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girls to recruit other underage girls, the indictment said.
"In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations
including New York and Palm Beach," the indictment said.
Mr. Berman's decision to seek an indictment in Manhattan was an implicit rebuke to the decision by
prosecutors in Miami in 2008 to enter an agreement with Mr. Epstein that allowed him to avoid federal
prosecution and a possible life sentence.
Under that deal, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges and spent about a year in a Palm
Beach jail. He was permitted to leave the facility six days a week to work.
Mr. Berman made it clear his office was not bound by the agreement, which was overseen by Alexander
Acosta, then the United States attorney in Miami who is now President Trump's secretary of labor.
"That agreement, by its terms, only binds the Southern District of Florida," Mr. Berman said.
The agreement has been examined in a series of reports in The Miami Herald and is being challenged in
court. A federal judge ruled earlier this year Mr. Epstein's accusers should have been consulted about the
deal before it was signed.
The indictment unsealed in Manhattan on Monday said that from 2002 to 2005 Mr. Epstein and his
employees engaged in a sex trafficking scheme, bringing underage girls to his Upper East Side mansion
and his palatial compound in Palm Beach, Fla., to engage in sex acts with him.
The indictment said Mr. Epstein used employees and assistants to arrange sexual rendezvous with at least
one girl at his New York residence and two at his home in Palm Beach.
Mr. Epstein is accused of having the girls perform nude massages, at which point he would masturbate and
touch their genitals with his hands or with sex toys.
The girls were paid hundreds of dollars in cash for each encounter and, once recruited, were asked to
return to the mansion several times, where they were abused again, the indictment said. Mr. Epstein, the
court documents read, "created a similar network of minor girls to victimize" in Florida.
"This conduct, as alleged, went on for years and involved dozens of young girls, some as young as 14,"
Mr. Berman said. "The alleged behavior shocks the conscience."
[Read the indictment.]
The charges unsealed Monday by the Southern District of New York signal a prosecution that some of his
accusers have been awaiting for years.
Accusations of pedophilia and sexual predation have dogged Mr. Epstein for decades. And now, in the
#MeToo era, his case has been held up as a prime example of insulated, powerful men avoiding
accountability.
For more than a decade, Mr. Epstein, a hedge fund manager, avoided a lengthy prison sentence, largely
because of the agreement his lawyers struck with federal prosecutors in 2008.
Mr. Epstein's social circle is filled with other high-profile connections, including to former President Bill Clinton, Prince
Andrew of Britain and a host of others.
In 2002, Mr. Trump described Mr. Epstein as "a terrific guy."
"He's a lot of fun to be with," Mr. Trump told New York Magazine. "It is even said that he likes beautiful
women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
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