By Francisco Alvarado, FloridaBulldog.org
Notorious New York financier and politically connected sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein violated the terms of his 2007 non-prosecution agreement five times during a two-year span after he signed the scandalous sweetheart deal.
Yet despite strong language in the agreement that a single breach of its conditions would allow the government to void the deal and “investigate and prosecute Epstein and any other individual or entity for any and all federal offenses,” the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office chose to let it go.
Instead, a top Miami prosecutor who helped negotiate the agreement sent Epstein’s team of high-powered lawyers a letter on June 15, 2009 warning them of Epstein’s repeated breaches of the agreement.
Florida Bulldog obtained the letter from the online website containing millions of pages of documents set up by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The letter and its contents have not been previously reported.
“There have been several instances of breaches by Mr. Epstein of the letter and spirit of the non-prosecution agreement, including the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing,” then-acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman wrote. “As soon as notice is provided by the United States, we are told that Mr. Epstein ‘was relying on his lawyers’ and had not intended to willfully breach the Agreement. Mr. Epstein, through those same lawyers, then undertakes a perfunctory ‘cure’ and continues to enjoy the benefit of his bargain until he decides to breach again.”
Although Sloman’s name is redacted, his title still appears on the signature line of the letter. Sloman was appointed acting U.S. Attorney on June 5, 2009, the day that his predecessor, Alex Acosta, left the position.
In a phone interview, Sloman said he could not remember specific details of the events that led to the letter and what happened after he sent it. “It was a laundry list of things he and his lawyers pulled before and after he went to [Palm Beach County] jail,” Sloman told Florida Bulldog. “I don’t remember what the exact calculus was.”
The 2007 non-prosecution agreement, generous in its terms, allowed Epstein to avoid being charged for federal sex trafficking crimes that could have sent him to life in prison, while also giving immunity to others involved in his criminal activities. Acosta approved the deal which also involved Sloman and two other then-assistant U.S. attorneys, Matthew Menchel and Anne Marie Villafana.
Acosta did not respond to phone messages and an email requesting comment. Jay Lefkowitz and Jack Goldberger, two of Epstein’s lawyers the letter is addressed to, also did not respond to requests for comment. The third attorney, Roy Black, died in 2025.
Sloman said he wanted to prosecute Epstein but defended Acosta’s decision to approve the non-prosecution agreement. “Everybody knows we didn’t lower the boom on the guy,” Sloman said. “It was a bad call, but nothing nefarious.”
THE EPSTEIN FILES
Seven years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, the federal government’s files on him existed as a sprawling, largely inaccessible paper trail that included FBI interview memos, flight records, seized photographs, emails, witness accounts and investigative material generated by agencies whose handling of Epstein’s crimes had long been shadowed by questions about his privilege, his power and selective accountability.
The non-prosecution agreement was predicated on Epstein facing state charges for his sex trafficking crimes, but it helped fuel a conspiracy theory that he had deep state protections because he was sex trafficking underage girls to some of the world’s most powerful men.
In June 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in a Florida state court to soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution as required by his federal deal. He was sentenced to 18 months in county jail. Epstein was also required to register as a sex offender and pay restitution to three dozen victims identified by the FBI.
Yet, he received special treatment, serving roughly 13 months under a work-release program that allowed him to leave the facility for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work at his office.
In 2019, a year after the Miami Herald’s investigative series, “Pervasion of Justice,” that re-examined Epstein’s sweetheart federal deal featuring new interviews with victims who came forward, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Jeffrey Epstein with sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors involving dozens of girls as young as 14. On Aug. 19, 2019, Epstein died by suicide in his cell at a New York City federal prison facility.
His co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after a New York jury found her guilty in December 2021 of five felony counts related to sex trafficking and conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors. Her transfer last year – days after meeting with now Attorney General Todd Blanche – from a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee to a minimum security prison camp in Bryan, Texas without traditional cells, guard towers or heavy fences sparked controversy and congressional scrutiny because Bureau of Prisons policy typically bars sex offenders from minimum-security camps.
In June, a Congressional oversight committee sent a letter to Todd Blanche seeking a criminal investigation into former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine, a longtime friend of Maxwell who has repeatedly downplayed a similar relationship with Epstein. A former female employee of Epstein testified before the committee that Levine sexually assaulted her during a trip to Saint Tropez in the early 2000s. Levine denied the allegation, insisting he had a “brief intimate encounter with a consenting adult” in a statement provided to various media outlets.
