Kate Briquelet

On Thursday, two actors on a Netflix series were killed and six other crew members were injured in a van crash near Mulegé, a city on the Baja California Sur peninsula. Now friends of the victims—Raymundo Garduño Cruz and Juan Francisco González Aguilar, known professionally as “Paco Mufote”—are lashing out against Netflix and the independent production company behind the show, The Chosen One, claiming that the cast members had been complaining about poor transport and logistics. Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, a friend of Mufote who has worked in the film industry, and is an artist and scholar, told The Daily Beast that […]

In April, Florida’s Celebration Church released a bombshell report on its founding pastor, claiming he was a “narcissist” who belittled staff and treated them like servants while he and his wife enjoyed a luxurious, jet-setting lifestyle and multiple mansions. Now the embattled former megachurch leader, Stovall Weems, is waging a legal brawl against the organization he founded in 1998, claiming its board of trustees staged a “nefarious coup” to make him and his wife Kerri “pariahs” to their flock and destroy their ability to form ministries elsewhere. The non-denominational church, based in Jacksonville, has locations as far-flung as the Netherlands and […]

Jane Doe S.P. was a 19-year-old college student and newly engaged in 2008 when she booked an appointment for a “premarital exam.” Such visits are unique to heavily Mormon Utah, can be similar to a first annual gynecology checkup, and are meant to establish a relationship with an OB-GYN before marriage and having sex for the first time. “I had heard that women go to the doctor before they get married and get birth control,” Jane, who is identified in the lawsuit as ‘Jane Doe S.P.,’ told The Daily Beast in an interview. “I don’t think I knew what to expect.” […]

The morning of the shooting at Texas’ Robb Elementary School, fourth-grader Jailah Silguero had asked her mother if she could stay home. But with just two days left in the school year, her mom insisted she go to class. “Jailah didn’t want to go to school yesterday,” her grandmother Linda Gonzales told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “That’s what her momma was really upset about last night: ‘If only I had let her stay home.’” “The girl was disappointed,” Gonzales added, “She wanted to stay home with momma.” On Tuesday night, Jailah’s mother Veronica Luevanos learned her daughter was among the […]

Juliette Bryant was at a Cape Town cocktail lounge with a friend when an associate of Jeffrey Epstein approached her. “This guy is bothering me,” the woman, an American actress named Naja Hill, told them that night in September 2002. “Can I hang out with you guys?” Bryant, who had just turned 20, understood that women must look out for one another and welcomed the beautiful stranger to join them. When Hill learned Bryant was an aspiring model, she suggested they find her “billionaire” friend Jeffrey, who she falsely claimed was the owner of Victoria’s Secret and could jump-start Bryant’s career. […]

On Tuesday, Britain’s Prince Andrew made his first public appearance since settling a rape lawsuit with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking ring who has also accused the 62-year-old royal of sexual abuse. The Duke of York escorted his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to a memorial service for her late husband, Prince Philip, at Westminster Abbey—a high-profile outing that royal family observers viewed as a defiant display of support for her disgraced second son, who is often described as her favorite, and a rushed attempt at rehabilitation. As Andrew’s appearance raised eyebrows and stirred debates on social media, […]

Employees of the Walt Disney Company staged a walkout on Tuesday over CEO Bob Chapek’s tepid response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which is set to ban lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation at elementary schools in one of the largest states in the country. GOP Gov. Rick DeSantis has indicated he will soon sign the legislation—officially known as the Parental Rights in Education bill—into law. It’s a measure LGBTQ+ activists and allies and mental-health professionals have condemned as harmful to students, and represents just one part of a broader wave of anti-LGBTQ+ initiatives in right-wing states in recent […]

Texas gubernatorial candidate and onetime presidential contender Beto O’Rourke is striking back against a Dallas oil billionaire’s defamation lawsuit, demanding a public trial and releasing a statement this week that declared: “I am ready for this fight.” Kelcy Warren, a major donor to incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott, sued O’Rourke earlier this month for what he described as “a relentless and malicious attack” by the former Democratic congressman. O’Rourke blamed Abbott for last year’s deadly power failures that killed hundreds of people and suggested he failed to protect the state’s energy grid because Warren, the chairman and former CEO of Energy […]

Over multiple nights last August, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Phi Gamma Delta house in Lincoln, Nebraska, and demanded the university ban the fraternity following reports that a member allegedly raped a 17-year-old girl. “Kick them out!” and “No means no!” students chanted during demonstrations that attracted national media and brought protests to Phi Gamma Delta chapters elsewhere. The fury prompted University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) administrators to shut down the Greek organization—more commonly known as Fiji—pending an investigation into the alleged sexual assault. UNL later suspended the frat’s operations through 2026 over violations stemming from alcohol use. Now Fiji is […]

On Saturday, a French model scout and alleged procurer of victims for wealthy sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his Paris jail cell. Jean-Luc Brunel, 76, reportedly hanged himself while awaiting trial for raping underage girls—an end stunningly similar to his predator pal. Thysia Huisman, who came forward to accuse Brunel of rape in 2019 and has pushed for his prosecution in France, told The Daily Beast she was “in shock” and “angry” that the criminal case she’s spent years fighting for was abruptly over. “I had my mind set on the trial one day and that he would stand […]

