THE EPSTEIN FALL GUYS: Who Are Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn?
Spoiler alert: they know EVERYTHING
There’s an absolutely staggering amount of directions one can go when diving into the slowly-released and heavily-redacted Epstein files.
Are you curious about his connections with movers and shakers like Les Wexner and Jean-Luc Brunel? Maybe you’re curious about he and Steve Bannon’s clearly close friendship - a friendship that included very focused discussion on then-future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Or maybe… you’re just curious about how such a “brilliant” man is not only so functionally illiterate, but deeply uncurious.
But then you come across something truly disturbing, like the story that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, back in 2019, was monitoring journalist Julie K Brown, the woman who originally broke the Epstein story in a mainstream capacity. Fun fact: it wasn’t just her Epstein research that was found in the files. A July 2019 flight log that contained Brown’s “unusual” maiden name was in the files. A mysterious discovery indeed - and one that I’m sure will not have any pleasant answers.
But then you find the case “Government of the United States Virgin Islands v. Darren K. Indyke, Richard D. Kahn, Estate of Jeffrey E. Epstein, and associated entities” from 2022. The first thing you might notice is that this is a lawsuit from after Epstein’s death containing some real doozies for allegations within it outlining not only Epstein’s human sex trafficking operation, but the labyrinthine financial system he abused to keep it afloat across the globe.
Within the document, there’s a list of properties and assets like the infamous Little St. James Island, but also Great St. James Island (because yes - he had TWO islands and I think most people tend to forget that), his New York City brownstone, and Zorro Ranch in New Mexico. The properties are one thing… but there are also a truly baffling amount of corporations and trusts in his name or connected to him that operated these properties, like Nautilus, Inc., who owned Little St. James… Great St. Jim, LLC (who owned part of Great St. James)... and then a truly flabbergasting number of companies with innocuous names.
Poplar, Inc. Plan D, LLC. Hyperion Air, LLC. Cypress, Inc. Maple, Inc. Laurel, Inc. Southern Trust Company, Inc. All of these were linked to Epstein in some way, whether he was President, manager, or connected via a surrogate. And the suit alleges that this vast web of corporations and trusts were used to not only facilitate, but conceal and maintain the entirety of Epstein’s criminal enterprise… even down to the transportation of the victims to each location specifically courtesy of Plan D and Hyperion Air.
This, plus the entirety of Epstein’s massive estate, was valued at $577,672,654.00 dollars, despite Epstein’s estate claiming back in February 2021 that the estate was only valid at $240,782,955.84 - around 60% lower than its starting valuation when the Estate was begun.
On its own, the allegations made here that outline the web of corporations aren’t anything new. We’ve known for quite some time that Epstein’s web branched off in a seemingly inconceivable amount of directions.
But what’s truly interesting are the names in the title of the suit. The names of the men who not only know where the bodies are buried, so to speak, but who buried them, who bought the shovel, who made the shovel, and perhaps most importantly, where the shovel was thrown when the gravedigger met his untimely demise.
Those men are Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn - Epstein’s personal lawyer, who represented him in court in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Epstein’s accountant, respectively.
They are also the co-executors of the Epstein estate.
OKAY, BUT WHO ARE INDYKE AND KAHN?
Aside from the still-to-be-confirmed clients of the Epstein operation, there were four people significant in Epstein’s business dealings. Ghislaine Maxwell is the most notorious, and the only one serving time currently, but there was also his secretary Lesley Groff, who scheduled his appointments… and Indyke and Kahn. These men kept the machine’s gears turning, with Indyke having worked exclusively for Epstein since 1996, and Kahn becoming the in-house accountant circa 2005. If their names are new to you, it’s because they were as under the radar as under the radar could be.
But who are they exactly? Well, Darren Indyke has known Epstein since he graduated from college thirty or so years ago, having met him at a Manhattan firm that represented Epstein called Gold & Wachtel. He had a job as an attorney for just five years when he decided to make Epstein his ONLY client. This came with great rewards, like an apartment paid for by Epstein in New York that later became one of the locations Epstein was confirmed to have been exploiting women in.
