New Mexico reopens investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch

(NEW YORK) — Even as investigators took Jeffrey Epstein into custody in July 2019, they were already turning their attention to others in the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender’s vast orbit who might also be involved in his crimes, according to a massive new trove of files released by the Justice Department early Tuesday morning.

The fresh batch of files also add new details to the Epstein saga not previously known, including operational details that went into planning for his 2019 arrest; how some federal officials reacted to his death by suicide in jail; and images of the fake Austrian passport Epstein held under a pseudonym.

And the files included a 2020 heads up from a federal prosecutor that Trump had traveled with Epstein more than was previously known at the time.

The latest DOJ disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act includes more than 10,000 files totaling more than 10 gigabytes of material, ranging from internal government emails to investigative materials, to a blueprint of Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse used by officials executing their search.

The DOJ posted the new materials just after midnight ET on Tuesday morning, marking the latest cache of materials released under a congressional mandate. The law, which President Donald Trump signed in November, required the DOJ to release all the documents by Friday, Dec. 19, although the department has said the vetting process required to protect Epstein’s victims has slowed their delivery.

A statement from alleged victims said the DOJ “violated the law” by “failing to redact survivor identities.”

Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019. A co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking of minors and other offenses.

Investigation into potential co-conspirators

Hours after Epstein had been arrested at Teterboro Airport and his Manhattan home had been raided, investigators also sought to ramp up their pursuit of others who might also potentially be involved in his alleged crimes.

Though it has previously been reported that investigations of possible Epstein co-conspirators were a focus after his death, the new disclosures indicate that those efforts had already begun by the time he was arrested — and were in fact well underway.

“When you get a chance can you give me an update on the status of the 10 co-conspirators?” someone from the FBI’s New York office wrote in an email at 12:24 p.m. July 7, 2019 — the day after Epstein’s arrest. The reply: That contact had been made with some of the alleged accomplices, and investigators were efforting others. Most of the names are redacted; however some are not.

The documents the DOJ chose to release Tuesday do not detail the information investigators sought from these individuals, nor the basis for characterizing them as potential co-conspirators.

“Attempts were made to [redacted] and Brunel,” the update said, referring to Jean-Luc Brunel, a now-disgraced modeling agent and Epstein associate, who would be arrested the following year in Paris and charged with rape of minors over the age of 15 and sexual harassment. It’s not clear if the charges related specifically to any Epstein victim. Brunel, who maintained his innocence, was found dead by suicide in his Paris prison cell in February 2022.

“Attempts to [Ghislaine] Maxwell are being made in Boston today,” the July 7 email said.

“I do not know about Ohio contacting Wexner,” the email added — referring to Leslie Wexner, the Ohio billionaire for whom Epstein served as a longtime personal financial adviser.

Wexner has previously denied any knowledge of Epstein’s behavior and said he had cut ties with him in 2007. “I condemn his abhorrent behavior in the strongest possible terms and am sickened by the revelations I have read over the past weeks,” he said in a written statement to his foundation after Epstein’s arrest, obtained by ABC News at the time. The founder and chairman of L Brands said after Epstein’s death that he was “embarrassed” to have ever been associated with the disgraced sex offender.

Wexner has never been charged and was not identified at Maxwell’s trial as a co-conspirator.

In another email exchange, dated July 9, 2019, a member of the FBI’s Crimes Against Children Human Trafficking Unit received an update on the 10 alleged co-conspirators.

“3 have been located in FL and served GJ subpoenas; 1 in Boston, 1 in NYC, and 1 in CT were located and served,” the email said. “4 of the 10 are outstanding with attempts having been made. 1 is a wealthy business man in Ohio, a lead is being sent to CV; the remaining 3 are currently out of pocket.”

The email added that teams of special agents and prosecutors were shortly flying out to “various locations” in Florida “to interview approximately 25 victims.”

About month later, Epstein would be found dead by suicide in his New York jail cell. But his death did not halt investigations into his associates, according to the files.

In September 2019, prosecutors exchanging updates noted the investigation into Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators was “ongoing,” and that they had had conversations with several people who would cooperate in the investigation. Prosecutors later detailed a seven-page “memo on co-conspirators we could potentially charge” as well as a 86-page “co-conspirator update memo,” according to the files.

In July 2020, Maxwell would be arrested by the FBI in New Hampshire. She was charged by the Southern District of New York with conspiring to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking of a minor and other offenses. She was convicted in 2021 on five of six counts and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

No alleged co-conspirator other than Maxwell has ever been charged, and the Department of Justice said in July that there were no credible allegations that would lead to charges against others.