On Tuesday, San Francisco voters will decide whether to oust three progressive school board members in an unprecedented recall election sparked in part because of the district’s slow reopening of schools during COVID-19, and its $125 million budget deficit. But some parents and educators are calling the effort a power grab by billionaires and right-leaning Silicon Valley investors, some of whom champion charter schools or oppose post-vaccine mask mandates. The campaign, which kicked off early last year with two organizers appearing on conservative firebrand Glenn Beck’s radio show, targets board members Gabriela López, Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins. “Everyone who is […]

California litigator Michael Avenatti, who in 2018 earned stardom as President Trump’s legal foil, was convicted on Friday of stealing funds from adult film actress Stormy Daniels, the client who made him famous. A Manhattan federal jury found Avenatti guilty of single counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection to his pocketing nearly $300,000 of Daniels’ advance for her memoir, Full Disclosure. He now faces up to 22 years in prison. Jurors began deliberating Wednesday afternoon and announced they had a verdict just before 3 p.m. on Friday. The decision arrived hours after the jury sent a note […]

When Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown published her book on the Jeffrey Epstein case last year, she dedicated it to Courtney Wild and other victims of the wealthy sex-trafficker. Now Wild and fellow accuser Haley Robson are suing the star journalist, whose 2018 Herald series about Epstein’s shady plea deal for abusing scores of girls led to his indictment. The duo allege she defamed them in her book. In a stunning lawsuit, Wild and Robson say Brown published “false and defamatory statements” in her 2021 book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, despite allegedly knowing the information wasn’t correct, […]

Last week, Britain’s Prince Andrew fired his latest salvo in his litigation with Virginia Giuffre, demanding a jury trial in the sex-abuse lawsuit she filed against him. Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex ring, sued the embattled royal in August. Now lawyers for Andrew and Giuffre will soon question several witnesses under oath—including Shukri Walker, a British woman who says she saw Andrew and then-17-year-old Giuffre at a London nightclub—and Robert Olney, a former royal attendant to the Duke of York. On Monday, new court filings revealed the Manhattan federal judge in the case has officially requested assistance from authorities […]

For the better part of 2018, adult film star Stormy Daniels and her flashy California litigator Michael Avenatti were flying high as an unlikely tag-team bent on taking down President Trump. They hijacked the national news cycle after suing the president over an NDA that silenced Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, forbidding her from speaking about her alleged sexcapade with Trump a decade before. They’d also taunted Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen with a defamation suit, and stole the show at his court hearing after the feds raided his home. And when Daniels was set to release a memoir, she […]

Michael Avenatti, the high-octane litigator who represented adult film star Stormy Daniels in her infamous “hush money” lawsuit against then-President Donald Trump, was in debt and “desperate” for cash when he stole part of the actress’ book advance, federal prosecutors said at his fraud trial Monday. During opening statements, Manhattan prosecutors said the publisher of Daniels memoir agreed to pay her $800,000 but that Avenatti siphoned $300,000 of it by forging her signature on a letter to the publishing house. Avenatti was “desperate for money” and his Newport Beach law firm was mired in debt when he took secret measures to […]

As billionaire Leon Black fights a former model’s rape lawsuit in a Manhattan court, he’s roping in other high-profile men and claiming someone secretly “bankrolled” her case in order to stage a “coup” at his former firm, Apollo Global Management. Last June, Guzel Ganieva filed a defamation suit against Black, the 70-year-old friend and client of wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, claiming he sexually abused her for years and coerced her into signing a non-disclosure agreement to keep her silent about the assaults. Black, who denies any wrongdoing and says they had a consensual affair, is attempting to subpoena Ganieva’s phone […]

At Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial—where the former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein was convicted on five counts related to child sex-trafficking—a victim named Carolyn testified that a second woman also arranged for her to be molested by the perverted multimillionaire. Sarah Kellen, a former assistant to Epstein, scheduled some of her “massage” appointments at his Palm Beach lair, sent for cars to pick her up and once took nude photographs of her for the pedophile, Carolyn said. “[Kellen] called and said she was calling in regards to Mr. Epstein,” she testified, “and that I would get paid $500 to $600 if she […]

Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite accused of procuring girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s teen “massage” ring, was convicted on five of six charges related to child sex-trafficking on Wednesday. The Manhattan federal jury delivered the verdict after six days of deliberations. The decision arrived four days after Christmas, which also marks the socialite’s 60th birthday. From the 1990s and onward, Maxwell’s romance, and later her close companionship, with the multimillionaire Epstein made headlines, particularly in the British tabloids which knew her as the youngest daughter of disgraced British media baron Robert Maxwell. Those ties would be her undoing decades later when Epstein was […]

When Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial opened, one of her defense lawyers declared: “This case is about memory, manipulation, and money.” And as the criminal proceedings came to a close, Manhattan federal prosecutors seized on the phrase and adopted it as their own. “Let me be clear,” assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said during a roughly two-hour summation on Monday. “Maxwell made her own choices. She was a grown woman who knew exactly what she was doing.” Moe told jurors that Maxwell manipulated underage girls to make them feel special before delivering them to a middle-aged man: her former boyfriend and “partner […]