Today, Indyke has a really interesting, and frankly suspicious, connection to Trumpworld… he works at the Parlatore Law Group. That might not ring a bell to you, so let me do two things for you. First, Tim Parlatore, founder of the group, is Pete Hegseth’s personal attorney, who notoriously represented Hegseth during his sexual assault allegations that emerged prior to his appointment to the Department of Defense. Huh. But second, he is also a former member of Trump’s legal team that represented his defense in the classified-documents case. So the Parlatore group? Heavily tied to Trump. Very suspicious.
But the third crazy thing? Well, I’ll just pull up this bomb that seems to have exploded off-radar from August, courtesy of Shane Harris at The Atlantic:
“In the summer of 2022, Donald Trump badly needed criminal-defense lawyers. Tim Parlatore, who was already working for the former president on an unrelated civil matter, joined the team defending Trump after an FBI search found classified government documents stored at his Florida estate. Parlatore had represented prominent Trump allies in their interactions with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attacks; that was helpful, because Trump also faced charges stemming from the riot. Parlatore was a star lawyer in Trump world, so it’s more than a little surprising that, in the fall of that year, he hired a close associate of one of the most notorious villains in the extended MAGA universe: Jeffrey Epstein.
Before he joined the Parlatore Law Group, Darren Indyke was Epstein’s personal attorney for nearly a quarter century and reportedly among his closest associates and advisers. Parlatore’s decision to hire Indyke appears to have escaped public notice. But Indyke, by his own account, has been working for the firm since October 2022.”
According to Parlatore, when Indyke applied, he was let in due to his “skills doing a bunch of stuff I don’t know how to do.” Specifically, his work with Epstein’s financial arrangements were the “bunch of stuff,” such as structuring finances and purchasing aircrafts, he was referring to. It’s probably worth mentioning that the lawsuit at the center of our article is still ongoing btw lol. What’s really interesting though is that according to The Atlantic’s piece, Parlatore has claimed Indyke is so busy with Epstein estate work that he doesn’t “have time for much else,” all while representing a few anonymous clients.
So in conclusion on Indyke, literally everything about his past, present, and future are sketchy. I’m not alleging anything directly against him… but his own biography makes it hard to give him anything better than a side eye.
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According to interviews conducted with the Wall Street Journal in November 2025, Richard Kahn came later in a more “transactional” way, having used a recruiting firm to find a seasoned accountant with over a decade of experience. Kahn wasn’t as lucky as Indyke when it came to the perks; the very year Epstein took him on, Epstein was arrested for the first time for abusing minor girls in Florida. Kahn told friends, according to WSJ, that he stayed with Epstein because he was a “new parent in a bad economy.”
Kahn, by far, is the more mysterious of the two men. We know next to nothing about him other than what’s in this article already.
Neither Indyke nor Kahn claimed to be aware of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation and denied any complicity or participation in said acts, even going as far as to deny having ever seen Epstein abuse a woman, according to statements they provided WSJ. However, that’s not what the suit against them claimed… and it’s also not what the Wall Street Journal’s extensive reporting found, which included reviews of public and nonpublic court documents, settlement agreements, banking, tax and property records, letters and emails, interviews with women who had dealings with Indyke and Kahn, AND interviews with the men themselves.
The Journal’s conclusion? It really seemed freaking likely that Indyke and Kahn, allegedly, knew where the bodies were buried.
“While their boss was alive, part of their job was keeping his financial activities private,” Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo write. “Indyke and Kahn created or were officers of entities that obscured transactions. Kahn managed the expenses, and Indyke withdrew cash in amounts that didn’t trigger federal reporting and pushed to relax travel restrictions that came with Epstein’s sex-offender status. Both explained away suspicious transactions in Epstein’s accounts when banks asked questions [but] another part of the job was dealing directly with women later revealed to have been caught in Epstein’s web. They facilitated marriages that turned out to be shams, sent payments to women who have since said they were abused and monitored the personal expenses Epstein was paying for. “
During the Epstein and Maxwell federal investigation, neither Indyke nor Kahn was questioned. That’s how under the radar these men were.
