Epstein's Tuition Network: 30 Schools, 10 Countries, One Trust

A Deutsche Bank presentation delivered to federal prosecutors in September 2019 contains a single exhibit titled "Tuition Payments on Behalf of Children / Women." It lists more than 30 schools across 10 countries. The payers are shell companies. The students include a registered sex offender's household employees' children, women described internally as "Butterfly Trust beneficiaries," and the son of the attorney who co-controlled the trust making the payments. (EFTA01681865)

The exhibit is one of 23 in the Deutsche Bank package. Others are labeled "Timeline of Payments to Alleged Co-Conspirators" and "Biographical Information on Female Butterfly Trust Beneficiaries." Together they constitute the bank's attempt to explain, after the fact, what it had been processing for Jeffrey Epstein for six years. In July 2020, Deutsche Bank paid $150 million to New York State regulators. The tuition payments were part of the conduct cited.

The Butterfly Trust

The Butterfly Trust was created on December 27, 2006. Its original beneficiaries were Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, and Ghislaine Maxwell. (EFTA01282018) Darren Indyke, Epstein's longtime attorney, and Richard Kahn, his accountant and financial manager, served as co-trustees.

Between 2014 and 2018, the trust executed more than 120 wire transfers totaling $2.65 million. Many were routed through a set of single-purpose LLCs: LSJE LLC, HBRK LLC, MERUKAS LLC. The school payments ran through these entities. So did payments the Deutsche Bank exhibit labels simply as transfers to alleged co-conspirators.

Indyke and Kahn later added themselves as trust beneficiaries. Indyke's own law firm, Indyke PLLC, received $475,821 from the trust. The Deutsche Bank presentation notes there was "no rationale listed" for those payments. Kahn directed the trust's school payments while his own son was receiving $83,846 in tuition from the same trust at the Allen-Stevenson School in New York City. A co-trustee paying his own child's private school tuition from a trust he controlled is described in the exhibit without apparent awareness that such a phrase requires explanation. (EFTA01681865)

The Florida Children

Ann Rodriguez appears throughout the tuition records as the point of contact for two children named Sierra and Emery Poleon. She listed her address as the U.S. Virgin Islands. She emailed Epstein using the salutation "Bossman." (EFTA02338562)

Sierra and Emery were enrolled at North Broward Preparatory School in Florida at a combined annual cost of $53,250. Sierra was in sixth grade, Emery in tenth. Their guardian of record was Rodriguez. Payment ran through MERUKAS LLC. (EFTA01285426, EFTA01142314) Both children had previously been enrolled at Admiral Farragut Academy in Florida, where the boarding costs exceeded $25,236.

In July 2016, Sierra was expelled from Camp Frontier. The expulsion notice cited "numerous serious issues" and was forwarded not to Rodriguez but to Karyna Shuliak, a Ukrainian-born woman who would later receive $631,000 labeled as tuition from the Butterfly Trust, including a single wire of $350,000. (EFTA00533218) The routing of a child's expulsion notice to a trust beneficiary in another country is not explained in the available documents.

Rodriguez used LSJE LLC credit cards to pay school expenses. When she sought reimbursement, Kahn directed the trust to cover "all house and school expense since inception." (EFTA02639829, EFTA02640206)

The Antilles School in the U.S. Virgin Islands received between $8,688 and $15,900 per year for a student named Lucas Rodriguez. Checks were signed by Cecile de Jongh, drawing on Southern Trust. De Jongh is the wife of John de Jongh, who served as governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2007 to 2015. (EFTA01346942, sd-10-EFTA01347529)

The Model Schools

The Deutsche Bank exhibit separates the tuition payments into two categories. One is for employees and associates. The other is for what the bank's own documentation calls Butterfly Trust beneficiaries, most of whom are identified by nationality rather than name in the public record: a Russian model, a Swedish model, a UK model.

The New School in New York City received nine payments totaling approximately $115,000 for a Russian model. The Fashion Institute of Technology received approximately $19,741 for a Swedish model. (EFTA01681865)

Two institutions in Switzerland received trust payments. The Glion Institute, a hospitality management school near Montreux, received $84,582 routed through HBRK LLC for two Russian models. Institut Villa Pierrefeu, a "finishing school" in Glion that teaches etiquette and what it describes as the "art of living," received $34,586 through LSJE LLC for Karyna Shuliak. (EFTA01681865)

A Swedish modeling agency called BBB AB, run by Barbro Ehnbom in Stockholm, supplied women who became trust beneficiaries. Ehnbom wrote Epstein: "Huge thanks for giving BBB another chance!! We have 200 quite fantastic young women including a minister, an ambassador, a professor, a princess-Sofia!" (d-28608) Women sent by the agency to New York later had their university tuition paid by the trust in multiple countries.

The International University of Monaco received $3,147 via LSJE for a UK model. The American University of Paris received EUR 14,875 wired directly by Kahn from a Deutsche Bank custody account. (EFTA00851498) Escuela Superior de Alta Gestion in Spain received $26,505 via LSJE for a Russian model. Roehampton University in London received $5,687 via HBRK. The New York Film Academy received $3,442.