A former executive assistant to Ghislaine Maxwell testified at the British socialite’s sex-trafficking trial on Thursday, telling jurors she “highly respected” and “looked up to” the accused accomplice to Jeffrey Epstein. Cimberly Espinosa, 55, was in her late 20s in 1996 when she began working as a legal assistant to Epstein’s longtime in-house lawyers, Darren Indyke and Jeffrey Schantz. But one month into her employment, Espinosa says, she filled in for an assistant to Maxwell and the heiress was so impressed that she enlisted Espinosa full-time. “I learned a lot from her,” Espinosa told jurors, adding, “I attribute my career as […]

During a trip to Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, Annie Farmer was frozen in fear. It was spring of 1996, and Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, aged 43 and 35 respectively, had chosen to spend a weekend with a teenage girl—alone. Farmer, then 16, says she agreed to let Maxwell give her a massage in the middle of what quickly was becoming a weekend in hell, and that the British socialite groped her breasts without warning. The next day, Epstein crawled into the girl’s bed and demanded to cuddle. Farmer said she knew Epstein’s Zorro Ranch was isolated and […]

When the feds raided Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2019, they unearthed a trove of evidence including binders of CDs containing tens of thousands of photographs. Some of those never-before-seen images—released by federal prosecutors this week—depicted happier days of the late sex-trafficker’s romance with his alleged accomplice, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of helping him groom and abuse four underage girls from 1994 through 2004. The exhibits contain several snapshots showing Maxwell giving Epstein a foot rub, seemingly on his private jet. Other photos reveal the couple kissing or embracing, riding a motorbike, lounging on a patio, and relaxing […]

A Florida victim of Jeffrey Epstein who was sexually abused up to three times a week for years testified on Tuesday that his alleged collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell, routinely called her to schedule “massages” and even invited the girl to the financier’s private island. “Carolyn,” who is Minor Victim-4 in the criminal case against Maxwell, says Epstein molested her more than 100 times between 2001 and 2004, and that several other people in the late sex offender’s orbit knew what was happening within his Palm Beach mansion. She was only 14 when the abuse began. Each time she visited, she received a […]

British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell will stand trial Monday on charges she procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex ring—more than a year after her arrest at a luxury hideout in New Hampshire, and two years after the financier killed himself in a Manhattan jail. The 59-year-old socialite is the only member of Epstein’s inner circle thus far to face a criminal indictment in the wake of his death despite allegations from victims who say she wasn’t alone in facilitating his rampant sexual abuse. She faces eight total counts including sex trafficking of children and sex-trafficking conspiracy. Two perjury charges will be […]

Last Thursday, Christopher Collins called Texas police from a gym and asked them to conduct a welfare check. His wife, Yuanhua Liang, had texted him about an intruder in their house, he claimed, and now he couldn’t reach her. The 41-year-old husband—a freelance graphic designer and financial adviser, according to his various social media profiles—allegedly told cops he didn’t rush home because Liang could be paranoid at times. When Collins met Harris County deputies at the couple’s residence, they found Liang shot to death in the living room. Now Collins is charged with her murder, and investigators say he “went to […]

The family of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has filed a complaint with the United Nations just before her trial in connection to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring and is requesting help in securing her release from jail. On Monday, human-rights lawyers François Zimeray and Jessica Finelle announced they were working on behalf of Maxwell’s siblings and filed an action with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The document alleges Maxwell, 59, is subject to “inhumane and degrading” conditions in the Brooklyn lockup that’s held her since her arrest, and that her “ongoing demonization in the media” has jeopardized her right to […]

Ghislaine Maxwell appeared to be in noticeably high spirits this week when she returned to court for jury selection for her sex-trafficking trial. The 59-year-old socialite sported a black turtleneck sweater and gray slacks, since the law prohibits jurors from seeing criminal defendants in chains or prison garb. Maxwell shared laughs, hugs and close conversations with her attorneys, and turned in her seat on Thursday to blow a flurry of kisses to her sister Isabel, who sat in the gallery. Leah Saffian, a California attorney and friend of Maxwell, was also in the front row this week. She declined to comment. […]

Prosecutors in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal case have asked a judge to ban the British socialite from claiming that she too was a victim of wealthy sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as a possible defense at trial, new court filings reveal. Maxwell, 59, is charged with grooming and abusing four underage girls for Epstein, her former boyfriend and employer, in the 1990s and early 2000s. She has pleaded not guilty and will face a Manhattan federal jury later this month. In an unredacted motion filed Friday, the government argued that Judge Alison Nathan should forbid “the defense from making the baseless argument” that Maxwell […]

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and accused accomplice to wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was never offered a plea deal related to her sex-trafficking case, prosecutors said on Monday. Maxwell, 59, appeared in Manhattan federal court for a lengthy hearing that addressed issues over witness testimony and proposed exhibits ahead of her trial date later this month—including the Little Black Book of famous names and addresses which Epstein’s former butler claims he snatched from the financier’s Palm Beach lair. When U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan asked Maxwell whether the government and her lawyer were correct in stating a plea bargain […]