The interesting part about the lawsuit alleging that Epstein’s criminal enterprise was as vast as it was is that it’s not just alleging that Epstein trafficked these women. It’s alleging, unambiguously, that the men were “instrumental” to Epstein’s human trafficking - AND his financial fraud.
WHAT DOES THAT LAWSUIT ALLEGE ABOUT INDYKE AND KAHN?
In short? A lot.
And hilariously, a lot of it is redacted… but in that sloppy way you may have heard about, where I can copy/paste from that document into THIS Substack window and WHOOPS - no more redactions. Here are the most direct allegations at the start of their section:
“Defendants Kahn and Indyke organized, controlled, and directed almost every aspect of the Epstein Enterprise. They were officers in virtually every corporate entity that Epstein created to fund and conceal his activities. They were deeply involved in the financial activities of the Epstein-owned entities, including those of Defendant Southern Trust Company, which made clear that Southern Trust did not provide the services described to the Government as the basis for tax incentives that allowed Epstein to fraudulently obtain more than $80 million from the Government.
Defendants Indyke and Kahn also directed, approved, enabled, and justified millions of dollars in payments that fueled the Epstein Enterprise’s sex trafficking, including payments to women who were forced to have sex with Epstein and/or recruited others to be victimized. Defendants Indyke and Kahn obtained large and frequent stocks of cash for Epstein which, based on public knowledge, would have funded Epstein’s cash payments for “massages”—code for forced sex.
Defendants Indyke and Kahn participated with Epstein in coercing his sex trafficking victims, in at least three cases, to enter into arranged and forced marriages in order to obtain immigration status for the foreign women so that they could continue to be available to Epstein for his abuse – a doubly-deep assault on their will and dignity. Defendant Kahn provided a letter of reference for at least one immigration application and tax services to the spouses, and Defendant Indyke paid the immigration lawyer who applied for citizenship for the women and threatened at least one who indicated that she would seek a divorce. They used their professional skills and authority to carry out this abhorrent scheme.
Indyke and Kahn were, in short, the indispensable captains of Epstein’s criminal enterprise, roles for which they were richly rewarded.”
So, there’s a lot to break down there, but it can be simplified as such: Indyke and Kahn helped keep the ships afloat in ALL of Epstein’s business dealings. Indyke and Kahn were the money men for Epstein’s sex trafficking. And, most horrifyingly, they helped coerce women into arranged marriages. Now, this was something I wasn’t aware of until reading this suit. I’m up to speed on a lot of the Epstein story, but Indyke and Kahn’s roles were blind spots to me.
Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in company checks were directly signed for young women from overseas for arranged marriages - the men would pay them on behalf of Epstein through something called The Butterfly Trust, and then the women would marry American women Epstein was abusing so as to ease travel to and from the United States (though usually just TO). The Atlantic’s article even begins with an anecdote about one of these arranged marriages drafted by none other than Richard Kahn.
“In 2016, a letter was drawn up for U.S. immigration officials with a glowing endorsement,” it begins. “It described “a very healthy marriage” between two women, their bond so deep they “often complete each other’s sentences.” Its author, a New York accountant named Richard Kahn, said he had personally witnessed the women’s “passion for each other” during meetings. He had his signature notarized to make it official. But the marriage turned out to be a sham.”
It’s worth mentioning that THIS particular sex trafficking operation is alleged to have been going down between November 2016 and July 2019 - aka right up until Epstein’s arrest. Indyke and Kahn’s alleged connections to Epstein weren’t from what we consider the bulk of Epstein’s trafficking - they were from the EVOLVED version of it that persisted until the day he died, allegedly by suicide.
In fact: the first three redactions in Indyke and Kahn’s allegations are ABOUT this timeline! The parts in bold are what were previously redacted:
109. Indyke made wire transfers from another of Epstein’s personal accounts with a different bank totaling almost $50,000 between November 2016 and July 2019 (just before Epstein’s arrest) to women with Eastern European surnames, including one known to have recruited young women and girls for Epstein.
