DEA memo in Epstein files reveals $50 million in suspicious transfers

A 69-page Drug Enforcement Administration memo newly disclosed in Department of Justice Epstein files documents a previously undisclosed DEA investigation opened in New York on Dec. 17, 2010, that tracked about $50 million in suspicious wire transfers between 2010 and 2015 involving Jeffrey Epstein and 14 other named-but-redacted targets. The memo, drafted in 2015 and marked in the file as “judicial pending,” links the transfers to activity in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.

The memo itself states, “DEA reporting indicates the above individuals are involved in illegitimate wire transfers which are tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.” It identifies two businesses by name, SLK Designs LLC and Hyperion Air, and a third company that is redacted. Public records in the files show those entities were formed and controlled by Epstein’s lawyer Darren Indyke; Indyke has denied involvement in wrongdoing.

The DOJ release of the memo is heavily redacted, but appears to have failed in one place to remove the name of a Polish fashion model whom the file ties to roughly $2 million in wire transfers. The release includes emails between that woman and Epstein; her attorney asked that she not be publicly identified and characterized her as a survivor. The files do not make clear whether she or others named in redacted sections were aware they were targets of the DEA inquiry.

Officials involved with the materials characterized the memo as the result of a DEA request to an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Fusion Center. One law enforcement source said, “For the DEA to open the case, there would have to be a drug nexus,” and another described the Fusion Center request as indicating a “significant” investigation rather than a routine information query. The “judicial pending” notation in the memo suggests investigators viewed court-authorized steps as relevant to the probe when the memo was written.

The newly disclosed memo sits uneasily alongside previously known milestones in the Epstein matter. The DEA case opening date falls two years after Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement and nearly a decade before his 2019 federal arrest and prosecution. People involved in the later prosecutions said prosecutors working those files did not have knowledge of this earlier DEA investigation, highlighting potential gaps in interagency and intra-Justice Department information flows.

The memo lists contacts and prior touches by other agencies and offices, including Customs and Border Protection, ICE and FBI probes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in St. Thomas, Harvard University campus police and the Virgin Islands Police Department. The files do not disclose whether the DEA probe led to warrants, grand jury actions, indictments or other enforcement outcomes; the ultimate disposition of the case remains unreported in the released material.

The disclosure raises institutional and oversight questions about coordination among federal investigative and prosecutorial units, recordkeeping and the sufficiency of redaction protocols in high-profile files. Given the memo’s size, its “sensitive but unclassified” appearance in the record, and the redactions that obscure identities and outcomes, elected officials and oversight bodies may seek further document releases and sworn briefings to clarify what the memo signaled and why later prosecutors appear not to have been alerted. The files as released leave central questions unanswered about the scope and result of the DEA inquiry and its place in the broader federal handling of Epstein.