The family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos invested nearly $100 million in Theranos after a marathon meeting with the biotech startup’s founder Elizabeth Holmes, a director of the billionaire’s family office testified on Tuesday. Lisa Peterson, who manages private equity investments for the DeVos clan’s RDV Corporation, told jurors at Holmes’ California wire fraud trial that she and members of the Michigan-based dynasty flew to Silicon Valley in 2014 to meet Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the company’s former president and Holmes’ ex-boyfriend. Peterson testified that Holmes was “hand picking” uber-wealthy families to invest in the Palo Alto company, which […]

The family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos invested nearly $100 million in Theranos after a marathon meeting with the biotech startup’s founder Elizabeth Holmes, a director of the billionaire’s family office testified on Tuesday. Lisa Peterson, who manages private equity investments for the DeVos clan’s RDV Corporation, told jurors at Holmes’ California wire fraud trial that she and members of the Michigan-based dynasty flew to Silicon Valley in 2014 to meet Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the company’s former president and Holmes’ ex-boyfriend. Peterson testified that Holmes was “hand picking” uber-wealthy families to invest in the Palo Alto company, which […]

A Georgia man has filed a lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, claiming the late sex-trafficker sold him a Gulfstream jet in the weeks before his 2019 arrest without disclosing that the aircraft was used in a “criminal enterprise.” Thomas Huff claims that JEGE LLC, the company Epstein once controlled and which owns the plane, has been “damaged by the stigma” connected to sex offender. “JEGE’s customers, some of which are very well known to the public, are tracked, surveilled, and reported to the press for using, what they believed to be Jeffrey Epstein’s company,” states the federal suit filed in Atlanta […]

On Wednesday, a hedge-fund tycoon published an “open letter” in the newspaper of the tiny Idaho town where he’s running for mayor, delivering an ultimatum to a retired doctor raising questions about his candidacy. Perry Boyle, a longtime executive at billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and now-defunct SAC Capital Advisers, left an affluent corner of Connecticut in 2019 to retire to picturesque Ketchum. It’s a community with an affordable housing crisis so dire that officials contemplated creating a tent city for nurses and service workers. In his paid advertisement, Boyle called out 79-year-old Gary Hoffman—a physician who owns two area […]

A new accuser has filed a class-action lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, claiming the late sex-trafficker raped and assaulted her numerous times from 2017 through 2019—including at his homes in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the months leading up to his arrest—after interviewing her on Skype and promising to aid her career. The woman, a Russian national referred to as Jane Doe, also claims Epstein gave her a tour of his Palm Beach mansion and showed off a broken guitar, a gift he claimed was from his longtime friend, the disgraced director Woody Allen. Doe’s complaint, filed in Manhattan […]

Rolf Kaestel has served 40 years of a life sentence for robbing an Arkansas taco eatery using a toy water gun. Now the 70-year-old inmate will finally be set free. Last week, the Arkansas parole board voted unanimously to release Kaestel following Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s decision this summer to commute his sentence. As The Daily Beast reported, no one was injured in the 1981 stickup, during which Kaestel snatched $264 from the restaurant’s register before bolting to a getaway car. When Kaestel exits his prison cell at a Gunnison, Utah, lockup for the final time, the victim of his crime will […]

At Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ trial on Tuesday, an Arizona woman testified that she could have terminated her pregnancy because of a faulty blood test she received from the Silicon Valley startup’s finger-prick system. Brittany Gould, a medical assistant in Mesa, was the first patient to take the stand in Holmes’ wire fraud case in San Jose, California. Prosecutors say Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and Theranos’ former president, defrauded patients and investors by claiming their devices could run scores of tests with just a few drops of blood. Those tests, however, were often inaccurate, and in some cases, […]

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her ex-boyfriend and former business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani exchanged lovey-dovey—and sometimes paranoid—texts while trying to tackle problems with their startup’s blood-testing devices, newly released messages show. “Really want to be home so bad. Feel like I an [sic] living another life,” Balwani, then president of the Silicon Valley startup, wrote in November 2013, while he was visiting his mother in the hospital. “I know,” Holmes replied. “So strange not coming home to you.” According to an exhibit filed Tuesday in Holmes’ wire fraud trial underway in San Jose, California, Balwani later added: “We need to […]

Britain’s Prince Andrew, who reportedly darted to Scotland to dodge being served with a lawsuit from a victim of Jeffrey Epstein, has in fact already been served with the papers, lawyers say. Court records filed Friday indicate a process server left a complaint for the Duke of York—a longtime pal of the late sex-offender Epstein and who is facing accusations of abuse himself—in August at the Royal Lodge Windsor, the mansion he shares with ex-wife Fergie. Weeks earlier, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a survivor of Epstein’s underage sex ring, filed the lawsuit against Andrew in New York. She alleges the 61-year-old royal […]

In the summer of 2015, deputy U.S. Marshal Dawn Mahoney went to her supervisor for help. A gay woman and Army vet, Mahoney claimed some of her male colleagues in the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force were harassing her relentlessly, and that the office culture was akin to the movie Animal House, but with guns. At one point, she claimed, someone in her office in Central Islip, New York, urinated in a cookie jar on her desk. In another episode, a task force member allegedly gazed at her body and said, “Look at you, you sexy bitch,” before grabbing […]