One beneficiary pursued language study in Hong Kong. Comfort Corporation Ltd, described as a Chinese language instruction provider, received $2,222. Q Language Ltd in Hong Kong received $3,330 via LSJE. Both payments were for the same Russian model. (EFTA01681865)

The Russian Bank Routes

Exhibit I of the Deutsche Bank package catalogs tuition wire transfers by receiving bank. AO Raiffeisenbank in Russia received $238,551. Alfa Bank received $56,831. Sberbank received $90,269. VTB Bank received $38,615. The National Economic Bank of Uzbekistan received $12,900. (EFTA01681865)

The routing of trust funds to Russian state-linked banks for tuition payments was part of the conduct Deutsche Bank identified in its presentation to the Southern District of New York. The bank had been processing these wires for years before it conducted its own review.

The New Jersey Employees

Not all the payments went to schools connected to models or household staff in Florida and the Virgin Islands. Several entries cover children of employees connected to a man named Harry Beller, who had property-related dealings with Epstein in New Jersey.

Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey received $19,867 for a Beller employee's child. Seton Hall University received $32,877 for a Beller employee. Sh'or Yoshuv Institute, an Orthodox rabbinical college in New York, received $15,100 for another Beller connection. Yeshiva Gedola Ohr Yisrael in Brooklyn received $24,500. Machon Raaya in Jerusalem received $19,500. (EFTA01681865)

Mississippi College received $10,000 for a property associate's child. The common thread is that Epstein's financial infrastructure was being used to pay school costs for people at multiple removes from Epstein himself.

The Researcher's Children

Joscha Bach is a German-American artificial intelligence researcher who held a fellowship at the MIT Media Lab and later worked at Harvard. Alef-Bet Child Care in Cambridge, Massachusetts received $12,480 for Bach's children. German International School Boston received $35,843 for the same children. Mill Basin Day Camp in Brooklyn received $4,400. Circle F Dude Ranch Camp in Florida received $11,340. The combined payments for Bach-connected childcare and education exceeded $47,000. (EFTA01681865)

The MIT Media Lab's connections to Epstein became a separate public controversy in 2019, when the New Yorker reported that director Joi Ito had personally solicited and received Epstein donations and had described them internally as "anonymous" to avoid scrutiny. Ito resigned. Bach's presence in the tuition records predates that disclosure.

Bella Klein

Bella Klein's daughters received dance instruction paid by Epstein. Nika Ballet Studio in Brooklyn received between $3,300 and $7,178 for Klein's daughters. Klein appears in the records as a person whose children's extracurricular costs were covered by the same financial infrastructure that was paying tuition for models across three continents. (EFTA01681865)

The Law School

UC Berkeley School of Law received $26,215. The payment came directly from Epstein, not through a trust entity, and is listed in the Deutsche Bank tuition exhibit without further annotation. (EFTA01681865)

The School That Said No

In March 2016, the superintendent of the Virgin Islands school district intervened when Epstein attempted to donate $20,000 to Ivanna Eudora Kean High School. The school returned the money. The document recording the return is one of relatively few in the released files showing an institution declining Epstein's financial approach. (EFTA01108698)

After Death

Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody on August 10, 2019. In April 2020, nine months later, $13 million was wired into the Butterfly Trust.

The trust was subsequently restructured, a process described in legal documents as "decanting." The new trusts created through that process named Indyke and Kahn and their spouses as beneficiaries. The restructuring documents state explicitly that the purpose was to "insulate from claims of third-party claimants." (dc-22121070)

Third-party claimants, in this context, means victims.

Indyke and Kahn had also served as executors of Epstein's estate, a role that put them in control of an estate estimated at over $600 million at the time of his death. Both faced legal challenges to their executor status. The Butterfly Trust restructuring, executed while those challenges were pending, used language that courts would later scrutinize.

What the Exhibit Shows

The Deutsche Bank tuition exhibit is not, on its face, a document about sex trafficking. It is a spreadsheet of school payments. But the exhibit exists inside a 23-part presentation that Deutsche Bank built to explain its relationship with a man who had been indicted on federal sex trafficking charges and whose financial operations a federal grand jury was investigating.

The schools receiving payments span four continents. The payment entities are shells. The beneficiaries include the trust's own co-trustees, household employees in the Virgin Islands, an AI researcher connected to MIT, the daughters of a woman named Bella Klein, and women identified only by nationality who were sent to New York by a Swedish modeling agency whose owner wrote Epstein thanking him for "another chance."

The exhibit does not explain what the trust's "children / women" designation means or why both categories appear in the same document. Deutsche Bank apparently did not ask. It processed the wires for six years before federal prosecutors came calling with subpoenas.

Kahn directed the tuition payments. His own son's tuition is in the same spreadsheet. The trust he co-controlled paid his firm $475,821 with no rationale listed. He wired money to the American University of Paris from a Deutsche Bank custody account. He was still operating the trust's financial machinery nine months after Epstein died, when $13 million arrived and the restructuring began.

The payments stopped. The trusts did not.