The CPA and the Lawyer Who Served Jeffrey Epstein—and Control His Fortune and Secrets

 In 2016, a letter was drawn up for U.S. immigration officials with a glowing endorsement. It described “a very healthy marriage” between two women, their bond so deep they “often complete each other’s sentences.”

Its author, a New York accountant named Richard Kahn, said he had personally witnessed the women’s “passion for each other” during meetings. He had his signature notarized to make it official.

But the marriage turned out to be a sham.

Kahn prepared the letter on behalf of his longtime boss and patron, Jeffrey Epstein. The convicted sex offender was trying to secure U.S. papers for an Eastern European woman he wanted to keep in the country. The plan required a spouse. Epstein had pressured an American woman he had abused into marrying the woman—and Kahn’s letter gave it legitimacy.

Soon after, the American woman told attorney Darren Indyke that she wanted a divorce. Indyke, who had previously advised her on how to communicate with U.S. immigration officials, warned against it. He, too, worked for Epstein.

Epstein wasn’t a one-man operation. He ran a well-oiled machine, with members of his inner circle performing specific roles. Former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell recruited girls and young women whom Epstein would abuse, as did victims whom Epstein coerced into his scheme. His secretary Lesley Groff scheduled appointments.

But it was Kahn, the trusted accountant, and Indyke, the loyal lawyer, who kept the engine running for years with their financial and legal maneuvers. Indyke started working exclusively for Epstein around 1996. Kahn became Epstein’s in-house accountant in 2005.

In separate statements to The Wall Street Journal, Kahn and Indyke each said they didn’t know their boss was engaged in sex trafficking and denied being complicit in or knowingly facilitating any crimes. They said they never witnessed Epstein sexually abuse a woman and that none of the women ever reported to them they were being sexually abused.

Epstein’s sexual abuse “by all accounts occurred behind closed doors, in secluded locations, and at times when neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn was present,” said Daniel Weiner, a lawyer for Indyke. The men said they provided legal and financial services that are typical for an ultrawealthy client.

The Journal reviewed public and nonpublic court documents; settlement agreements; banking, tax and property records; and letters and emails. The reporting includes interviews with women who dealt with Indyke and Kahn as well as people who worked with the two men and others familiar with their activities.

Both Kahn and Indyke were working closely with Epstein when he was arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges. Epstein made the men co-executors of his estate, giving them the power to control access to evidence and assets currently estimated at more than $100 million.

While their boss was alive, part of their job was keeping his financial activities private. Indyke and Kahn created or were officers of entities that obscured transactions. Kahn managed the expenses, and Indyke withdrew cash in amounts that didn’t trigger federal reporting and pushed to relax travel restrictions that came with Epstein’s sex-offender status. Both explained away suspicious transactions in Epstein’s accounts when banks asked questions.

Another part of the job was dealing directly with women later revealed to have been caught in Epstein’s web. They facilitated marriages that turned out to be shams, sent payments to women who have since said they were abused and monitored the personal expenses Epstein was paying for.

Women said Kahn’s office provided cash and logged costs for things Epstein was covering—doctors’ visits and rent, as well as lingerie from Victoria’s Secret and haircuts at Frederic Fekkai. Kahn also prepared tax returns for some of the women and provided detailed spending reports on them at Epstein’s request. For about two years, Kahn and Indyke worked from offices in a New York City building where Epstein also housed women who later said they were abused.

When banks cut off Epstein over suspicious transactions, Kahn and Indyke took steps to keep Epstein afloat. Indyke withdrew $100,000 in cash for his boss in 2018, and Kahn found new firms where Epstein could open accounts.

In their statements, Kahn and Indyke said Epstein’s entities served legitimate purposes, such as employing household staff and paying expenses for aircraft. They said they didn’t hide Epstein’s involvement from banks and that any cash withdrawals were authorized and reviewed by banks. More than 90% of Epstein’s spending was related to his residences and planes, according to Kahn.

Kahn “only very rarely ever interacted with any of Epstein’s accusers” and any letter Kahn provided in support of a woman’s immigration application was provided at the request of the recipient, said Daniel Ruzumna, a lawyer for Kahn. “He had no reason to think that any woman was coerced into a forced marriage.”

Weiner, the lawyer for Indyke, said that Epstein regularly needed cash because after 2008 Epstein had limited access to credit cards, that there was nothing “inherently suspect” about Epstein’s payments to Eastern European women and that Indyke had no reason to believe that the marriages “were anything other than consensual.”

All the while, the duo were richly rewarded by Epstein. He paid them millions and gave them millions more in loans—that were never repaid. Epstein also paid out-of-pocket for perks such as covering extra healthcare expenses and children’s education.