A federal judge in California has granted disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti a mistrial in a case accusing him of siphoning millions from his own clients. On Tuesday, Judge James V. Selna ruled that federal prosecutors in Santa Ana failed to turn over evidence to Avenatti before his wire fraud trial—including data from a law firm bookkeeping software program called Tabs, or Tax and Bookkeeping Solutions. Selna set a new trial date for Oct. 12, along with a pretrial conference for Sept. 2, according to Meghann Cuniff, a local reporter live-tweeting Avenatti’s second of four criminal trials. Outside the courthouse, Avenatti told […]

Last Saturday around 2 a.m., a pair of deputies in a tiny California city responded to a report of domestic violence at an apartment complex. But instead of finding the 911 caller or their alleged suspect, the cops tased, pepper-sprayed and beat a Native American man and shot and killed his dog. The disturbing encounter, captured in bystander video and body cam footage released by the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office, has sparked outrage and divided residents in Bishop, a city of about 3,700 people near the Nevada border. George Barlow, 32, was at an empty gas station on the Bishop Paiute […]

Wade Linford still remembers the days in the mid-2000s when he built his home from scratch. The 40-year-old building contractor can smell the sawdust from when his brother, Auston, and father, Keith, milled the trees and seasoned the wood. Neighbors in his tiny community of Indian Falls, California, also helped craft the two-story structure, beam by beam. “We toiled over that house,” Wade told The Daily Beast. “Every board was cut out of the forest, sanded, and oiled.” It was a place abutting Plumas National Forest where family gathered, a son was born, and dogs and loved ones were buried. They […]

The son of a Texas billionaire is waging a messy legal battle against his late dad’s alleged “mistress,” accusing the Los Angeles socialite of extortion in hopes of avoiding paying her the millions she claims she’s owed by his father’s estate. Bradford Phillips, son of Dallas real-estate developer Gene E. Phillips, filed a pair of lawsuits against Marsana de Monserat in California and Texas early this year. The suits came after De Monserat demanded $2.6 million in refinancing proceeds from one Florida rental property she owned but had allowed the late Phillips to manage, along with $1.7 million from a promissory […]

Billionaire Leon Black is fighting back against a former model’s sexual abuse allegations, claiming he was the victim of an “extortion” scheme and that his accuser “professed her love and appreciation” for him “while regularly extracting millions of dollars” for her own rent, furniture, tuition, vacations, and more. In June, Guzel Ganieva filed a lawsuit claiming Black—perhaps best known lately as a former friend to Jeffrey Epstein and for his ties to the Museum of Modern Art—coerced her into signing a nondisclosure agreement to stay silent about his years of “sexual violence” toward her. The 69-year-old private-equity mogul, in response, released […]

“Woman Passes Gas in Store, Then Pulls Knife.” It was 2018, and as she watched her newspaper’s monitor broadcasting the site’s leading stories, Miami Herald scribe Julie K. Brown seemed to be getting her clock cleaned by a goofy crime story. She didn’t realize the impact her work was about to make. That morning, the Herald had published Brown’s three-part investigation into wealthy sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s lenient plea deal—brokered in 2008 in secret from his victims, who didn’t learn of the agreement until it was too late. It was a bombshell series that sparked a seismic shift in the public’s awareness […]

Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti, who skyrocketed to fame for representing adult film star Stormy Daniels in her hush money suit against former President Trump, was sentenced Thursday to two-and-a-half years in prison for trying to extort Nike for millions of dollars. Avenatti cried in court as he gave a short speech, thanking his family and admitting that, “I and I alone have destroyed my career, my relationships, my life, and there is no doubt that I deserve to pay, have paid, and will pay a further price for what I have done.” But Judge Paul G. Gardephe was unmoved, calling Avenatti’s […]

Rolf Kaestel has served 40 years of a life sentence for robbing an Arkansas taco restaurant with a toy water gun. He took $264, no one was hurt and, as The Daily Beast reported in May, even the victim has advocated for the 70-year-old inmate’s release. Now Kaestel is getting that chance at freedom, something he’s spent decades fighting to obtain. On Thursday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced his intent to commute Kaestel’s sentence, which a Sebastian County jury delivered in 1981 after convicting him of aggravated robbery. Kaestel, then a drifter with a criminal record, was 29 years old. As we […]

As billionaire Leon Black battled a public backlash over his $158 million in payments to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, one of his Dartmouth associates was elected this spring to the boards of both his private-equity firm Apollo Global Management and the Museum of Modern Art, where he’s riding out his last term as chairman amid scandal. Pamela Joyner, a prominent San Francisco-based philanthropist and art collector, was voted into Apollo’s board in January—just before Black announced he would step down as CEO—and MoMA’s board of trustees soon after, The Daily Beast has learned. In late March, Black revealed he was giving up […]

