the twenty-eight-page run consists of. ↩

  13. Information, United States of America v. Alfredo Rodriguez, No. 9:10-cr-80015-KAM (S.D. Fla.), Document 15, entered on the FLSD docket 01/29/2010, EFTA00179447, p. 10, charging that “From at least as early as January 18, 2007, through on or about November 3, 2009 … the defendant, ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ, did corruptly conceal a record, document, or other object, with the intent to impair the object’s availability for use in an official proceeding, that is proceedings before a federal grand jury”. The same four-page filing — Information, certificate of trial attorney, penalty sheet and waiver of indictment — is reproduced twice in this run, at pp. 10-13 and pp. 14-17, with a third copy of the waiver at p. 18. ↩ ↩2

  14. Same memorandum, EFTA00179447, p. 20, printed “-2-”: “As you all know, the Operation Leap Year investigation ended with the Non-Prosecution Agreement between Jeffrey Epstein and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. No federal charges were filed against Epstein or any of his co-conspirators. While there were a multitude of reasons for that decision, one sentiment was that federal nexus was not as strong as it normally is because there was no evidence of e-mail contact or interstate travel by victims.”; “Rodriguez appeared for deposition and produced documents as an unrepresented party on July 29 and August 7, 2009.”; “he had the “holy grail” of information regarding all of the sexual activity that Epstein had been engaging in”; “Rodriguez claimed to have a list of more than 500 names of young girls who had been to Epstein’s houses in Palm Beach, New York, Paris, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands. Rodriguez also claimed to have emails and evidence that the girls had been transported interstate by Epstein. If Rodriguez does have this evidence, it would have been relevant and highly material to the Operation Leap Year grand jury investigation.” Also on that page, in a footnote: “From the description, it appears that he disclosed far more during the deposition than he did to the Palm Beach Police and the FBI, but I cannot make that determination without reviewing the actual deposition.” The page’s other two footnotes are not reproduced here. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  15. Same memorandum, EFTA00179447, p. 21, printed “-3-”: “I told him that, if the witness really had withheld that information, it was obstruction of justice and we would want to do an undercover operation to obtain the evidence and prosecute him for obstruction.”; “said that he would think about it and get back to me, but I never heard any more.”; “On October 22nd, I heard again from” the attorney; “FBI agents who were not involved in Operation Leap Year and I met with [the attorney], his investigator, and another attorney from their firm and did a debriefing. Today, [the attorney] made a controlled call to the target and introduced the undercover agent. It is not expected that [he] will be further involved in the investigation, except to turn over the items that I am seeking in the subpoena.”; and the numbered list under “ITEMS CALLED FOR BY THE SUBPOENA”, of which the second reads “The videotape of the deposition, transcript, and documents produced in”. The attorney’s name is replaced in these quotations and is not reproduced here. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. Same memorandum, EFTA00179447, p. 22, printed “-4-”: “The first two items are necessary to determine what was asked for and received and to see whether Rodriguez made statements contrary to what he told federal agents. The email correspondence is needed to see the beginning of the contact between [the attorney] and Rodriguez and to defeat any claim of “entrapment.""; “None of the items contain any privileged information.”; “For the foregoing reasons, I recommend the issuance of the attached subpoena.” Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  17. Same form, EFTA00179447, p. 25, printed “3”: item 14, “The other sources for the information would be other attorneys in the same set of civil lawsuits, all of which raise the same issues raised herein. Also, disclosure to them could compromise the undercover operation.”; “It is possible that the target was provided with a copy of his deposition transcript, but providing him with a subpoena would inform him that he is the subject of an investigation and disclose the undercover operation.” ↩

  18. Same form, EFTA00179447, p. 26, printed “4”: item 15(a), “The attorney’s firm is concerned about liability issues and feels that the most prudent approach is to produce the documents in response to a subpoena.”; item 15(b), answered “No” with “Not applicable. The target is not the attorney’s client.”; item 16, “The items sought do not contain any attorney-client communications. They all involve communications between the attorney and a third party (our target).” The signature lines for the requestor and the United States Attorney carry only marks, not printed names. ↩

