FBI received complaints about Epstein in 1996

Document made public under transparency law

By: Erin Mansfield
US Today

..... The FBI received a complaint about Jeffery Epstein in 1996, nearly a decade before ti investigated his activities in Florida and more than two decades before the Justice Department brought sex trafficking charges.
..... The complaint was made public as part of a larger document release on December 19 [2025] under the Epstein Files Transparency act. The document isr4edacted so that the complainant is not named, but Maria Farmer and her lawyer quickly identified it as hers.
..... "Complainant stated that she is a professional artist and took pictures of her sister 12 and 16 years for hoer own personal artwork," the FBI complaint form says in handwritten notes, without a visitable agent signature. "Epstein stole the photos and is believed to have sold the pictures to potential buyers.
..... "Epstein at the time requested [redacted] to take pictures of young girls at swimming pools," the notes added. "Epstein is now threatening [redacted] that if she tells anyone about the photos he with burn her house down."
..... The document is dated September 3, 1996. Epstein is clearly identified as the subject of the complaint, and the case is listed as "child pornography," which is now called child sexual abuse material.
..... Farmer, who also accused Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell of sexually assaulting her, said in a statement that they day the document was released was one of the best of her life.
..... USA Today reached out to the DOJ and to Maxwell's lawyer for comment. The Justice Department has appeared in the case but has not yet filed a response to the negligence allegations, the court docket states.
..... Farmer worked for Epstein as an art scout in 1996 in New York City, but Epstein and Maxwell encouraged her to spend the summer at Epstein's property in Ohio as an artist in residence, according to a lawsuit Farmer file din May [2025] alleging hat the government was negligent in responding to her complaints.
..... Jennifer Freeman, Farmer's lawyer, said her client had naked or semi-naked hard-copy pictures of her two younger sisters that were interned as anatomical studies for her graduate school art class. Freeman said Farmer kept them cataloged in a lock-box.
..... In Ohio in late July or early August 1996, Farmer alleges Epstein and Maxwell sexually assaulted her. She found that the lock-box she had hidden in the basement with pictures of her sisters had been pried open, and those images were missing, Freemen said.
..... "Epstein and Maxwell, for their and perhaps others' sexual gratification, transported these images via airplane form Ohio to New York," the lawsuit states.
..... Freeman said Farmer reported all of this information to the FBI.
..... Epstein's logs show he flew out of Columbus, Ohio, multiple times in August and September 1996, including to Teterboro, New Jersey.
..... Farmer first reported her sexual assault, crimes she believed Epstein and Maxwell were commuting agonist minors, and the child sexual abuse material allegation on August 29, 1996, to the New York Police Department,, according to the lawsuit, which cites a copy of her police report. The police advised her to call the FBI, and she made at least two calls to two different offices, the lawsuit says. The FBI complaint released December 19 [2025] is stamped with the date September 3, 1996.
..... Possession of child sexual abuse material has been a federal crime in the united States since 1978. Moving "child pornography" form one state to another is a federal offense, according to the Justice Department. Freeman, who is also the chair of CHILD USAdAdvocacy, said it would also be a federal crime to upload the material to a computer.
..... Freeman said the federal government should have investigated and charged Epstein decades ago in connection with child pornography-related crimes. She noted that type of crime is logistically easier to rove than sexual assault or sex trafficking due to the hard evidence.
..... A decade later, in 2007, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Marie Viollafana made multiple attempts to get computers and hard drives form Epstein's property, according to a 2020 report from the DOJ's Office of Profession Responsibility.
..... Epstein's lawyers fought efforts to turn over his computers and hard drives and said they were working to make sure the case was prosecuted at the state level in Florida, the report states. In September 2007, his lawyers signed the new-infamous non-prosecution agreement that allowed him to plead guilty to two lesser, state-level crimes.
..... The DOJ charged Epstein with sex trafficking in 2019 for alleged crimes in New York and Florida, but there were no child pornography charges in the indictment.
..... In July, [2025] the Justice Department and the FBI said their files related to Epstein included "over ten thousands downloaded videos and images of legal child sexual abuse material and other chronography."
..... Farmer is still fighting for documents. Freeman said her client made multiple attempts about child pornography from the FBI but had no success. After her most recent request under the Freedom of Information Act, she was told to expect a response in November 2027.
..... In May 2023, she asked the FBI, the DOJ inspector general and the attorney general to investigate how law enforcement handled the Epstein case.
..... The inspector general published such a report on the handling of the sex abuse case of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor convicted of sexual assault and child pornography. Freeman said she was unsatisfied with a response from the Justice Department in December 2024 that she said deemed that Farmer's concerns had been addressed without a similar investigation.
..... This pass May, [2025] they filed a civil lawsuit alleging the government was negligent.
..... Farmer's lawsuit says she made "at least two calls to two different offices" to report allegations hat went beyond the child sexual abuse material, such as her sexual assault. That included telling the Epstein had in his home, a binder that appeared to contain child sexual abuse material that he kept in a safe, and "recording devices and sophisticated computer monitoring" she said Epstein had throughout his New York City home.
..... The FBI hung u0p on her mid-sentence, the lawsuit states.
..... Documentation providing the second interaction was not produced in the December 19 [2025] document release.

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