On a Sunday night in February 1981, Rolf Kaestel robbed an Arkansas taco restaurant using a toy water gun. No one was injured in the stickup. He stole $264—and was sentenced to life in prison. Forty years later, Kaestel is still behind bars for aggravated robbery. His penalty is unusually severe, supporters say, for a crime without injuries or even a physical altercation. This year could be the 70-year-old inmate’s final shot at redemption, a taste of freedom for however many good years he has left. Kaestel’s fate now rests in the hands of Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who denied him […]

For four years, the ex-wife of a Russian oligarch has chased an unpaid $600-million divorce settlement—even suing her 27-year-old son for helping his billionaire dad stash hundreds of millions of dollars in assets out of her reach. Now, in the latest twist in this family drama, Tatiana Akhmedova has hired veterans of the Special Boat Service—the British equivalent of the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6—to seize the $500-million superyacht purchased by her ex-husband, Farkhad Akhmedov, a 66-year-old oil and gas tycoon and ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The high-stakes maneuver follows the London High Court’s recent ruling that Tatiana’s son, […]

In the latest legal spat between Ghislaine Maxwell and the feds, lawyers for the alleged accomplice to Jeffrey Epstein suggest she got a “black eye” from shielding her face from the harsh lighting inside her jail cell at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. The British socialite and accused sex-trafficker has been denied bail four times since her arrest for grooming minors last July. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Maxwell’s request to be released on bond. At oral arguments the day before, her lawyer David Oscar Markus complained about her conditions in the federal lockup, claiming […]

Former President Donald Trump is one step closer to testifying in a New York lawsuit filed by a group of protesters who claim his bodyguards assaulted them in 2015. As The Daily Beast previously reported, the activists had gathered outside Trump Tower to protest the Republican candidate’s derogatory comments on Mexican immigrants. On that September day, soon after the demonstrators assembled on Fifth Avenue outside the skyscraper, several members of Trump’s security team allegedly “violently attacked” them and destroyed their protest banners before a crowd that included reporters. While president, Trump had tried to quash a subpoena that would force him […]

A Manhattan federal judge has refused to dismiss charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of grooming underage girls for sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. On Friday, Judge Alison Nathan denied the British socialite’s various motions to toss the original indictment against her. Nathan also ruled that Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami—which shielded him and his alleged co-conspirators from federal charges—does not apply to Maxwell. “No evidence suggests anyone promised Epstein that the NPA would bar the prosecution of his co-conspirators in other districts. Absent such a promise, it does not matter who did or did not […]

Ghislaine Maxwell, the accused accomplice of wealthy sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, claims she was forced to shut down her dubious oceans charity because of “cancel culture,” according to a new website from her family. As the British socialite fights new federal sex-trafficking charges, and the government’s claims that she refuses to clean her Brooklyn jail cell or flush her toilet, her siblings are publicizing RealGhislaine.com as part of their drive to paint her as a wrongfully-accused criminal justice advocate who is languishing behind bars. “Ghislaine is extremely grateful for the hundreds of beautiful and supportive letters from strangers some of whom write […]

Manhattan federal prosecutors have hit back after a lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell complained about her “detrimental” conditions last month, saying in a letter filed Tuesday that the real problem seems to be her failure to clean her “very dirty” cell and flush her toilet. The letter came in response to a complaint sent to a federal judge in February by a lawyer for the British socialite. Maxwell—who faces trial for grooming and trafficking girls for multimillionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—claimed she was forced to drink dirty tap water and eat unheated meals and that a guard “physically abused” her during a […]

Warning: The article contains descriptions of sexual violence that some viewers may find disturbing. A new lawsuit filed against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate claims that the sex-trafficker and his gal pal Ghislaine Maxwell “brutally” raped a young Muslim woman in Florida in 2008 and afterward threatened “that she would end up in the pond to be consumed by the alligators if she told anyone about the crimes committed against her.” In her complaint filed this month, Jane Doe says that the British socialite Maxwell recruited her and groomed her for Epstein, sending her expensive gifts and assuring her the financier “could get […]

When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited Rochester to survey flood damage in May 2017, one of his staffers asked resident Sherry Vill if he could visit her house. Lake Ontario’s rising water levels had flooded homes on Vill’s street in the suburb of Greece, and her family agreed to let the governor inside. But shortly after he arrived, Cuomo allegedly pulled Vill toward him and grabbed her face to kiss both her cheeks—a moment captured on video by her son, who posted a still image on Facebook. Cuomo also allegedly told Vill she was beautiful. “I felt that he was […]

Ghislaine Maxwell, accused accomplice to sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, is facing more allegations of grooming underage girls for the sick pedophile. In a superseding indictment filed Monday, Manhattan federal prosecutors added a fourth unidentified minor victim to their case—and two new sex-trafficking charges against Maxwell. The complaint says the girl was 14 when the British socialite allegedly began grooming her for Epstein, who abused her from 2001 to 2004. In a letter to Judge Alison Nathan, federal prosecutors said a Manhattan grand jury returned the superseding indictment on Monday. According to the indictment, Maxwell met the girl, referred to as “Minor Victim-4,” […]

