I have up until now, not told my side of the story. My attorneys and PR people advised me to just stay quiet, and it will all go away. I have received the same advice for five years now. I realize my silence is now causing collateral damage to my friends and other innocent bystanders. The time has come to let the hounds of investigative reporters loose on those that, driven by money, have made false claims, concocted malicious fabrications, and have expanded their fictions now to include others in my orbit. I was investigated for soliciting underage prostitutes. To be precise, girls under the age of 18 who were brought to my house by their close friends who worked in local massage parlors or strip clubs(West Palm Beach has scores of massage parlors and happy ending places that routinely advertise in the same local papers that have chastised my behavior)[ see Palm Beach Post classifieds]. I am and have always been a bachelor. I have used massage parlor women, licensed massage therapists, and women with no massage experience. I have never ever used force, coercion, or in fact had intercourse with any of these women. When the police investigated me, went through my garbage, searched my house, they found sex toys, but NO cameras or camera equipment; nothing in fact out of the ordinary from many homes of single men. There were never any photos of underage girls. Never. A careful reading of any law enforcement document makes that clear. The camera that was referred to in the search warrant, was the camera installed in my house with the help of the local police to catch my houseman, John Allessi; the same houseman mentioned in many articles. He was breaking into my house and stealing money after being fired. The camera caught him in the act. These cameras were the only cameras at my house; security cameras. The local state attorney, after conducting an extensive investigation and interviewing the girls herself, a sex crimes prosecutor with over 13 years experience, and who had herself authored the more tough legislations dealing with sex crimes, said in her own words, “There are no real victims here. The girls knew they were going to a house in Palm Beach, they had their boyfriends or family members drive them to the house and wait outside, and then they encouraged their friends to go.” Many of the girls interviewed were in their mid twenties, some in their early thirties, and some younger than 18. The girl that the newspapers have referred to as a fourteen year old told the police that she had repeatedly told me that she was 18 and a senior in high school, like many of the massage parlor girls told me, and in her own words to the police, said the reason she said she was 18 was that she was told if she didn’t, MR EPSTEIN would not let her in the house. These reports are available. The state attorney offered me to take a plea to aggravated assault with only probation. My attorneys told me that it would be forever a blight on my r ecord, and I should refuse the deal. I did so. The state attorney, Barry Krisher, took the unusual step of bringing the facts before a state grand jury. In Florida, this happens most often in capital murder cases, not prostitution in someone’s own home. To be certain that the public would not criticize the outcome, the state grand jury was given all the evidence and returned a verdict of Solicitation of Prostitution. Solicitation, a non-registrable offense which carries with it a sentence of mandatory probation. Mandatory probation; solicitation is one of the few statues that has such a designation. The local police chief, however, met this charge with great disdain. He believed something untoward had gone on for the grand jury to return such a mild verdict after his department had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars examining the behavior of a resident that rarely left his house. Women seemed to come and go, women of ALL ages. Some masseuses interviewed were in their sixties, some were men. The police chief, unhappy with the decision of twelve Florida citizens that weighed the evidence, took the unprecedented step of releasing the raw police reports to the press. The raw sewage of an investigation not corroborated, or as it turns out, not even transcribed from the actual interview tapes correctly. Before a plea to the indictment was entered and the case was still open, he released the reports and then sent a letter off to the parents of some of the girls and to the FBI asking for their assistance. Only two days after the grand jury decided that I should only be charged with solicitation of prostitution, NOT underage women, not pimping, but using prostitutes as a john, I received my first FEDERAL subpoena. What resulted after a thirteen month investigation and can be read in my non prosecution agreement, was the federal government threatened me with a fifty page indictment alleging that I had broken federal law, though all actions took place in my home in Florida, the women were from Florida, and no interstate travel took place. The AUSA said that my secretary had made telephone calls to the women. Many of those calls were return calls, and the use of the telephone by my secretary to confirm massage appointments, was equivalent federally to some guy surfing the internet, knowing full well that the person on the other end of the connection is under age, and trying to coerce them into some illegal sex activity. The internet luring statute says that someone uses the means of interstate commerce, (in my case it was a phone) to knowingly coerce underage persons into sex. This was the first time in history that this statute would be stretched, twisted beyond all recognition in an attempt to threaten prosecution. I had hired Ken Starr, former Solicitor General; Alan Dershowitz, law professor; Roy Black, trial attorney; Joe Whitley, former assistant attorney general; and Guy Lewis former US attorney in South Florida, to defend me again