The Trust That Paid His Lawyers, His Fixers, and Itself

Jeffrey Epstein created the Butterfly Trust on December 27, 2006, seven days after the FBI began interviewing witnesses in what would become its Palm Beach sex trafficking investigation.

The timing was not incidental. The trust was structured under U.S. Virgin Islands law, a jurisdiction chosen specifically to insulate its assets from federal court jurisdiction. It was made irrevocable. Its termination clause was tied to the lifespans of Epstein, Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, and Ghislaine Maxwell, set to expire 21 years after the last survivor among them died. The original beneficiaries were those same three women. (EFTA01282018)

The original trustees were Darren Indyke, Epstein's personal attorney, and Richard Kahn, a financial associate. A third, Harry Beller, was listed as successor.

Over the following thirteen years, Epstein's attorneys would use the trust to route cash to associates, pay legal fees for employees facing prosecution, structure large cash withdrawals from Deutsche Bank, and eventually hand themselves direct financial benefits. After Epstein's death, they used it to shelter assets from victim claims.

The Beneficiary Timeline

The trust's beneficiary list was not static. Deutsche Bank compiled a detailed amendment timeline as part of its 2019 SAR filing. (EFTA01681865 Exhibit E)

In March 2011, Indyke and Kahn added three unidentified women in the space of one week. No rationale was recorded.

In January 2014, Deutsche Bank opened checking and money market accounts for the trust.

On December 9, 2014, Maxwell and the two original beneficiaries were removed. The trustees were replaced by Harry Beller and Erika Kellerhals, Epstein's USVI-based attorney who had represented him during his 2008 non-prosecution agreement proceedings.

Between December 2014 and March 2015, a rapid sequence of new beneficiaries was added. One of them was Karyna Shuliak, listed in Deutsche Bank biographical records as a Slovakian national with the occupation "Student / Interior Decorator." (EFTA01681865 Exhibit F)

Deutsche Bank's compliance team flagged a discrepancy in Shuliak's records: her listed address, 301 East 66th Street in Manhattan, matched the address of Jennifer Kahn, the wife of trustee Richard Kahn. Jennifer Kahn was herself also listed as a beneficiary. The bank noted the shared address without explanation from the account holders.

In the fall of 2018, Epstein personally contacted Deutsche Bank relationship manager Stewart Oldfield to request another round of beneficiary changes. Three beneficiaries were removed, including Maxwell. Eight were added. Among those added: Shuliak again, and for the first time, Indyke and Kahn themselves.

The trustees had made themselves beneficiaries of the trust they controlled.

The Payment Record

Deutsche Bank's Exhibit G compiled total payments by recipient category for the duration of the trust's operation. (EFTA01681865 Exhibit G)

Indyke's law firm, Indyke PLLC, received two payments totaling $475,821. The payment records list "no rationale" for either transfer. The funds originated from AO Raiffeisenbank, a Russian state-owned bank, and Standard Chartered.

Shuliak received six payments totaling $631,000. The stated rationale was "Tuition." The payments moved through JP Morgan, the Butterfly Trust, and NES LLC, one of Epstein's shell entities. One payment of $150,000 went to an entity called WINS LLC.

The single largest wire to an identified individual beneficiary was $350,000 to Shuliak on November 4, 2016, sent directly from Epstein's JP Morgan account. (EFTA01681865 Exhibit H)

One unnamed beneficiary received 63 separate payments totaling $552,243, with stated purposes of "Expense Reimb / Immigration / Loans / Rent / Tuition." Another received $290,625 with no stated rationale. A third received $250,000, also with no rationale recorded.

The payment record also includes $63,254 in "Grand Prix driving reimbursements" and $26,970 wired to Banca Del Fucino, an Italian bank.

Four Suspicious Activity Reports

Deutsche Bank filed four separate Suspicious Activity Reports naming Darren Indyke between 2016 and 2019.