A heads-up about Trump’s travel

Six months after Maxwell’s arrest, prosecutors receiving Epstein-related records discovered that the onetime friend and current sitting president had in the 1990s traveled with Epstein far more than they had previously known.

“For your situational awareness, wanted to let you know that the flight records we received yesterday reflect that Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a Maxwell case,” according to the Jan. 7, 2020, email to recipients whose names and email addresses are redacted.

“In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present,” the email said. “He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric. On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [redacted]. On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case. We’ve just finished reviewing the full records (more than 100 pages of very small script) and didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road.” It’s not clear if there was any response to the message.

The flight records of Epstein’s private aircraft documents referenced in that email would later become public exhibits during Maxwell’s 2021 trial. There was no allegation raised during those proceedings that Trump’s travels on Epstein’s plane were in any way connected to the charges against Maxwell.

Prosecutors press for interview with Prince Andrew

One of the documents included is an extensive email exchange in September and October 2020 between an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York and a lawyer representing then-Prince Andrew of Britain.

In the email exchange — which took place a few months after Maxwell’s arrest — Andrew’s lawyer lays out restrictions on the manner of the interview, including Andrew only providing a signed witness statement, and the topics he would agree to discuss.

Prosecutors pushed for a live in-person or virtual interview, according to the files. Andrew’s lawyer appeared to refuse, agreeing only to written answers. In the last email of the exchange, the assistant U.S. attorney writes, “[B]ecause the written statement you propose to provide will not assist our investigation, we intend to move forward with our MLA request seeking a compelled interview of your client.” An MLA request, or Mutual Legal Assistance, is a request from one country to another for assistance in a legal matter. It’s not clear from the newly-disclosed files if prosecutors followed through on the MLA request.

The fact that Andrew, who has been stripped of his title as prince, had offered a written statement, and that the SNDY had declined that format and intended to pursue an MLA request were reported at the time — but these communications reveal an extensive inside look at the process of those negotiations.

Details of Epstein’s arrest

Meticulous planning went into the undercover operation that would ultimately take Epstein into custody, according to the newly released DOJ files.

Among the documents is an “Operations Order Form,” dated July 2, 2019 — four days before he would be arrested — that strategizes how it might all go down upon his return from overseas.

“Epstein is presently out of the country. A silent hit notification with [Customs and Border Protection] has been put into effect for his return to the US. Upon Epstein’s return to the US, CBP will detain him at an airport. Agents and NYPD detectives will coordinate with FBI Newark and CBP, then respond to effect the arrest of Epstein,” the document said.

“Once Epstein is in custody, a search warrant for his premises in New York will be sworn out,” the document said. “Agents and NYPD detectives will knock and announce their presence at the subject premises. Upon entry, the subject premises will be secured and the search warrant will be executed. Teams will then break off to conduct interviews.”

The order mentions a “tactical brief” scheduled for July 8. But agents got word Epstein’s return home was imminent, according to the files.

“We received a hit notification that our sub will be landing at Teterboro at 1720 tomorrow, 7/6/2019,” according to a July 5, 2019, email from an FBI special agent. The agent then goes on to suggest that they should plan to meet at the airport at 3:30 p.m. “in case of an early landing.”

The exchange noted Epstein used a private plane and was a “frequent flier out of Teterboro. Ideally we would like to pick him up when he arrives.” Because Epstein would be arriving on an international flight, CBP would need to initiate the arrest, the agents noted.

Also included in the documents is the arrest warrant for Epstein dated July 2, 2019, and issued by SDNY. Epstein was arrested July 6, 2019, when he landed at Teterboro.

Epstein’s alter ego, ‘Marius Fortelni’’

The new disclosure also includes several photographs of a fake Austrian passport bearing a photograph of Epstein — but in the name of Marius Robert Fortelni — who listed his occupation as “Manager” and his residence as Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

The passport was issued in 1982 and was valid until 1987. On the inside pages are stamps from airport arrivals in Paris and Nice, France, in the early 1980s as well as entry stamps for England and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

After Epstein’s arrest in 2019, prosecutors said they had discovered that passport in a safe in Epstein’s New York mansion, along with three U.S. passports, 48 loose diamonds and $70,000 in cash.

Epstein’s defense attorneys, seeking to secure bail for their client, said that two of the US passports were expired. The foreign passport, they claimed, was given to Epstein “by a friend,” and he had never used it to travel. They argued he received it in the 1980s for personal protection when traveling in the Middle East.

Internal government reaction immediately after Epstein’s death

Internal communications sent in the hours after Epstein was found unresponsive at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan in August 2019 show how some people with federal email addresses reacted to the news, with one stating that they could not understand how it happened.

