New Mexico Sues to Stop Epstein's Lawyer and Accountant From Collecting $75 Million, Saying They Helped Fund and Hide His Sex Trafficking

Darren Indyke was Jeffrey Epstein's personal lawyer for more than 20 years. Richard Kahn was his accountant for more than a decade. Since Epstein died in a New York jail cell in 2019, the two men have run his estate, and under his will they stand to collect up to $50 million and $25 million from it. On Wednesday, New Mexico sued to stop that, accusing both men of helping pay for and hide Epstein's sex trafficking, including the abuse of girls and young women at his Zorro Ranch south of Santa Fe, the state Justice Department announced.

"Jeffrey Epstein did not operate alone, and his death does not end the pursuit of accountability for the people who helped make his crimes possible," said New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. It is the first law enforcement action ever brought against the two men, his office said.

The 49-page complaint, filed in federal court in Albuquerque, makes claims under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act and New Mexico's racketeering law. It also names Epstein's estate and the 1953 Trust, named for the year he was born, which holds his assets, valued at more than $107 million. The state wants the court to freeze payouts to Indyke and Kahn while the case is fought, strip them of Epstein-related interests and steer the money to survivors, with triple damages under state racketeering law.

The cash came in just under the limit

Most of Wednesday's coverage stuck to the press release. The complaint itself reads like a ledger. Epstein paid girls and young women a few hundred dollars after each "massage," it says, and that took a steady supply of cash, "which Indyke and Kahn made available from Epstein's accounts." Between 2002 and 2013, more than $6 million in cash came out of his bank accounts, an average of over $1,700 a day.

Banks must report any cash transaction over $10,000 in a day to the Treasury Department. Even after Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 and registered as a sex offender, the suit says, Indyke alone pulled more than $200,000 a year in cash from Epstein's accounts at a single bank, structured to stay under that line. In 2018 he withdrew $100,000 from one Deutsche Bank branch for what he called "tipping and household expenses." He repeatedly asked bankers how to take out cash without triggering an alert to the government, the complaint says, and Deutsche Bank cut Epstein off that December.

Kahn, a certified public accountant with more than 20 years in the business, told Congress he didn't know about repeated $9,800 cash withdrawals, $200 short of the reporting limit, the suit says. Withdrawing $9,800 over and over is like a driver who sets the cruise control at exactly 64 in a 65 zone, every day, past the same speed camera. Nobody does it by accident.

"The latest batch of medical expenses for girls"

The complaint says Indyke and Kahn were officers and directors of nearly every company Epstein set up, and that as of 2005 they held or managed at least 140 bank accounts for him and his entities. Over the decade from 2003 to 2013, more than $3 million went from Epstein-related accounts straight to girls or women with no business purpose anyone could find. Even a nonprofit charity the two men helped run, the C.O.U.Q. Foundation, paid more than $30,000 to girls or women in 2012.

Kahn's paper trail is specific. In 2017, he emailed Epstein about paying "the latest batch of medical expenses for girls," a bill so routine he only asked to confirm Epstein didn't want to see it, the suit says. In 2018 he explained wires to Russia's Sberbank to Deutsche Bank as "payment[s] sent to a friend as tuition for school." And when JPMorgan Chase dropped Epstein in 2013, its own internal review concluded he was running a "sex trafficking ring" and that "KAHN was a primary actor in the movement of EPSTEINs funds," according to the complaint.

Indyke's ties ran deeper still. In a 2009 court hearing he called Epstein "kind of my mentor." Besides more than $16 million in pay from 2011 to 2019, the suit says Epstein lent him $7 million that was never repaid, helped him buy homes in New Jersey and Boca Raton, Florida, and covered multiple rounds of fertility treatment. Indyke handled the 2011 transfer of Zorro Ranch to Cypress Inc., an Epstein company where he was vice president and Kahn was treasurer.

What happened at the ranch

Epstein bought the remote property near Stanley in 1993 and built a mansion, an airstrip and a helipad, CBS News reported. One survivor called it "its own miniature town that housed his servants and groundskeepers." Flight records show girls and young women traveled there from 1997 to 2018, and staff were told not to talk with guests or tell anyone what happened, the complaint says.

It lays out the accounts of seven women, five of them minors at the time. One testified in 2019 that she was 15 when she flew on Epstein's plane to the ranch and was assaulted for hours. The next night, she crashed an ATV on the mesa and worried she'd be in trouble. Another girl told her, "Don't worry, no one gets in trouble for anything here."

The men say they never knew

Indyke and Kahn told the House Oversight Committee in March that they knew nothing of Epstein's crimes beyond his 2008 guilty plea, CBS News reported. Their lawyers said Wednesday the two "emphatically reject" the allegations and that the abuse happened "behind closed doors, in secluded locations, and at times when neither Mr. Indyke nor Mr. Kahn was present." They called it a "baseless lawsuit" and said no one from Torrez's office asked to interview them first, CNBC reported.

Survivors aren't buying the blind-spot defense. "Those who argue that he could not have acted alone are right," six of them, including Courtney Wild and Anouska De Georgiou, said in a statement. "His operation depended on the appearance of legitimacy and access to money carefully structured to avoid exposing his crimes. This lawsuit is aimed at the two men most responsible for that appearance and structure," per CBS News.

Their sharpest point is about who controls the money now. As co-executors, the survivors wrote, the men are "helping determine what victims receive while standing to gain what is left over after the victims are paid for their damages," Courthouse News reported.

Why now, and what comes next

The case was built on documents the public never saw until recently. Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025, and the complaint credits the files released since then for bringing "a more complete picture of the Enterprise's operations" to light. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan opened their own investigation into Indyke and Kahn last month, The Wall Street Journal reported, according to CNBC.

The two men aren't new to court. In February, Epstein's estate agreed to pay as much as $35 million to settle a Manhattan class action accusing them of aiding Epstein's trafficking, without admitting wrongdoing, CNBC reported. New Mexico's criminal investigation of the ranch, which Torrez reopened this year, is still going, and no criminal charges have been filed, his office said.

The ranch itself has moved on. The estate sold it in 2023 to the family of Don Huffines, a Texas Republican now serving as state comptroller, who renamed it San Rafael Ranch and plans to run it as a Christian retreat, NBC News reported. "Survivors deserve more than promises that the truth will eventually come to light," Torrez said. "They deserve an accounting of what happened." New Mexico is now asking a jury to make Epstein's money men give one.