Jeffrey Epstein Image by wikicommons

With unlimited funds, a top-tier legal team and a circle of powerful friends, a Palm Beach multimillionaire financier was able to get off nearly scot free after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, the Miami Herald reported.

The Herald’s first story in a three-part series on hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein revealed that in 2007, Alexander Acosta, then U.S. attorney in Miami and now President Trump’s secretary of labor, helped Epstein escape a lifetime in prison after the financier allegedly created what the Herald described as a “large, cult-like network of underage girls.”

Assisted by female “recruiters,” Epstein was accused of making these young girls perform sex acts behind his waterfront mansion and on his plane, sometimes as often as three times a day. Police began investigating in 2005.

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“This was not a ‘he said, she said’ situation. This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ — and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story,’’ retired Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter told the Herald.

But Epstein, 54, only ended up serving 13 months in the county jail on two prostitution charges. Epstein, a friend of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and represented by high-powered lawyers like Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz, reached an plea deal with Acosta that would shut down the ongoing FBI investigation. The agreement was kept hidden from the victims, which appeared to break federal law. It also granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators,” the existence or identities of whom remain unclear.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

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