“His victims deserve some sort of modicum of justice and this is not how it should have gone down,” one unidentified individual wrote.

The names and email addresses of the people who sent the messages were redacted.

“In separate news and not to be crass but Epstein! Wow. Can we still pursue forfeiture against the estate?” one of the emails said.

“We can bring a civil forfeiture against the properties IF we’re within statute, which we may not be. We’ll have to look at it, but we’ve got some time, since I’m pretty sure no one’s going to want to have that be was our immediate reaction to his suicide,” another person responded. “We can’t pursue any kind of general money judgment against the estate – there we’re out of luck.”

One person wrote in an email that it had not been a “great year” for the Bureau of Prisons in the New York area.

“It’s just slightly more awkward where he was somehow allowed to commit suicide on a second try in two weeks by a branch of our government,” the email noted.

A different message concluded with, “MCC, WTF?”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Their brand was ultra-lux real estate, and the lifestyle to match.

For more than a decade, brothers Oren and Tal Alexander built a rep of jetsetting glamour and partying at hot spots, flanked always by beautiful women.

What was actually going on behind the scenes, according to federal authorities, was criminal.

Along with a third brother, Alon, Oren and Tal Alexander were arrested in December 2024 on federal sex trafficking charges in a case that has splashed across the nation’s tabloids.

As the brothers prepare to go on trial, the case looms as a battle of he said, she said: whether, as their advocates say, their alleged behavior was simply boys partying hard —  or, as authorities allege, something far more sinister.

In a 16-page indictment, the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan says that for well over a decade, the Alexander brothers conspired to “repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault and rape dozens of women,” using the “promise of luxury experiences, travel and accommodations” as a tool “to lure and entice” and ultimately force sex.

Prosecutors have assembled a chorus of women accusers whose accounts they hope will take a jury through a journey of rendezvous, drugs and booze in places like the Hamptons, Aspen, Las Vegas and the Bahamas.

Some of the accusations date to a time before the #MeToo reckoning. The brothers could face 15 years to life in prison, if convicted on all the federal charges. Oren and Alon also face state charges in Florida. And collectively, the three are staring at dozens of civil lawsuits that remain on hold while the criminal cases proceed.

The brothers’ parents, Orly and Shlomy Alexander, maintain their sons are innocent and insist that that will become clear from the testimony in the criminal case.

“We have been living with this ordeal since allegations first surfaced in civil lawsuits and were widely amplified long before any criminal charges were brought. The impact on our family has been profound and deeply painful,” the parents said in a statement to ABC News. “We believe our sons are innocent, and that if they are judged on the evidence presented at trial — free from speculation or public narrative — the truth will prevail. We ask only for a fair process, grounded in facts, where their voices can finally be heard.”

The sons of Israeli immigrants, Oren, 38, and Tal, 39, forged reputations as star brokers in the cutthroat world of New York luxury real estate, with a portfolio that includes some of the all-time most expensive home sales in the United States. As Oren and Tal in 2022 started their own brokerage, Oren’s twin Alon took a job as president of the family’s security firm.

Promiscuous and privileged though they may have been, the Alexander brothers’ lawyers argue they are not guilty of sexual violence. The men leveraged their success and used it to attract women, who, their lawyers insist, participated willingly. Defense attorneys insist the brothers’ did not commit the crimes they’re charged with and that their accusers’ accounts are dubious and “speculative,” motivated by hopes for windfalls.

“The Alexanders were interested in meeting women, and they met women in virtually any place a man could meet a woman: nightclubs, bars, restaurants, beach parties, pool parties, their own homes, the homes of friends, etc.,” their defense said in a November brief filed with the court.

“None of these women were drugged or raped or anything of the sort,” the defense submitted to US District Judge Valerie Caproni, overseeing the case. “Rather, those who engaged in sex with one or more of the Alexander brothers did so consensually. Years later, they either regretted their voluntary decision or, through communicating with other supposed victims, rewrote history or developed a perspective that was different from reality.”

The brothers’ spokesman, Juda Engelmayer, was more pointed: “Many of these began as late-filed civil claims, not criminal cases, and they surfaced without the objective evidence serious allegations would traditionally produce, no contemporaneous reports, medical documentation, or forensic findings,” he said, noting that the alleged victims did not come forward at the time of the alleged assaults. “At the time, the Alexander brothers were young and navigating adult social environments, but that is not criminal conduct and bears no resemblance to trafficking. These accusations exist only within litigation, where financial recovery is the incentive, not proof.”

Ensemble allegations
In their filings, federal prosecutors alleged that the brothers employed a “pattern of behavior” of physical force and “drugged sexual assaults that were the hallmark of the defendants’ conspiracy.”