Between 2011 and 2019, Epstein and Epstein-owned entities paid more than $16 million to Indyke and over $10 million to Kahn, “apparently far more than could reasonably be attributed to the rates of their professional services,” the U.S. Virgin Islands government said in a 2020 lawsuit against the estate. Epstein owned a private island and had some of his entities based in the U.S. territory.

After Epstein’s death in 2019, the pair were left to manage his estate and settle lawsuits brought by Epstein’s victims. The men are among the beneficiaries of a major trust that will collect his remaining assets after all claims against the estate are resolved, called the 1953 Trust. That means they stand to personally benefit from whatever is left of his fortune, potentially tens of millions of dollars each.

Although their work for Epstein has been detailed in several civil lawsuits, Kahn and Indyke have largely stayed under the radar. When federal authorities in New York were investigating Epstein and Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges, neither Indyke nor Kahn was questioned by law enforcement, according to people familiar with the investigation.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which handled the Epstein and Maxwell cases, declined to comment.

In recent months, the estate has been turning over documents, including Epstein’s 2003 birthday book and a cache of emails with prominent people, in response to a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee.

In a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting with the committee in September, some of Epstein’s victims delivered a more urgent message to lawmakers, according to people who attended: Collecting documents isn’t enough. Investigate the men controlling access to them. The women told committee members that the two men now gatekeeping access to evidence are the same ones who, in their view, helped orchestrate Epstein’s operation for decades.

After Epstein’s death, the men used their executor roles—controlling both victims’ compensation and access to records—to try to immunize themselves from personal lawsuits, according to court filings. Victims who settled with the estate had to sign a release barring them from suing Kahn, Indyke and others. The victims could request an exception—but it had to be approved by Kahn and Indyke.

“Epstein’s sex trafficking could not have operated at the scope and scale it did, for as long as it did without the services and support Indyke and Kahn provided,” said attorney David Boies, who is representing some Epstein accusers in a lawsuit against the two men filed in New York last year. “They managed the cash that fueled the sex trafficking, paid procurers like Maxwell, arranged transportation and housing for victims, concealed the sources of funds.”

Lawyers for Kahn and Indyke said they have not improperly controlled access to evidence and continue to provide documents to the House Oversight Committee as requested. All of the estate’s assets have gone to resolve claims, pay taxes or operational expenses—and have been monitored by a court-appointed special master.

They said the victims’ compensation program was voluntary and adjudicated by a neutral administrator, and that the language of the agreements was negotiated with victims’ lawyers and was designed to avoid litigation that would deplete the estate’s resources. Kahn and Indyke have also resolved more than 50 other victims’ claims outside the program, their lawyers said.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 for her role helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse underage girls. She is serving a 20-year sentence, though was moved to a lower-security facility earlier this year.

Groff, Epstein’s former secretary, hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing and has denied knowledge or involvement in Epstein’s crimes. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The lawyer and the accountant

Indyke was a recent college graduate from New York when he first met Epstein about three decades ago. He was working at a boutique Manhattan law firm called Gold & Wachtel that counted Epstein among its clients.

Within a few years, Indyke attended law school at Cornell University. When he graduated in 1991, he returned to Gold & Wachtel as an attorney, then moved to Greenberg Traurig, a large national firm.

​Around 1996, Indyke left the firm to work exclusively for Epstein, supporting his financial consulting firm. Epstein moved his business in the late 1990s from the mainland to the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the government granted him millions of dollars in tax incentives.

Early on, Epstein arranged an apartment for him at 301 E. 66th Street, where Indyke lived for about two years in the early 2000s. The building would later become infamous when it was discovered that Epstein had been housing women there that he was sexually exploiting. In their statements, Indyke and Kahn said they weren’t aware of any abuse of the building’s occupants.

“I was given an incredible opportunity and that was to go join and work closely with Mr. Epstein, who had become kind of my mentor,” Indyke would say at a 2009 hearing in USVI. “So I guess you could say I’ve been working with him as an attorney, adviser and personal representative for over 20 years now.”

Kahn’s recruitment was more transactional, according to people familiar with the events.

In 2005, Epstein was in the market for a new accountant and used a recruiting firm. He tried out three candidates and eventually chose Kahn. The accountant was a young CPA from New York who had graduated from college in 1994 and earned his master’s in taxation in 1999.

Like Indyke, Kahn dedicated himself to Epstein. He first worked as an employee of New York Strategy Group, an Epstein company. In 2008, he and fellow accountant Harry Beller established HBRK Associates Inc., a one-client firm that listed its address as the 301 E. 66th Street building used by Epstein. It was a one-bedroom apartment converted into an office. Indyke had a similar one, and their doors were across the hall from each other.

Kahn had been in the job less than a year when Epstein was arrested in 2006 on charges he was abusing girls in Florida. Kahn later told people that, as a new parent in a bad economy, he stayed on.