For a third time, a Manhattan federal judge has denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s request for bail before her trial in connection to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. In a ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan wrote: “If the Court could conclude that any set of conditions could reasonably assure the Defendant’s future appearance, it would order her release. Yet while her proposed bail package is substantial, it cannot provide such reasonable assurances.” The 59-year-old socialite is charged with grooming, recruiting and abusing underage girls for Epstein, her former boyfriend and employer, in the 1990s. Maxwell pleaded not guilty and has long […]

Eccentric antivirus millionaire John McAfee is facing federal charges again—this time, over a pair of alleged cryptocurrency schemes that allegedly raked in more than $13 million for himself and his accused band of scammers, including his ex-security guard turned CEO. Manhattan federal prosecutors announced Friday that McAfee, 75, was being held in Spain on separate criminal charges by the Department of Justice’s tax division, while authorities cuffed his alleged accomplice, 40-year-old Jimmy Gale Watson Jr., in Texas. It’s the latest problem for the eponymous founder of the antivirus software company. In October, McAfee was indicted for federal tax evasion and willfully […]

A new fundraising arm for accused Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is raising questions about how his previous legal team spent hundreds of thousands in donations, as it battles PayPal and other platforms that are shutting down its new accounts. FreeKyleUSA has fired Twitter salvos at Rittenhouse’s former lawyers—California litigator John Pierce and pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood—for weeks, demanding an accounting of funds from Wood’s FightBack Foundation. (Pierce resigned from FightBack in September amid scrutiny over his embattled law firm, which was millions in debt. Lin himself is facing a lawsuit from former partners, who accuse him of failing to pay them […]

At 11 years old, Olivia Nguyen was the oldest of three siblings. She was smart and sassy, and loved making playlists with songs from Coldplay and U2, music written before she was born. Her brother, Edison, 8, was quiet and articulate. He loved the color green and taking photos of anything in his path, especially sunsets. Their youngest sibling, Colette, turned everything into a song. Nicknamed Coco, the 5-year-old was known for donning sparkly pink dresses and shoes. Early Tuesday morning, the children and their grandmother, 75-year-old Loan Le, lost their lives when their Texas home erupted in flames. The fatal […]

When Arian Noma ran for prosecutor in a rural Washington county in 2018, he was a newcomer who vowed to stop the over-prosecution of crimes and seek bail only when necessary. Standing inside the wood-paneled Okanogan Grange, Noma gripped a microphone and told the crowd, “If you want to make change, I’m your candidate. If you want things to remain the same, I think you know who to vote for.” “As we continue to make regulations and over-regulate our citizens nationwide, over-criminalize everything … before you know it, we all have badges of conviction,” Noma said. “And if you don’t have […]

A transgender woman in upstate New York is suing the local police and sheriff’s office for allegedly mocking her gender identity, using excessive force, and sexually assaulting her during a strip search at the Jefferson County jail. DeAnna LeTray, 54, says Watertown cops hauled her to the police station after responding to a domestic dispute in September 2017, and that corrections officers harassed and abused her throughout the night. One officer allegedly called her “a man dressed like a woman” and warned, “We can’t let you walk the streets looking and dressed like that,” before arresting her for criminal mischief in […]

Victims of Jeffrey Epstein continue to come forward in new lawsuits against his $400-million estate, including one woman who says the creepy financier lured her into his sex ring after interviewing her for a job on Skype. Last week, three women filed separate complaints in Manhattan federal court against the co-executors of Epstein’s estate, each seeking at least $25 million in damages. One woman, referred to as Jane Doe XX, says Epstein started abusing her in 2014, when she was 24. In a lawsuit filed Dec. 31, the woman says she met Epstein through one of his associates, who scheduled a […]

Tom Lundborg was a teenager in the late 1970s when he worked under accused Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner, who was a technician for an alarm company. Back then, Lundborg’s father owned A.C.E. Alarms, a firm providing commercial and residential burglar systems, but was incapacitated in a car wreck. That left a young Lundborg and 20-something “Tony” Warner to run the business, and they drove to different sites to do burglar alarm installations and service calls. “I worked with Tony as his helper. I kind of looked up to him. He was kind of a hippie. Had long hair, a Magnum, […]

A federal judge has again denied bail for Jeffrey Epstein’s accused accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who faces trial for allegedly recruiting and grooming girls for the financier. In a ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan wrote that “none of the new information” Maxwell provided to the court “has a material bearing on the Court’s determination that she poses a flight risk.” “The Court also finds that the Defendant’s proposed bail conditions would not reasonably assure her appearance at future proceedings,” Nathan added. Earlier this month, Maxwell proposed a $30-million bail package backed by her siblings and supposed husband, who is […]

Before Scott Renninger was arrested for allegedly putting a hit on his wife, prosecutors say he told a phony assassin he wanted her to “disappear” so he wouldn’t have to endure their divorce proceedings. The Ohio man claimed he’d watched “a thousand hours” of true crime shows and knew how suspects got caught. “With no body, they can’t charge you,” Renninger is said to have told an associate, who grew concerned about the Uniontown father-of-four’s conversations about killing his estranged spouse and tipped off authorities. The FBI had this acquaintance set Renninger up with a pretend hitman, and Renninger devised the […]