Prosecutors also point to a series of text message chats between the brothers and their friends about obtaining drugs, including Quaaludes, MDMA, cocaine, GHB and Ambien. The chemicals, federal authorities allege, were  “to incapacitate women to further their sex trafficking scheme.”

The Alexanders’ defense challenged the prosecutors’ evidence, including chalking up those conversations as “idle chatter.”  

“Even taking the Government’s factual allegations as true (which we do only for the purposes of this motion), there is not a single alleged instance of sex in exchange for something of value,” the defense said in a November filing. “In fact, the statements of the witnesses are precisely the opposite, specifically that they had sex against their will, either because they were drugged, drunk or forced.”

Prosecutors remain confident their case against the brothers is rock solid.

They have notified the court they plan to call seven alleged victims to prove the core of their charges, among them a woman who says she was only 16 years old when the sexual encounter occurred with Alon and Tal, who were 22 and 21 at the time.

Also expected to testify are other alleged victims, some of whom have filed civil lawsuits claiming assault by at least one of the brothers, and may also appear as witnesses in the state criminal case. Though their alleged assaults are not the subject of federal charges, the women may be called as witnesses to what prosecutors say illustrates a history of prior bad acts.

The federal judge has allowed one of the alleged victims in the Florida case to appear as a witness in New York. That woman, known in court papers as “M.G.,” says that in October 2021, she met Oren at a dinner, joined him and others on his boat, and a small group eventually went with him to his Miami home.

M.G. said her conversation with Oren was “flirty,” he gave her a drink, and it turned physical, according to her 2024 interview with a Miami Beach police detective. She alleged that it turned to unwanted and aggressive behavior, and he allegedly ripped her dress off.

When she ran downstairs and tried to open the backyard door, she said it “would not open,” and when she requested to be let out, she later told the detective, he sexually assaulted her with his fingers as she kept saying “no.” M.G. said when she could finally leave, she immediately told her friend what had happened, but that her friend “was pretty drunk.”

In her 2024 police interview, M.G.’s friend said she recalled being told Oren had “tried having sex with [M.G.] after she said no” but didn’t remember being told that Oren had penetrated M.G. in any way. The friend also did not recall the doors being locked when she texted M.G. and they decided to leave.

“I was like, ‘hey, where are you?’ And she said, ‘I think I’m in a room with Oren or something like that.’ And I was like, ‘I’m ready to leave. Let’s — let’s leave.’ And she’s like, ‘yes, please, let’s go.’ And then I just remember walking out of the house,” the friend said. She recalled M.G. seemed “distressed” and had told her “she didn’t want to sleep with him, and he was forcing it.”

In an October 2025 deposition with the Alexanders’ Florida attorneys, the friend reiterated Oren’s alleged advances and M.G.’s objections. But she also said there was nothing unusual about M.G.’s clothing when they left through the front door.

The Alexanders’ attorneys point to what they say are the women’s misaligned memories of the night as evidence the allegations cannot be proven in court.

“M.G’s story is like a C-grade Horror film,” Oren’s Florida defense attorneys Ed O’Donnell IV and Joel Denaro said in a statement to ABC News, adding “her best friend contradicts” several points of the alleged narrative.

“M.G.” did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. 

Other alleged victims in the federal case have offered similar stories of their own alleged assaults, according to court documents.

Two of the alleged victims in the federal case said in June 2009, they were “invited by party promoters to the Hamptons to celebrate Alon and Oren’s birthday.” Though taken to the club on a party bus, the women learned it would not return them to Manhattan.

Alon “told [one of the women] that he had a nice house” where “there would be a fun afterparty, and invited [her] to stay there,” according to court documents. Both women agreed to go to the house. The night allegedly became a blur of what they said were drugged and repeated group rapes by the brothers, though they said they could only be remembered in “flashes of memory” between the two.

Clash of the narratives
A critical linchpin in each of the Alexanders’ cases will be the credibility of victims’ narratives, according to legal experts — a hallmark of sex-crimes cases.

“The prosecution of this type of case often comes with a unique set of challenges. As we saw during the prosecution of Sean Combs, consent can be a very complex issue,” said Matt Murphy, a former senior prosecutor in Orange County, Calif., referring to the recent case of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“Jurors often struggle with things like continued contact, friendly text messages, alcohol use, and of course, pending civil suits,” said Murphy, now an ABC News legal contributor. “Prosecutorial success will depend heavily on victim credibility and solid corroboration. We’ll see.”

Some of the women who have come forward with their allegations have said they did so only after learning of others who said they had similar experiences with the brothers.

