Lawyers representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein sued two of the disgraced financier’s closest advisers on Friday, accusing them of “aiding, abetting and facilitating” his sex trafficking of young women and teenage girls.
The civil suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, seeks class action status on behalf of Mr. Epstein’s many victims. It comes just a few months after two big banks agreed to pay hundreds of millions dollars to Mr. Epstein’s victims to settle lawsuits that claimed the banks had enabled his activities.
The newest lawsuit seeks money damages from Mr. Epstein’s longtime personal lawyer, Darren Indyke, and his longtime accountant, Richard Kahn. The lawsuit claims the two men helped build “the complex financial infrastructure” that Mr. Epstein relied on to sexually abuse hundreds of young women and teenage girls for at least two decades.
The complaint was filed on behalf of one unidentified female victim of Mr. Epstein and a woman, Danielle Bensky, who said she was an aspiring dancer in 2004 when Mr. Epstein sexually abused her. Over time, the complaint said, Ms. Bensky “was coerced into a cultlike life controlled and manipulated by Epstein” and feared he would harm her.
The lawsuit said Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn had played major roles in setting up their former employer’s many companies that were involved in funneling millions of dollars in cash payments and wire transfers to victims. The lawsuit also said the men had contributed to a “sham” same-sex-marriage scheme that Mr. Epstein orchestrated to help some of his female assistants with their immigration status.
Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn, who are also serving as executors of Mr. Epstein’s estate, “were richly compensated” by Mr. Epstein, including being named as beneficiaries of a trust that Mr. Epstein used to dole out money to people who worked for him. The complaint said the same Butterfly Trust had also paid out money to “young women with Eastern European surnames” and Ghislaine Maxwell, a former business associate and confidante of Mr. Epstein’s who was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of conspiring in his sex-trafficking operation.
