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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 140 of 348

until after Epstein completed his sentence, but that Krischer would oppose such a petition “if it is in the agreement.”¹⁷⁹ On November 16, 2007, the case agents met with Belohlavek and asked if the State Attorney’s Office would oppose a request that Epstein be granted work release. Belohlavek was noncommittal, and when the agents asked that she include language in the state’s plea agreement prohibiting Epstein from participating in work release, she responded that she would have to discuss the issue with the State Attorney.¹⁸⁰ Krischer later told OPR that work release was “within the control of the Sheriff’s Office, not my office.” The state’s plea agreement with Epstein did not address the issue of work release.

The day after Epstein entered his June 30, 2008 plea, Villafaña and her immediate supervisor met with a Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office official to discuss work release. According to Villafaña, the official told them, “Epstein would be eligible for work release and will be placed on work release,” a statement that contradicted the information the case agents had been given by a jail supervisor the previous November, as well as statements made by defense attorney Jack Goldberger to Villafaña just days before the plea was entered, when he “specifically told [Villafaña] that [Epstein] would not get work release.” Villafaña alerted the Sheriff’s Office official that although Epstein told the court during his plea proceeding that he had worked “every day” for a “couple of years” at the “Florida Science Foundation,” that entity did not even exist until November 2007.¹⁸¹ Moreover, the address Epstein provided to the court for the “Florida Science Foundation” was the office of Epstein’s attorney Jack Goldberger. Villafaña and her supervisor asked that the Sheriff’s Office notify the USAO if Epstein applied for work release.

Acosta told OPR that he was aware Villafaña was trying to ensure that Epstein did not get work release, and he would not have contradicted her efforts. Acosta explained that the USAO expected Epstein would be “treated just like everyone else,” but that, as shown by “our subsequent communications with the [S]tate [A]ttorney’s [O]ffice,” having Epstein on work release “was not what our office envisioned.”

In August 2008, Villafaña spoke with defense attorney Black about ensuring Epstein’s compliance with the NPA, and raised the issue of work release. Villafaña later reported to Acosta and Sloman that Black assured her he had “reminded the team that . . . 18 months IN JAIL is a material term of the agreement.”

The USAO never received notice of Epstein’s work release application. On October 10, 2008, less than three-and-a-half months after Epstein entered his guilty plea, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office placed him into the work release program, permitting him to leave the Stockade

¹⁷⁹ According to Sloman, Krischer explained that even without registration Epstein would be “treated” as a “sex offender” and that “just like any other sex offender, he can petition the court for work release.”

¹⁸⁰ In the November 16, 2007 email, on which she copied Acosta, Villafaña also indicated that she was “reviewing all of the statutes” to determine whether there was any impediment to a state judge granting Epstein work release. In a subsequent email, the FBI case agents informed Villafaña that they had also spoken with a “jail supervisor,” who advised them that although Epstein, as a sexual offender, would not qualify for work release, the judge could nevertheless order him placed on work release if he was sentenced to a year or less of incarceration.

¹⁸¹ During the plea hearing, Epstein told the court he was “President” of the Florida Science Foundation, it had been in existence for 15 years, and he worked there “every day.” Plea Hearing Transcript at 27-29.

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