  19. Email chain, subject “Op stolen globe” / “Re: Op stolen globe”, EFTA00212662, p. 1. The earliest message, stamped by the sending client “Sent: Wed Nov 04 20:31:09 2009”, reads in full: “I have seen the Holy Grail. Can we talk tomorrow morning?” The reply, “Sent: Wed Nov 04 21:20:33 2009”, reads “Yes but I will be in WPB”; the top message reads “Me too.” and carries the production header Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:23:06 +0000, which in Eastern standard time is 9:23 p.m. on 4 November, two and a half minutes after the local stamp it answers. That consistency is the basis for reading the two quoted stamps as local time and for placing all three messages on the evening of 4 November. Every sender and recipient line is redacted. Read from the page image. ↩

  20. Email, subject “Op Stolen Globe Meeting”, header Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:44:32 +0000, EFTA00212619, p. 1: “The First Assistant ([redacted]), the Criminal Chief ([redacted]), the head of the Child Exploitation Section ([redacted]), and I are meeting on Thursday, December 17th at 10:30 at the USAO in Miami to discuss Op Stolen Globe and how we will handle a potential new investigation against Jeffrey Epstein or others. We would like to have FBI present for the meeting. I don’t know if you want the SAC to attend, or your ASAC, or whomever, but certainly whichever agent(s) would be potentially handling such an investigation should be there.”; “I am still in South Carolina and then will be in Colombia, back in West Palm Beach on the 9th. Please just let me know whom to expect so I can let the bosses know.” The header fields, the greeting and the three parenthetical names are redacted. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2

  21. The same message forwarded, subject “Fw: Op Stolen Globe Meeting”, header Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:46:17 +0000, body “Fyi”, EFTA00019172, p. 1, where the quoted original is stamped “Sent: Thu Dec 03 12:44:32 2009”. The five-hour difference between that stamp and the 17:44:32 +0000 header of the message itself is what fixes the zone as Eastern standard time. Read from the page image. ↩

  22. Email, subject “Are you in the office tomorrow?”, header Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:58:55 +0000, EFTA00212608, p. 1: “We are having a conference call about “Op Stolen Globe” at 1:00.” The header fields and every name in the message are redacted. One further sentence of the message is not reproduced here. Read from the page image. ↩

  23. Email, subject “Stolen Globe Information.pdf”, header Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:37:24 +0000, attachment Stolen_Globe_Information.pdf, EFTA00212181, p. 1: “here is the draft information. I am going to submit the packet to my superiors tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any concerns. The plea agreement will follow shortly.” The header fields, the greeting and the signature block are redacted. Read from the page image. ↩

  24. Email, subject “Press Coverage re Op Stolen Globe/Epstein”, header Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:20:53 +0000, attachment ex-epstein-worker-faces.pdf, EFTA01657821, p. 1: “I have suspicions about who tipped off the press given my recent back and forth with some of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, but in any event, this appeared in this morning’s Palm Beach Post.”; “Can we set up the meeting with the AUSAs in California and New Mexico some time soon?” The header fields are blacked out. A name in the message is not reproduced here. A second copy of the same message is at EFTA00213295, p. 1, where the quoted-back copy is stamped “Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:21 AM” against this copy’s own header of 15:20:53 UTC, which places the message in the mid-morning Eastern. Read from both page images. ↩

  25. Email, subject “PB Post Article re arraignment.pdf — Op Stolen Globe”, header Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:27:47 +0000, attachment PB_Post_Article_re_arraignment.pdf, EFTA00207039, p. 1, body in full: “Just FYI.” Seven names in the header fields are redacted, each followed by the visible office code “(USAFLS)”. Read from the page image. ↩

