Judge won't release identities of two women once described as potential
co-conspirators of Epstein
[September 17, 2025]
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — The identities of two women once listed as potential
co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein will remain sealed for their safety
and privacy, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
In a written decision, Judge Richard M. Berman rejected an NBC News
request to make their identities public after lawyers for the women and
the U.S. Justice Department opposed the unsealing request. He wrote that
threats to the safety of the individuals persist and releasing their
names would threaten their safety and privacy.
In requesting the unsealing, attorney Alexander Ziccardi for NBC News
cited the First Amendment and said there was a “presumptive right of
access” requiring that the names redacted from a July 2019 government
letter to Berman be released publicly.
The 2019 letter, filed by prosecutors opposing bail for Epstein, was
written in part to answer questions the judge had raised at a bail
hearing about two unidentified individuals prosecutors cited in their
arguments against granting Epstein bail.
Prosecutors acknowledged that their names had been publicly associated
with Epstein and his alleged sexual assault on girls and young women
over two decades. Epstein obtained protection for both individuals in a
nonprosecution agreement he signed with federal prosecutors in Florida
in 2007.
Prosecutors said in the letter that Epstein paid one potential
co-conspirator $100,000 and the other $250,000 in late 2018 after the
Miami Herald focused fresh attention on Epstein’s abuse and the deal he
made with federal prosecutors in Florida a decade earlier that spared
him from federal charges.
Federal authorities in New York, insisting that they were not bound by
the 2007 nonprosecution agreement, arrested Epstein in July 2019 on
federal sex trafficking charges.
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In their 2019 letter, prosecutors said the woman who was paid
$250,000 was one of the Epstein employees identified in the
indictment.
The indictment alleged that she and two other employees facilitated
Epstein's trafficking of minors in part by contacting victims and
scheduling their sexual encounters with Epstein at his Manhattan and
Palm Beach, Florida, residences, the letter noted.
But lawyers for the women recently adamantly opposed the release of
their names. A lawyer for the woman who Epstein paid $100,000 told
Berman that his client was the subject of death threats because of
misinformation about her and was investigated by the FBI and found
to be credible, the judge noted.
A lawyer for the second woman told Berman that investigators found
that both women were “severely victimized by Jeffrey Epstein ... and
should be afforded the same protections that have been afforded to
all other victims.”
As he awaited trial in New York, Epstein died in a federal jail in
August 2019 in what was ruled a suicide. His former girlfriend,
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, was convicted of sex
trafficking charges in December 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison
sentence.
Messages for comment sent to NBC and Ziccardi were not immediately
returned.
A spokesperson for the prosecutor declined comment.
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