The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein's bank records and emails, searched his homes and spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world's most influential people.
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But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal US Justice Department records shows.
Videos and photos seized from Epstein's homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands did not depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.
An examination of Epstein's financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.
While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he "lent her" to his rich friends, agents could not confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.
Summarising the investigation in an email last July, agents said "four or five" Epstein accusers claimed other men or women had sexually abused them.
But, the agents said, there "was not enough evidence to federally charge these individuals, so the cases were referred to local law enforcement".
Media organisations are still reviewing millions of pages of documents, many of them previously confidential, that the Justice Department released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act and it is possible those records contain evidence overlooked by investigators.
But the documents, which include police reports, FBI interview notes and prosecutor emails, indicate why US authorities ultimately decided to close the investigation without additional charges.
The Epstein investigation began in 2005, when the parents of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at the millionaire's home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Police would identify at least 35 girls with similar stories: Epstein was paying high school age students $US200 or $US300 ($A290 or $A430) to give him sexualised messages.
After the FBI joined the probe, federal prosecutors drafted indictments to charge Epstein and some personal assistants who had arranged the girls' visits and payments.
But instead, then-Miami US attorney Alexander Acosta struck a deal letting Epstein plead guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl.
Sentenced to 18 months in jail, Epstein was free by mid-2009.
In 2018, a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea deal prompted New York federal prosecutors to take a fresh look at the accusations.
Epstein was arrested in July of 2019.
One month later, he was found dead in his jail cell.
New York City's medical examiner called the death a suicide.
A year later, prosecutors charged Epstein's longtime confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, saying she had recruited several of his victims and sometimes joined the sexual abuse.
Convicted in 2021, Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison term.
Prosecution memos, case summaries and other documents made public in the department's latest release of Epstein-related records show that FBI agents and federal prosecutors diligently pursued potential co-conspirators.
Even seemingly outlandish and incomprehensible claims, called in to tip lines, were examined.
Some allegations could not be verified, investigators wrote.
In 2011 and again in 2019, investigators interviewed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who in lawsuits and news interviews had accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with numerous men, including Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor - formerly Prince Andrew.
Investigators said they confirmed that Giuffre had been sexually abused by Epstein but other parts of her story were problematic.
Two other Epstein victims who Giuffre had claimed were also "lent out" to powerful men told investigators they had no such experience, prosecutors wrote in a 2019 internal memo.
"No other victim has described being expressly directed by either Maxwell or Epstein to engage in sexual activity with other men," the memo said.
Giuffre acknowledged writing a partly fictionalised memoir of her time with Epstein containing descriptions of things that did not take place.
In a memoir published after she took her own life last year, Giuffre wrote that prosecutors told her they did not include her in the case against Maxwell because they did not want her allegations to distract the jury.
She insisted her accounts of being trafficked to elite men were true.
with Reuters
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