Newly Unsealed DOJ Documents Detail Jeffrey Epstein’s Ties to U.S. Virgin Islands CBP Officers
Newly unsealed records from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reveal that federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials spent more than a year investigating connections between disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers stationed in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI).
As previously reported by The Guardian and The New York Times, seized emails, text messages, and investigative files show Epstein deliberately built personal relationships with multiple local CBP officers. He hosted them as guests on his private island, invited them on whale-watching trips via his private helicopter, and even delivered Christmas Eve cannolis as a gift to one officer. In exchange, Epstein often turned to these officers to vent about mistreatment from other CBP staff and federal agents. The vast majority of these interactions occurred years after Epstein pleaded guilty to state sex crime charges in Florida in 2008.
None of the CBP officers linked to Epstein have ever faced criminal charges connected to their relationship with him, and at least one has since retired from the agency with full pension benefits, indicating investigators ultimately did not find actionable misconduct. Even so, the documents outline patterns of behavior that raise ethical red flags: two of the officers openly referred to Epstein as a “friend,” a dynamic one government ethics expert calls inappropriate and a potential violation of federal ethics guidance. The records also include grand jury subpoenas that specifically name the officers, ordering financial services firms (the primary recipients of the subpoenas) to assist prosecutors probing allegations of a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government.
Neither CBP nor the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which led the Epstein investigation, responded to requests for comment on the newly released records.
Per a 2020 complaint filed by the former USVI attorney general, Epstein trafficked hundreds of women and girls—some as young as 12—to his private Little Saint James island over decades, and regularly flew in and out of the territory on his private jet. A November 2020 FBI interview summary with Epstein’s long-time personal pilot, Larry Visoski, confirms all of Epstein’s flights from USVI to the U.S. mainland required CBP clearance before departure.
Visoski told the FBI some of Epstein’s passengers were college students traveling with official school letters explaining their trip. Other times, Epstein traveled with women who held foreign passports. If CBP officers began questioning these passengers, Visoski said, Epstein would immediately intervene and argue with officials to end the scrutiny.
Despite these occasional run-ins, Visoski confirmed Epstein went out of his way to befriend CBP officers, even ordering Visoski to collect agents’ personal contact information on multiple occasions. In one email to a CBP officer, Epstein wrote, “as you know Im very respectful of people just doing their job.” Over the years, records show multiple CBP officers reached out to Epstein directly, or through Visoski and other associates, and many were invited to visit Little Saint James as guests.
For example, in May 2014, Visoski emailed Epstein: “While going through customs in STT, our nice person gave me his cell contact.” The pilot added the officer was available to visit Little Saint James that same week, and attached his contact information. The next day, Epstein’s on-island estate manager emailed to confirm the CBP officer would be picked up for lunch on Wednesday. It remains unclear whether the lunch ever occurred.
Emails from 2015 and 2016 show a second officer, Glen Samuel, regularly traveled to Little Saint James to play steel pan drums for Epstein’s guests— a side gig Samuel casually advertised on his Facebook page at the time. In a January 2015 email thread, Epstein asked an associate to confirm Samuel’s performance rate. The associate replied: “Mr. Samuel says he does not intend to charge you. He considers you a friend and was doing this for you. If you wish to give him something, he is appreciative, but there is no fee.” Samuel has not responded to requests for comment.
Epstein also exchanged regular personal texts and emails with James Heil, a supervisory CBP officer based in USVI. One email shows Heil first connected Epstein with Samuel, shared Samuel’s contact information, and confirmed Samuel had official approval for outside employment. Heil did not respond to independent requests for comment, but previously told The New York Times all his interactions with Epstein fell under his official role as a “professionalism service manager” for CBP.
Epstein often turned to Heil to resolve frustrations with CBP processes. In March 2016, he emailed Heil to complain about a Newark-based CBP supervisor, who he claimed detained several of his passengers—including a woman with a pending asylum application—to review their travel documents. He also told Heil about an incident where Newark officials cited a “glitch” in USVI systems to delay his travel. Heil replied he would follow up directly with the Newark supervisor.
