A lawyer suing the estate of Jeffrey Epstein said Thursday her office is still inundated daily with calls from new women claiming to be victims of the dead pervert.
“My law firm literally gets a half-dozen calls a day from women,” attorney Roberta Kaplan told Manhattan federal Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman.
The statement came during a hearing between lawyers for the co-executors of Epstein’s estate — who are now fending off some 14 lawsuits — and lawyers for now-grown women who claim they were sexually assaulted as teens by the serial sexual predator.
Brad Edwards, who represents Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre, also says he predicts filing more complaints against the financier’s $577 million estate.
Much of Thursday’s hearing was devoted to a back-and-forth between plaintiffs’ attorneys and Bennet Moskowitz, the lawyer representing the estate’s co-executors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.
Moskowitz urged plaintiffs to consider ditching their lawsuits in favor of the “extraordinary opportunity” allegedly provided by a “victims compensation fund” awaiting approval in the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein’s will was filed.
Yet multiple lawyers for accusers blasted the nascent fund for being too vague or refusing to involve plaintiffs in the process.
Kaplan told the court she’d reached out to Moskowitz repeatedly about settlement and for more details about the fund but was met with “radio silence, complete radio silence.”
“These are women who want agency over their lives,” she said of her clients, who were 14, 15, 16 years old when they were allegedly abused by Epstein. “Given the way [the fund] has been created — the secret, unilateral way this has been created — we have serious doubts.”
Edwards said he saw no point in waiting for a “vague” program to be approved when he could bring one of his cases to trial by next year.
Moskowitz was unable to answer questions from Freeman regarding the fund’s details, such as how much of the estate would be designated for claims, but added that plaintiffs’ input was welcome and “nothing had been fully baked.”
Freeman urged the parties to communicate, and scheduled the next conference for Jan. 10.
Moskowitz declined to answer questions outside court.
Epstein was found dead in his cell at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in August. While an official report listed his death as a suicide, a forensic pathologist hired by his brother said the 66-year-old’s injuries were more consistent with homicidal strangulation than suicide by hanging.
Two MCC correction officers were arrested Tuesday on charges they failed to perform checks on Epstein the night he died — and falsified records claiming the contrary.
The officers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, are due back in court Monday.