In late 2019, a pregnant Turkish woman obtained a tourist visa for American travel and told officials she’d stay at a New York City hotel. But instead, federal prosecutors say, she moved into a Long Island “birth house,” had her baby at a local hospital, and left the country after applying for a U.S. passport for her child. The woman was one of about 100 Turkish nationals to fraudulently obtain citizenship for their babies through a Suffolk County “birth tourism” scheme, which authorities say bilked Medicaid out of $2.1 million in benefits. On Wednesday, the feds arrested five Long Island residents […]

An Arizona man was sentenced to six years behind bars Tuesday for smuggling pregnant women into America as part of an illegal adoption scheme that operated in three states and helped to bankroll his luxurious lifestyle. Paul Petersen, a Republican former Maricopa County assessor and adoption lawyer, pleaded guilty in June to paying expectant mothers from the Republic of the Marshall Islands—a chain of islands between Hawaii and the Philippines—to have babies in the U.S. and give them up to adoptive families in exchange for thousands of dollars. During his sentencing hearing, however, Petersen denied knowing that his employees in the […]

Ashley Biggs was working as a Domino’s delivery driver when she stopped at an Ohio business one summer night in 2012. An Army vet and mother of a young daughter, Biggs had no idea this company was closed. Or that the caller who had ordered the large half-mushroom, half-pepperoni pie used an alias. The midnight delivery was just a ruse to lure Biggs, 25, to her death. At the time, Biggs was in the middle of a heated custody battle with Chad Cobb, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her 7-year-old child. When Biggs arrived, Cobb was waiting in the parking […]

Two brothers in Maryland are charged in a $5-million scheme that involved a network of fraudsters who romanced more than 200 victims—many of them “elderly and isolated”—to siphon funds from their savings and retirement accounts. David Annor, 27, and Lesley Annor, 22, of Gaithersburg, were arrested for money laundering last week. The feds say their co-conspirators courted the victims, ages 38 to 83, using a roster of phony identities with back stories fit for a soap opera. One man claimed to be a military service member in Afghanistan who needed tens of thousands of dollars for surgery. Another said he was […]

Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell often took photographs of topless European “girls” at the sex-trafficker’s Palm Beach mansion, according to newly unsealed testimony of the financier’s former butler. Juan Alessi, once Epstein’s house manager in Florida, testified in a 2016 deposition that Maxwell—who now faces trial for Epstein’s sex ring—was an avid photographer and that most of her images were of bare-chested, foreign young women in Epstein’s orbit. “I know that she went out and took pictures in the pool, because later I would see them at the desk or at the house; and nude, 99.9 percent of the time […]

The lawyer for Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is on a Twitter tear again—this time, urging supporters to “dust off those Second Amendment rights” and not let China “steal” the election from lame-duck President Trump. “Time to dust off those Second Amendment rights. Founders put it there for a very specific reason,” attorney John Pierce tweeted Wednesday night. In another tweet, Pierce wrote, “Trump won in a landslide. The triad of Big Tech, mainstream media and the CCP is trying to steal it. Obvious. Do not let them. Do not give an inch. Fight over every single hedgerow. Nothing less than our […]

The Department of Justice held a meeting with victims of Jeffrey Epstein today to give them a first look at an investigative report into the financier’s secret 2007 plea deal. One victim’s lawyer told The Daily Beast the feds determined Miami federal prosecutors didn’t violate any laws or policy when they declined to prosecute Epstein. About 30 victims and their lawyers met at the FBI’s office in Miramar, Florida, for a three-hour briefing on the DOJ’s probe into the controversial nonprosecution agreement that shielded Epstein’s accomplices from a federal indictment in Florida. Jack Scarola, a lawyer for Epstein victims, told The […]

One night in October 2011, a nameless killer invaded the Indiana home of a beloved professor and his wife and brutally attacked them as they waited for their teenage children to return home from a marching band competition. James Miller, a 58-year-old biology professor at Goshen College, died of blunt force injuries and stab wounds after running to his wife’s rescue. Linda Miller, who was stabbed 23 times while getting ready for bed, survived the assault. But police didn’t name a suspect until 2018, when they arrested Winston Earl Corbett, who was 16 years old at the time of James’ slaying. […]

American cities are preparing for civil unrest during and after Election Day, as the specter of turmoil looms over a nation divided and President Trump reportedly plans to declare a premature victory Tuesday night if he’s “ahead,” despite uncounted ballots. Some urban areas readying for chaos include Minneapolis, where clashes erupted this summer after the killing of George Floyd, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse fatally shot two protesters, and injured a third, during a fiery demonstration against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. The city of Kenosha—where Trump planned one final campaign rally Monday night—said it would install police […]

This is a developing story… The long-secret testimony of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has finally been made public. Four years after her confidential deposition in one victim’s lawsuit, Maxwell’s answers to under-oath questioning could provide a deeper look into Epstein’s trafficking ring ahead of her criminal trial scheduled for next year. On Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the unsealing of Maxwell’s 2016 deposition from a now-settled defamation suit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who claims Maxwell and Epstein trafficked her to powerful men for years. Maxwell, 58, fought to keep the 418-page transcript secret, saying it […]