Jeffrey Epstein was doing this for TWO DECADES where were USVI officials? Were they sleeping or were they being paid off? Where were the feds? Who was watching this registered sex offender’s planes as he traveled the world over the past 10 yrs?”

The U.S. Virgin Islands’ top law enforcement officer filed a lawsuit on Wednesday alleging that high-profile pedophile Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked hundreds of young women and girls, some as young as 12, to his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018. The lawsuit states that the registered sex offender used a web of shell companies, as well as a computer database to track his victims’ availability and movements, to execute and conceal his crimes.

U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorney general Denise George, who started the position last April, based the new civil enforcement action on independent investigations from her office as well as court documents from multiple lawsuits against Epstein throughout the country.

Ms. George said the suit will focus on crimes committed on Epstein’s island and “would not disclose if the alleged victims in the Virgin Islands were brought from South Florida or elsewhere to the Epstein properties,” according to the Miami Herald, leading some critics to question the timing and self-imposed limitations of the explosive new lawsuit:

NEW: So if #JeffreyEpstein was doing this for TWO DECADES where were USVI officials? Were they sleeping or were they being paid off? Where were the feds? Who was watching this registered sex offender's planes as he traveled the world over the past 10 yrs? pic.twitter.com/lx9rwGT4Vo

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) January 15, 2020

As the Associated Press reported last year, residents of the U.S. territory have alluded to the new allegations claiming that there was a decades-long sex trafficking scheme headquartered in the Virgin Islands.

“Everybody called it ‘Pedophile Island,’” Kevin Goodrich, who is from St. Thomas and operates boat charters, told the Associated Press in July. “It’s our dark corner.”

The suit seeks the forfeiture of Little Saint James and Epstein’s other private island, Great Saint James, as well as the termination of the numerous shell companies the sex offender established in the territory that officials claim were made deliberately complex to conceal his sex trafficking operation.

Epstein’s shell companies also held private airplanes and helicopters used to transport young women and girls to and from the Virgin Islands, the lawsuit said.

Epstein maintained his legal permanent residence and estate in the Virgin Islands and he filed his will in a Virgin Islands court two days before he was found dead in his cell. The will’s executors include two longtime Epstein employees, lawyer Darren Indyke and businessman Richard Kahn, as well as Boris Nikolic, a fomer adviser to Bill Gates, who is listed as an alternate executor. Notably, Gates has also been connected to the high-profile pedophile.

“Epstein clearly used the Virgin Islands and his residence in the U.S. Virgin Islands at Little Saint James as a way to be able to conceal and to be able to expand his activity here,” George told the New York Times.

Epstein reportedly broke environmental laws in his constructions on the island, which also featured a bizarre temple: “What makes it peculiar is that if you wanted to keep people out, the bar would be placed inside the building, [but the] locking bar appears to be placed on the outside … as if it were intended to lock people in,” former Epstein contractor Steve Scully told ABC.

But seriously, what's up with this weird temple thing on Jeffrey Epstein's private island? pic.twitter.com/njxfg2HahN

— jon gabriel (@exjon) July 9, 2019

“There were photos of topless women everywhere,” Scully told ABC News. “On his desk, in his office, in his bedroom.” Scully also told ABC that he frequently saw groups of girls who “couldn’t have been more than 15 or 16 years old” riding ATVs and bathing topless. Former President Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” 26 times, reportedly visited the island.

Despite legal requirements that Epstein be regularly monitored due to his status as a registered sex offender, he was able to refuse an investigator from his property in Little St. James as recently as 2018 by claiming the island’s dock was his front door. Epstein’s employees signed non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from speaking about Epstein’s affairs.

“The estate continues to engage in a course of conduct aimed at concealing the criminal activities of the Epstein enterprise,” the lawsuit said.

Les Wexner, chief executive of Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands, also reportedly visited the island, as did former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.

Epstein and his co-conspirators used fraudulent modeling visas to lure and transport victims between the ages of 12 and 17 years old across borders, according to the suit. “As recently as 2018, air traffic controllers and airport workers reported seeing Epstein leave his plane with young girls, some of whom appeared to be between the ages of 11 and 18 years old,” reported the Miami Herald.

The court documents state that Epstein’s victims included aspiring models from South America. Notably, alleged Epstein accomplices Ghislaine Maxwell and Jean Luc Brunel were traced to the Infinity Blue Resort and Spa in Santa Catarina, Brasil in October, but authorities have failed to issue arrest warrants to Epstein’s numerous potential co-conspirators for crimes against children.

Epstein and his accomplices also allegedly tracked their victims’ movements through a computer database. “One 15-year-old victim was forced to have sex with Epstein and others and then tried to escape by swimming off Little St. James, the lawsuit said, but Epstein and others organized a search party and found the girl,” reported the Herald. “They kept the girl captive and confiscated her passport, the lawsuit said.”

Business Insider journalist Meghan Morris noted that Epstein’s close ties with former US Virgin Islands governor John de Jongh could help explain why authorities allowed a massive child sex trafficking operation to take place through Epstein’s shell companies.

The former governor’s wife, Cecile de Jongh, was “a vice president and officer for a decade” at Epstein’s Financial Trust Co., one of the pedophile’s Virgin Islands-based shell companies – “including during six of John de Jongh’s eight years in office.” Cecile de Jongh also sat on the board of the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation.

I'm surprised the story doesn't note Epstein's connection with former USVI governor John de Jongh, whose wife Cecile was on the board of an Epstein foundation and employed as an office manager for one of his companies.

The couple has refused to talk about their connection.

— Meghan Morris (@MeghanEMorris) January 15, 2020

The Miami Herald notes that most of Epstein’s Virgin Island companies were created in 2011 and 2012, shortly after he registered as a sex offender in the U.S. territories following his 2008 plea deal.

“The Epstein case highlights how sex traffickers — like all organized criminal enterprises — thrive on the secrecy provided by anonymous shell companies,” Clark Gascoigne, executive director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, a group calling for greater transparency about true owners of shell companies, told the Miami Herald. “Opaque ownership structures make it difficult — if not impossible — for law enforcement to track individuals.”

The lawsuit brings forward a host of charges including human trafficking, sexual servitude, forced labor, and other criminal behavior. Observers have called for co-conspirators, who were protected by Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea agreement, to be named and arrested.

“The lawsuit charges Epstein’s estate, his companies and other individuals identified only as John and Jane Does with eight counts of human trafficking; two counts of child abuse and neglect; two counts of aggravated rape; two counts of second-degree rape; two counts of unlawful sexual contact; two counts of prostitution and keeping a house of prostitution; one count of sex offender registry violation; two counts of fraudulent conveyance and one count of civil conspiracy,” reported the Miami Herald.

Alleged former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe, journalist Vicki Ward, Mintpress’ Whitney Webb, and journalist Eric Margolis have posed Epstein’s alleged ties to the intelligence community as reason for the bizarre circumstances surrounding his prosecution and imprisonment.