  26. Email, subject “RE: Press Coverage re Op Stolen Globe/Epstein”, header Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:07:10 +0000, EFTA00213295, p. 1: “The AUSAs we recommend in each district are:” followed by two blacked-out names against “LA” and “New Mexico”; “What about New York, [redacted]? Have they been approached? What district?”; “We’ve worked with both [redacted] and [redacted] and they’re very good. As we’ve discussed, I think they AUSAs will want as much information from [redacted] as they can get – on all aspects of the case. I’m not sure whether an individual or group approach is best, but I leave that decision to USAFLS. We are happy to facilitate and participate in any phone meetings that are called, but, as I said at our meeting, we can’t get involved substantively in the investigation.”; “Let me know how we can help.” “they AUSAs” is the document’s own wording. Every header field is blacked out and the signature block visible at the foot of the page belongs to the quoted 26 January message, not to this reply. Read from the page image. ↩

  27. Email, subject “FW: Excel spreadsheet/ phone co. info”, header Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:05:17 +0000, attachment excel_subpoena_info.xls, EFTA00207136, p. 1: “I forgot to send this to you eons ago. Can you prepare grand jury subpoenas in the Operation Stolen Globe matter for these numbers?” The message it forwards, stamped “Sent: Friday, March 12, 2010 1:49 PM”, reads: “Sorry this has taken so long. Attached is a list of phone numbers and the corresponding phone company info for the massage lists in California, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands. I also have Epstein’s numbers from the island on this excel sheet.”; “I’m still working on Epstein, Maxwell, and [redacted] numbers from NY, NM, etc. and will attach those in a separate spreadsheet. There’s around 150 additional of those numbers.”; “I also have copies of 2 of 4 of the CD’s of Alfredo’s depos.”; “As far as Alfredo’s case, is there anything that you’d like me to work on?” The forwarding signature gives the office as “500 S. Australian Ave, Suite 400 / West Palm Beach, FL 33401” and the quoted message’s as “FBI Miami Division / 505 Flagler Dr. Ste. 500 / West Palm Beach, FL 33401”; the names are redacted and are not reproduced. The attached spreadsheet is not in the release as searched here. Read from the page image. ↩

  28. “Subpoena to Testify Before Grand Jury”, form AO 110 (Rev. 04/07), United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, headed “FGJ 08-1103(WPB) No. 067-013”, to the “Custodian of Records / Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless”, EFTA00078172, p. 5, within a faxed packet transmitted by Verizon Legal Compliance on 2 April 2010. Date and time for return: “4/8/2010 9:30 am” at the image; the corpus text layer renders this “4/6/2010”. Command: “All subscriber, detailed billing information, including incoming and outgoing numbers dialed, and payment information from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2006 for cellular telephone number” followed by a single number, which is not reproduced here. Signed by a deputy clerk over the court’s seal and dated “3/22/2010”. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩ ↩2

  29. “Certification Regarding Domestic Records of Regularly Conducted Activity”, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, “IN RE FEDERAL GRAND JURY SUBPOENA / FGJ 08-1103 No. 067-001 / AT&T”, EFTA00129379, p. 46, on an unfaxed and undamaged scan; the three characters before the hyphen were enlarged at 400 dpi and read as the digits 0, 6, 7, matching the digit forms in “08-1103” on the same line. The accompanying appearance notice at p. 54 of the same run gives an early voluntary turnover date “prior to November 12, 2009” and is signed “JEFFREY H. SLOMAN / ACTING UNITED STATES ATTORNEY / BY:” over a blacked-out line. Read from the page image at 400 dpi. ↩

  30. Three further certifications on the same form, cited for the existence and numbering of the series only, each carrying a number of the same shape beneath “IN RE FEDERAL GRAND JURY SUBPOENA”: the 002 (YMAX Communication) at EFTA00129379, p. 55; the 009 (Verizon California, Inc. - CA (GTE)) at EFTA00240114, p. 26; and the 003 (Cellco Partnership d/b/a Verizon Wireless) at EFTA00242292, p. 4. These three are faxed or degraded copies and the prefix on them was not settled at the image; the reading in the body text rests on the clean scan cited in the preceding note. ↩