On another occasion, Epstein texted Heil to complain that one of Heil’s subordinates was “nasty” to him, and that he had requested an official complaint card. Heil replied just one minute later, saying he would speak to the officer immediately. On Christmas Eve 2016, Epstein texted Heil that he had just landed with “your xmas cannolis” and asked for Heil’s home address for delivery. A few hours later, Heil replied: “Thank you, old friend, the family's thrilled! (Including the mother-in-law!)” No formal finding of ethics violations has been made against Samuel or Heil.
Kathleen Clark, a Washington University in St. Louis law professor who specializes in government ethics, told WIRED that while federal ethics rules include a carve-out for gifts worth less than roughly $20, the core goal of the rules is to avoid any situation that would raise questions about an employee’s impartiality or integrity.
After Epstein died by suicide in federal custody in 2019, a CBP supervisor in Charleston filed a report about Tim Routch, a CBP agricultural specialist, after two complaints about Routch’s ties to Epstein were submitted to law enforcement by one of Routch’s associates. That October, an agent with “FBI New York” in their email signature (whose name was redacted by the DOJ) opened a preliminary investigation into Routch based on the report.
Records show a federal grand jury issued a subpoena to TransUnion in May 2020 seeking information on Routch. Additional records from the same period include Google subscriber data (typically turned over in response to government legal requests) as well as credit reports from Equifax and Experian. Correspondence between the DOJ and Visoski’s legal team shows one key goal of the FBI’s Visoski interview was to unpack Routch’s relationship with Epstein, including why Routch’s contact was saved in Visoski’s phone.
Notes from a July 2020 email sent by a redacted Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York state that Visoski had no memory of Routch, but clearly recalled three other CBP officers with ties to Epstein: Heil, who along with a second officer “wouldn't give [Epstein] a hard time” even when other inspectors delayed his flights, and Samuel the steel pan player.
In August 2020, the DOJ sent another grand jury subpoena to TransUnion seeking records on the three officers named by Visoski. Both the subpoena for the three officers and the earlier subpoena for Routch cite the federal statute for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and other fraud offenses. None of the four officers have ever been formally charged.
The FBI interviewed Routch in 2021 alongside a representative from the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s office. An FBI memo of the interview quotes Routch denying any wrongdoing and saying he was never actually friends with Epstein. In a phone interview with WIRED, Routch said he only visited Little Saint James once, to inspect palm trees for invasive mites as part of his CBP role preventing the spread of non-native species. Routch said he volunteered for the trip and traveled on Epstein’s boat.
He recalled telling his supervisor about the inspection, but could not confirm it was conducted in an official capacity, noting that if it had been official CBP business, he would have used a government boat. “I think I did what I did for the right reasons, but I might not have done it exactly by CBP protocol,” Routch said. After the inspection, Routch ate a meal at Epstein’s on-island tiki bar; per FBI notes, Routch “thought it was ‘pretty cool’ to have lunch at the home of a billionaire” and estimated the meal cost less than $25.
Clark said debating whether the meal fell under the $20 gift limit misses the larger point of Epstein’s behavior. “To talk about whether the sandwich was less than $20 misses the point,” she said. “The point was that it was a way for [Epstein] to ingratiate himself with them, making them feel good about him.” She added that Epstein’s skill at manipulating officials to reduce scrutiny is exactly “how he got away with” trafficking children for decades.
Routch said no disciplinary action was taken against him after the FBI interview—his only unusual aftermath was accidentally going on a blind date several months later with the mother of one of the interviewing FBI agents. Since retiring from CBP, Routch has become a novelist. Reflecting on Epstein, he said: “He was polite, he was a nice guy, he was easy—well that’s the facade. That’s how, you know, dangerous people are. They put this facade about them.”