The first SAR, filed in September 2016, documented Indyke cashing a $7,500 check from Epstein's account, then a $4,000 check from his own PLLC account. He told the bank teller he would return the next business day to avoid "all the paperwork and going over his cash limit." Total withdrawn: $11,500. (EFTA01656432)

The second SAR, filed in June 2017, recorded the same pattern: $7,500 from Epstein's account, $4,000 from his PLLC. Indyke again told the teller of his intent. The cumulative total across both incidents reached $23,000. The SAR was filed under the category "Customer advised he would structure." (EFTA01656447)

The third SAR, filed in August 2017, covered three transactions across three consecutive days: $7,500 cashed from Indyke's own account, then 6,600 euros from Epstein's account (the bank recorded the stated purpose as "for vacation"), then another $7,500 from Epstein's account. Cumulative total: $38,000. Deutsche Bank conducted a phone confrontation with Indyke, who stated he "did not realize he was cashing checks in any concerning pattern." (EFTA01656409)

The fourth SAR was filed in July 2019, days before Epstein's arrest. It listed both Epstein and Indyke. (EFTA01656437)

Structuring, the act of deliberately keeping cash transactions below federal reporting thresholds to avoid paperwork, is a federal crime under 31 U.S.C. 5324. Four SARs documenting the same pattern, with the subject explicitly telling tellers of his intent to return the following day, constitute one of the more detailed paper trails in the EFTA document release.

Legal Fees for the Network

Among the most significant transactions routed through Indyke PLLC were payments to law firms representing Epstein associates facing legal exposure.

Indyke PLLC paid $87,902 to Haddon Morgan and Foreman, the Colorado-based criminal defense firm representing Ghislaine Maxwell.

It paid $122,434 to Link and Rockenbach, the law firm representing Lesley Groff, Epstein's long-serving personal assistant, in proceedings related to the investigation. (EFTA00799164)

It paid $150,000 to Alston and Bird, described in records as a victim settlement payment.

And it paid $269,159 to Noam Chomsky, with no stated purpose recorded in available documents.

The TD Bank and JPMorgan Filings

The Butterfly Trust's financial activity did not run through Deutsche Bank alone.

TD Bank filed a SAR covering $47.3 million in suspicious wires between 2015 and 2019. (EFTA01656524) Among the transactions: Indyke's personal account received $7.75 million from an entity called Southern Financial LLC. His PLLC account received $14.6 million, including $2 million directly from Epstein's Deutsche Bank account. Kahn withdrew $8,000 in cash from the HBRK Associates account, the same entity used as Maxwell's listed mailing address.

JPMorgan Chase separately filed a SAR covering $1.08 billion across 4,725 wire transactions between 2003 and 2019. (dc-26222697) The bank filed the report under its "human trafficking advisory" category.

Post-Death: The Decanting

Epstein died in federal custody on August 10, 2019. At the time of estate filing that same month, his assets were valued at $577 million.

In April 2020, nine months after his death, $13 million was wired into the Butterfly Trust.

In September 2020, the trust was "decanted," a legal mechanism by which the assets of an irrevocable trust are transferred into one or more new trusts with potentially different terms. The Butterfly Trust was split into three successor trusts.

Two of the three named Indyke, Kahn, and their respective spouses as beneficiaries.

An investment advisor retained in connection with the restructuring stated in records that the purpose of the decanting was to "insulate from claims of third-party claimants." (dc-22121070) Third-party claimants, in this context, referred to Epstein's victims.

By February 2021, eighteen months into the Indyke and Kahn executorship, the estate's reported value had dropped from $577 million to $240 million, a reduction of $337 million.

The Architecture of Control

The Butterfly Trust was not a passive vehicle. From the week of its creation in 2006, its structure reflected a specific set of legal choices: USVI jurisdiction, irrevocable status, a termination clause tied to specific individuals, trustee selection concentrated in Epstein's personal attorney and financial manager.

Over thirteen years, those trustees used the trust to pay for Maxwell's criminal defense, Groff's legal representation, and victim settlements, all while making repeated structured cash withdrawals that generated four federal SARs. They added their wives as beneficiaries. They added themselves as beneficiaries. After Epstein's death, they moved $13 million into the trust, split it into three new vehicles, placed themselves inside two of them, and justified the structure as a shield against victim claims.

The legal analysis of whether any of this was criminal has not been resolved. No charges related to the trust structure have been filed against Indyke or Kahn as of the publication of this article. The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee have both requested Indyke's testimony.

The documents are available in the Epstein Financial Transaction Archive.

This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 examined the trust's school payment network across 30 institutions in 10 countries. Part 3 examines how Epstein used an elite Michigan arts camp as the starting point of his abuse.