  31. “EPSTEIN BOX INVENTORY”, an index of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s boxed Epstein files, EFTA00066350, p. 4, under the heading “Box 8:”: “Green file folder with Grand Jury Subpoena Log– Operation Stolen Globe”; “12/19/07 Acosta-Sanchez letter with post it – to be produced after stay is lifted”; “2009R02690 Criminal Complaint folder for Op. Stolen Globe”; “Empty redwell – Additions to Items to be Produced after stay is lifted from privileged items”; “Op Stolen Globe (redwell)”; “4/29/2008 Grand Jury Presentation for Operation Leap Year with Indictment”; “OLY cd”; “Jane Does v. U.S. Bates Nos 000670-002110 cd”; “Jane Does v. U.S. 0001-1652 cd”; “Redwell with multiple copies of 4/29/2008 indictment”; “Orange Composition notebook with [redacted] notes”. The document is undated and names no compiler. It is an index: it records that a folder existed under a title, not what was inside it. Read from the page image. ↩

  32. A second “EPSTEIN BOX INVENTORY”, boxes lettered rather than numbered and redacted to a different standard, EFTA00194822, p. 4, under “Box H:”: “Green file folder with Grand Jury Subpoena Log – Operation Stolen Globe”; “12/19/07 [redacted]-[redacted] letter with post it – to be produced after stay is lifted”; “Op Stolen Globe (redwell)”; “4/29/2008 Grand Jury Presentation for Operation Leap Year with Indictment”; “[redacted] cd”; two “Jane Does [v.] U.S.” cds; “Orange Composition notebook with [redacted] notes”; “Redwell with documents provided to [redacted] on cd (000670-002110)”; “Redwell with correspondence between Epstein’s attorney’s and USAO”; “10/21/2009 letter to [redacted] from [redacted]”; “12/9/2009 [redacted] Ltr re [redacted] Complaints (green file folder)”; “Epstein redwell with correspondence”; “Printout of [redacted]s arrest”; “Yellow Notepad with [redacted] notes”; “Enforcing Victim’s Rights – April 26, 2012”; “Index of Victim Notification Letters”. This box carries neither the “2009R02690 Criminal Complaint folder” nor the “Empty redwell” that the numbered version’s Box 8 lists. Read from the page image. ↩

  33. Same second inventory, EFTA00194822, p. 7, under “Box M:”: “Redwell – Stolen Globe folder with draft indictment and documents from case; copies of phone number lists; copies of case law; green folder with attorney notes”; “Operation Leap Year composition book with notes”. Other entries on the page are not reproduced. This is an index entry, and is evidence that a folder bore that description, not of what the draft indictment said. Read from the page image. ↩

  34. Itemised list of shipped contents, EFTA00129637, p. 5: “The Below is a list of the content sent Via FedEx, tracking # [redacted]”; “Items are listed per titles solely on original folders in box.”; “Red Wallet #3 Contain: Loose Document File with sticky labeled Disco Conf: Stolen Globe on Disco “Original""; and, beneath it, “Manila Folders Labeled:” followed by “Cell data”, “Phone subscriber info”, “72-MM-113327 and Alfredo Rodriguez PPI”, “Order to seal documents”, “Plea agreement”, “Loose court doc”, “Written/ Email correspondence”, “Alfredo Rodrigues (Court documents)”, “Jail Property Receipts”, “FD-302” and “Phonebook/ handwritten Docs”. The tracking number is not reproduced here. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2

  35. “STATEMENT OF [redacted] IN RESPONSE TO APRIL 2, 2019 LETTER FROM JEFFREY R. RAGSDALE”, the written response of an Assistant U.S. Attorney to the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, EFTA00225044, p. 12 of 58, in a list of FBI personnel: “S/A [redacted] (still at FBI): S/A [redacted] was the case agent on Operation Stolen Globe, which involved the investigation of Alfredo Rodriguez (Jeffrey Epstein’s butler), who tried to sell evidence to”. Neither the agent’s name nor the attorney’s is reproduced here. The statement is the subject attorney’s own document in an inquiry into that attorney’s conduct; its opening records that “Due to the passage of time, updates to various software and hardware, and the crash of my work laptop several years ago, I no longer have every piece of relevant material and my memory may be imperfect.” (EFTA00225044, p. 1.) Read from the page image. ↩