“Like, handfuls of girls … it was like everyone in Miami knew,” one of the alleged victims in the Florida case, identified in court papers as S.M., told a detective in August 2024, as seen in body-worn camera footage of the interview obtained by ABC News.

“Now I finally feel like, no one’s going to call me a liar ’cause I’m not the only one,” she told the detective.

S.M., who was a model at the time, said she went to an event where the group included Oren in October 2017. Afterward, she said she went with him to his apartment. Once there, she said, he gave her a glass of wine and a virtual reality headset to try, then led her to a bedroom, pushing her onto the bed, where she says he assaulted her as she told him, “no.”

The brothers’ attorneys have stressed that the real-time behavior from some of the alleged victims belies the narrative they have told prosecutors and the public.

The day after that alleged assault, S.M. posted a picture of herself in a bikini on social media with the caption, “Cloudy with a chance of awesome,” according to court filings. That night, the defense said, she went out with friends to a nightclub.

“I always am in a bikini and take pictures in bikinis because I’m a model,” S.M. explained to the defense during a September 2025 deposition in Florida, according to a transcript obtained by ABC News.

Days after her alleged assault, S.M. texted Oren a picture of them, together and smiling, taken at the event, according to court documents.

“You would acknowledge that by you sending him that picture three days later, it would indicate that you in no way thought that he sexually assaulted you back then,” the Alexanders’ Florida defense attorney Edward O’Donnell said during the deposition.

“I feel like I was in some sort of denial,” S.M. said. “I was hoping that it didn’t happen.”

Two weeks after her alleged assault, S.M. met up with Oren again. “I wanted him to make it right because I was — I didn’t want it to be true and I was hurting inside,” S.M. said during her deposition.

Their texts after the alleged assault tell a different story, O’Donnell argued.

“It would be nice to have dinner. Hopefully we can schedule something before you leave,” S.M. texted Oren on Nov. 2, 2017, according to court documents.

“Documented-wise, your actions, your photographs, your downloads, your videoing him, taking photographs of him, you sending him those pictures, all subsequent to you, the date you claim that you were sexually assaulted, all go against that your sex was non-consensual,” O’Donnell said.

S.M. insisted she did not consent to that encounter.

“I don’t have evidence of what happened in that room, but I know what happened in that room and how I chose to act afterwards,” S.M. responded during the deposition. “Whether it be naive or hopeful, doesn’t change that.”

S.M.’s attorney declined to comment to ABC News.

On Jan. 8, a grand jury returned one of several superseding indictments, adding an additional charge against Alon and Oren for allegedly drugging and assaulting a woman during a 2012 Bahamian cruise.

The two brothers had already been charged for allegedly slipping her a drugged drink and taking “turns raping” her; the additional count also charged them with allegedly engaging in sex with her “while she was physically incapable of declining participation.”

In a filing over the weekend, the Alexanders’ attorneys filed a motion to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that prosecutors have repeatedly made last-minute changes to the charges that have left insufficient time for the defense to fully investigate.

In particular, the defense cast doubt on the authenticity of a foreign birth certificate which would establish the alleged age of one of the females involved in some of the activity charged. Prosecutors allege that in 2009, Oren “recorded himself and another person engaging in sexual activity with a incapacitated 17-year-old girl in Manhattan.”

In their latest filing, the defense argued verifying such a birth certificate from a city “in an active war” is near-impossible, and more time is needed given the “central importance of the true birth date.” The judge has not yet weighed in.

The judge has scheduled jury selection to begin on Tuesday. The trial, which is scheduled to start on Jan. 26, is expected to last roughly a month.

Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — A woman was arrested Thursday afternoon for allegedly stabbing a tourist inside the Macy’s flagship store in New York City, according to police.

Kerri Aherne, 43, from Tewksbury, Massachusetts, allegedly stabbed the tourist multiple times as she was changing her infant daughter’s diaper in a seventh floor restroom at Macy’s Herald Square location, the New York Police Department said.

The baby was uninjured, and the victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition, according to police.

Aherne allegedly stabbed the tourist, who was visiting Manhattan from California, in her back and arm from behind just before 3 p.m. before her husband disarmed the suspect and held her until police arrived.

The victim and her husband work for the sheriff’s office in Jurupa Valley.

Aherne was charged with two counts of assault, attempted murder, criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child, and she is expected to appear in court later Friday.

A Macy’s spokesperson told WABC that “we are deeply saddened about the incident that took place today as the safety of our customers and colleagues is our top priority. We kindly defer any further questions to the local authorities.”

Police said the attack appears to be unprovoked and is currently under investigation.

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.