New Mexico's attorney general sued Jeffrey Epstein's lawyer and accountant Wednesday, accusing them of helping conceal the disgraced financier's sex trafficking operation at his sprawling ranch in the state.
The lawsuit seeks to stop attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn from accepting any payments from Epstein's estate, estimated at more than $100 million.
Indyke worked as Epstein’s attorney for roughly two decades. Both he and Kahn have testified in Congress that they did not know about Epstein’s abuse, though New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has a different view.
He said Indyke and Kahn "stand to benefit substantially” from Epstein's estate unless a court intervenes.
"Those resources rightfully belong in the hands of survivors,” Torrez said, referring to victims of Epstein’s abuse.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 in a federal jail in New York City, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Epstein’s former girlfriend and close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges in New York. Witness testimony at Maxwell’s trial alleged she and Epstein had sexually abused women at the New Mexico ranch.
Epstein purchased the ranch in Stanley, New Mexico, a sparsely populated ranching community about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Santa Fe, in 1993. He built a 26,700-square-foot mansion with a sprawling courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home, and a private airstrip and helipad.
Epstein never faced charges in New Mexico, though the state attorney general's office in 2019 confirmed that it was investigating and planned to forward its findings to federal authorities in New York. Hector Balderas, who was attorney general at the time, said the state’s outdated laws failed to protect children from abuse.
Torrez reopened the state’s investigation this year. In August, he sued the Department of Justice, accusing it of blocking the state from investigating alleged sex crimes at the ranch. The lawsuit said state prosecutors faced "sustained resistance” to the kind of information-sharing common between state and federal investigators. The Justice Department said it was not releasing some information the state requested to avoid disclosing victim-identifying information.
Also in August, a commission established by state lawmakers to investigate the allegations and whether local authorities looked the other way released a 119-page report that found that authorities repeatedly deferred to investigations in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Virgin Islands, while leaving Epstein’s offenses in New Mexico unexamined and unpunished.
The ranch was sold by Epstein’s estate in 2023 - with proceeds going toward creditors - to the family of Don Huffines, a Republican recently appointed Texas’ state comptroller.