  36. Email to “USAFLS-ALL”, subject “In Re: Alfredo Rodriguez, FOIA Request”, sent Wednesday, March 16, 2016 11:06 AM, quoted in the chain at EFTA00211150, p. 3: “A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has been made for records regarding Alfredo Rodriguez, (date of death: December 28, 2014).”; “Please reference the following link pertaining to this individual;” followed by a link to an article on the Mirror’s website, which is not reproduced; “Please contact me as soon as possible if you are in possession of any documents, files, e-mails, or electronic records.”; and, in bold, “Please do not destroy or purge any records related to Alfredo Rodriguez.” The sender’s name and telephone line are blacked out. The same page carries the reply “The case involving victims of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation is Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2 [v.] United States, 08-80736-Civ-Marra.” and “Can you advise who the requesting party is on the FOIA request?” Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2

  37. Reply in the same chain, EFTA00211150, p. 2: “As per your request, the requesting party is a news site by the name of MuckRock. The case that you prosecuted in 2010, appears complete in LIONS but not in the close file room. Do you have this file or know where it may be? I will need all of your e-records and e-mails related to Mr. Rodriguez’ case. I do not need any of the grand jury transcripts. I will be contacting the 8th floor about the other case that was prosecuted by [redacted]”; “Your email helped me tremendously in identifying the exact Alfredo Rodriguez.” No name is taken from this page. Read from the page image. ↩

  38. Email, subject “RE: In Re: Alfredo Rodriguez, FOIA Request (08-80736-Civ-Marra)”, header Thu, 04 Aug 2016 20:30:59 +0000, EFTA00211150, p. 1: “I looked through 27 boxes and finally found the stuff. Do you want me to send you the originals or copies? It is about ½ a box.”; “The information contains the identification of numerous minor sex trafficking victims so please advise how it will be reviewed and stored.” The chain below carries a message of “Tuesday, August 02, 2016 10:32 AM” reading “EOUSA is requesting a status update, please let me know the status.”, and one of “Monday, June 6, 2016 4:12 PM” reading “I don’t think I have received this file, please let me know the status.” Every header field is blacked out. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2

  39. Email, subject “Inquiry regarding an old case”, header Wed, 27 Apr 2016 21:19:44 +0000, EFTA00211693, p. 1, quoted in full in the body text. The sender’s name is not reproduced here. The two recipients are blacked out against the visible office codes “(MM) (FBI)”. The reply twenty minutes later, “I will check with ELSUR tomorrow to see if we are still in custody of the recording.”, appears in the chain at EFTA00211692, p. 1, whose own header reads Wed, 27 Apr 2016 21:40:36 +0000 and which stamps the original message “04/27/2016 5:19 PM (GMT-05:00)”. That label names the base Eastern zone while the effective offset that day was four hours; the Eastern daylight readings in the body text follow the arithmetic between the RFC header and the client stamp, not the label. Read from the page images. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  40. Email, subject “RE: Inquiry regarding an old case”, header Thu, 28 Apr 2016 14:35:39 +0000, EFTA00211690, p. 1: “Thank you. Yes, I know he died. That is one of the reasons why they want the recording. I will pass the info along.”; “Hope things are going well in Fort Pierce!” The message it answers, stamped “Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2016 10:33 AM”, reads: “It looks like Miami is still maintaining the recordings. On a side note Alfredo died in Dec. 2015.” The header fields are redacted; no name is taken from this page. Read from the page image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  41. AT&T California covering sheet and custodian certification, EFTA00240784, pp. 1-2. The cover sheet reads “Reference : CONTROL NUMBER: S-2010-04-09-319” and, on the line below, “CASE NUMBER: 08-1103”; its “TO:” and “FROM:” lines are redacted and it is stamped “SENT ON: Apr 13, 2010 09:02:52”; the certification on p. 2 gives “CRIMINAL CASE NUMBER: 08-1103”. The same pair appears at EFTA01338661, pp. 1-2. Cited only as part of the account of what the “08-1103” search returns; no control number for a subpoena appears on either sheet. Read from the page image. ↩

Backlinks