110. From another of Epstein’s personal accounts with another different bank, for which Indyke had signatory authority, someone acting on Epstein’s behalf made a total of 21 separate withdrawals each in the amount of $1,000 on every but one business day from April 9, 2019 to May 8, 2019.
111. Payments from this account totaling almost $60,000 were transferred by wire to young women mostly at foreign beneficiary banks in February and March 2016.
112. Upon information and belief, based on their authority for the accounts, their interactions with the relevant banks, and records indicating that they made or approved the transactions, these payments could have only been made with the knowledge and/or at the direction of Indyke and Kahn.
Now, why do we think it is that these sections were redacted? Although “officially” it’s to disguise the identities of victims listed within the documents, it is quite damning that within one of the most prominent of Epstein drops (even if the suit has always been public), direct allegations of financial fraud committed by Indyke, who works alongside Pete Hegseth’s personal attorney, are redacted. Furthermore, none of these details are identifying to the victims: in at least one case, a potential PERPETRATOR is being redacted.
Needless redactions like these are all over this case, in fact; in point 80, the names of Financial Strategy Group, Ltd., Financial Trust, Inc., and Hyperion Air, Inc. are redacted, despite having previously been listed as corporations the two were a part of (and none having anything to do with victims’ identities). And, most tellingly, points 84 through 86 are ENTIRELY redacted. You might be able to figure out why in a second:
83. The J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation, Inc. (the “Foundation”) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt private foundation that was founded in June 2000 and registered in the Virgin Islands.
84. As of October 23, 2007, Indyke was listed as President of the Foundation. He also was a signatory on the Foundation’s checking accounts.
85. Between September 2015 and June 2019, Indyke signed Foundation account checks for over $400,000 made payable to young female models and actresses, including a former Russian model who received over $380,000 through monthly payments of $8,333 made over a period of more than three and a half years until the middle of 2019.
86. In November 2017, Indyke signed a Foundation check made payable to the immigration lawyer in New York who was involved in one or more forced marriages arranged among Epstein’s victims to secure a victim’s immigration status. The check’s memo line references the former Russian model’s last name.
Many of the redactions made in the name of “protecting victims” appear, instead, to be protecting Indyke and Kahn. Any time direct allegations are made of the pair misappropriating company funds to traffick women or arrange marriages, the details are redacted either in full or to the point of incomprehension. This is really interesting to me, because for many, many years, we’ve been looking at the Epstein operation as a serpent with two heads: the “braun” of Epstein, and the “brains” of Maxwell, regardless of whether either were accurate.
“In September 2025, Kahn and Indyke filed legal responses denying the allegations against them in the New York lawsuit,” the WSJ writes. “The men agreed with the lawsuit on some points: They said they are entitled to future compensation for their work as co-executors and control the trust that will get whatever is left of Epstein’s fortune. They didn’t volunteer that they are also key beneficiaries.”
In reality, it seems that there were two money men keeping the cemetery well populated - and I don’t think we’re talking about them enough. Both of these men are still in charge of the Epstein estate today, and according to victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards, they’ve stonewalled requests for discovery at every turn.
“We have a situation where it is truly a fox guarding the henhouse,” he stated in February 2025. “The co-executors Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn are not independent, neutral executors. Unless we tell them exactly the documents that we know exist, we’re getting no responsive documents back.”
Working for Epstein has made the men unimaginably wealthy. The WSJ reported that Indyke lives in a $1.8 million home in Delray Beach, Florida, which was followed by the sale of his Boca Raton home for $5.5 million. On top of his mysterious work with Parlatore, he is also a real estate agent now. Khan is allegedly “retired” as an accountant, and owns property in New York.
Life is alright for them, somehow. I don’t think it’s going to stay that way forever.
There was and likely still is a whole network of people supporting this “lifestyle ”. There are definitely more people that need to be held accountable. Great job with this!
If this were the plot of a movie, people would find it impossible. I have no trouble believing the “allegations” because I know how callous and entitled wealthy, powerful people can be.