During the 2024 campaign and into his return to the White House, President Donald Trump and his allies helped fuel expectations that the government’s Jeffrey Epstein records would finally be released. By last summer, the Trump regime had changed its tune, blocking efforts to release all the files the held by the FBI and Department of Justice. Survivors, transparency advocates and lawmakers in both parties accused the Trump regime of slow walking a promise that had become central to the president’s campaign.
Congress eventually passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, requiring DOJ to publish the records online. The website contains more than three million pages, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The department has withheld the release of millions of additional documents claiming victim privacy, child-sex-abuse material, legal privilege and other statutory exceptions. The Sloman letter is identified as EFTA00213048 in the database.
SLOMAN’S EPSTEIN LETTER
About a year after Epstein pleaded guilty to the state prostitution charge, Sloman wrote to the financier’s lawyers Black, Goldberger and Lefkowitz, about the five warnings sent to their client about violating the non-prosecution agreement. The first breach occurred shortly after Epstein signed the agreement by missing a DOJ-imposed deadline of Oct. 26, 2007 to plead guilty to the state charges and that he begin serving his sentence no later than Jan. 4, 2008.
“From the start, and as mentioned in extensive correspondence in October and November 2007, Mr. Epstein did not use his ‘best efforts’ to enter his guilty plea and be sentenced within the time frame set by the agreement,” Sloman wrote. In addition, Epstein and his criminal defense team waited until shortly before he was set to enter his guilty plea to send federal prosecutors a draft of the state plea agreement.
“I received a copy of the proposed state agreement, which contained language that directly contradicted the non-prosecution agreement,” Sloman wrote. “A second notice of breach had to be prepared and sent to bring the state plea agreement into compliance.”
The other violations occurred after Epstein pleaded guilty and was sentenced, according to the letter. “First, Mr. Epstein’s counsel obstructed our ability to abide by our obligations to notify the victims of the outcome of the federal investigation,” Sloman wrote. “Second, Mr. Epstein refused to promptly fulfill Mr. Epstein’s obligation to secure the services of an attorney representative for the victims.”
Epstein also sought to block a subpoena for his computer equipment to be analyzed in order to identify additional victims. Epstein’s actions resulted in the third warning. The fourth warning stemmed from Epstein making false and threatening statements to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office that it would face legal repercussions from the U.S. Attorney’s Office if he was not admitted into the work release program that allowed him to leave county jail for 12 hours every day.
The South Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office learned about his work release after being accused by Epstein victims that federal prosecutors had violated laws requiring victims be notified of any developments, Sloman wrote.
The letter does not explicitly state what the fifth warning was about but noted that Sloman had a conversation about it with Lefkowitz on June 12, 2009. Epstein’s lawyer told Sloman that his client did not intend to breach the non-prosecution agreement and was “merely relying on his attorneys.”
“In light of the fact that Mr. Epstein is highly intelligent and experienced with the law and is reportedly spending more than twelve hours a day at his attorney’s office working on nothing but the litigation pending against him, this excuse will not be accepted,” Sloman wrote. “This letter is being provided to all three of you with the recommendation that you circulate it to any attorney who is acting on Mr. Epstein’s behalf.”
Sloman closed the letter by acknowledging Epstein had received a lenient deal, yet he continued to play games with federal prosecutors: “Importantly, while Mr. Epstein has continued to receive the benefit of his bargain by not facing federal prosecution, our office has not received the benefits of finality, savings of resources, or the punishment and victim restitution terms envisioned by the non-prosecution agreement.”
The non-prosecution agreement contains tough language warning Epstein, who signed it on Sept. 24, 2007, that “a breach of any one of these conditions allows the United States to elect to terminate the agreement and to investigate and prosecute Epstein and any other individual or entity for any and all federal offenses.”
Still, for reasons unknown, the U.S. elected not to act on that authority despite its findings about Epstein’s lies, threats and multiple failures to comply with the terms of his agreement.
Sloman told the Florida Bulldog he could not recall why he and the South Florida U.S. Attorney’s Office did not do more than issue Epstein five warnings. But he still defended the non-prosecution agreement.
“The decision was made that this was a uniquely state case and that it should be resolved by the state,” Sloman said. “That is what Alexander Acosta decided to do.”
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