Two of Epstein's closest advisers are being sued by his victims

Lawyers representing Jeffrey Epstein's victims sued two of the financier's disgraced 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 major banks agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Mr. Epstein's victims to settle lawsuits alleging the banks enabled his activities.

The latest lawsuit seeks monetary damages from Mr. Epstein's longtime personal attorney, Darren Indyke, and his longtime accountant, Richard Kahn. The lawsuit alleges that 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 an unidentified female victim of Mr. Epstein and a woman, Danielle Bensky, who said she was an aspiring dancer in 2004 when Mr. Epstein sexually assaulted her. Over time, the complaint said, Ms. Bensky was “forced into a cult-like life controlled and manipulated by Epstein” and she feared he would harm her.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn were instrumental in setting up their former employer's many companies that were involved in funneling millions of dollars in cash payments and wire transfers to the victims. The lawsuit also said the men contributed to a “sham same-sex marriage scheme” that Mr. Epstein orchestrated to help some of his female aides with their immigration status.

Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn, who also serve as executors of Mr. Epstein's estate, “were lavishly compensated” by Mr. Epstein, including being named as beneficiaries of a trust that Mr. Epstein used to raise money to hand out 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, who was convicted in 2021 on federal charges of conspiracy in his sex trafficking ring. operation.

Ms. Maxwell was indicted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan on federal sex trafficking charges about a year after Mr. Epstein's arrest in July 2019. A month later, Mr. Epstein committed suicide in a federal prison in Manhattan. Ms. Maxwell is the only person in the United States associated with Mr. Epstein to have been convicted of a crime.

The lawsuit against Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn argued that, given their long tenure with Mr. Epstein, they should have known that their legal, accounting and business services enabled his activities. Mr. Indyke began working for Mr. Epstein in 1995, and Mr. Kahn began working as his internal accountant in 2005.

The lawsuit was filed by attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner, who were part of a group of lawyers who previously sued JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank on behalf of Mr. Epstein's victims. Those lawsuits alleged that the banks ignored warning signs about Mr. Epstein's sex trafficking because the institutions generated high fees for handling hundreds of millions of dollars in money transfers for him. JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle the lawsuit, and Deutsche paid $75 million to resolve a similar lawsuit.

Daniel Weiner, a lawyer for the estate and for Mr. Indyke and Mr. Kahn, said in a statement that both men “emphatically reject the allegations of misconduct” and called the claims “baseless and legally frivolous.”

David Boies, a lawyer for the victims, said Mr. Epstein's sex trafficking would not have lasted as long as it did “without the support and assistance of key associates.”

In the course of the lawsuit with JPMorgan, Mr. Kahn said in a statement that he only learned of Mr. Epstein's worst activities after the death of his former employer in August 2019. In the confidential statement, previously reported by The New York Times, Mr. Kahn said that none of Mr. Epstein's female “assistants” had ever complained to him about Mr. Epstein's behavior.

After Mr. Epstein's death, Mr. Kahn and Mr. Indyke created a lawsuit that has yielded about $155 million in restitution to more than 125 victims. These settlements often included broad releases for some individuals associated with Mr. Epstein. It is not clear how this release of the settlement could complicate the claims against the two men.

Mr. Weiner said in his statement that Mr. Boies had a hand in negotiating some of these releases and agreed at the time that they provided “indisputable legal protection” to Mr. Kahn and Mr. Indyke.