Jeffrey Epstein Joins Manafort, ‘El Chapo’ in Notorious Manhattan Jail

Bernie Madoff did time there. So did John Gotti Jr. Paul Manafort is currently in residence. Jeffrey Epstein -- inmate 76318-054 -- just moved in.

The hulking Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan is several miles and worlds away from the mansion near Central Park that Epstein may have been planning to head for when he was arrested by the FBI after touching down at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on July 6. Among his new neighbors is the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who has been holed up in the federal jail’s notorious 10 South wing for more than two years.

One of Guzman’s lawyers, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he was astonished to see Epstein two days after his arrest wearing a jail-issued uniform in a holding cell next to a conference room on 10 South where lawyer meetings typically occur.

“There he was, sitting there, all alone,” Litchtman said. “This unit is completely isolating.” If Epstein is there full-time right now, “he won’t have any contact with others.”

Bureau of Prisons authorities confirmed Epstein is being held at the facility but said they generally don’t share information on the condition of specific inmates for “privacy and safety and security reasons.”

Epstein’s lawyers didn’t answer emails seeking comment about where their client is being held.

A registered sex offender facing new sex-trafficking charges, Epstein could get permission to leave the MCC as early as July 15, when he is scheduled for a bail hearing. What conditions might U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman require to release him?

Possibly a “substantial” cash amount (guesstimates are in the tens of millions of dollars), a home-confinement mandate and an electronic-monitoring device strapped to one of his ankles, said Brandon Sample, a defense attorney and sentencing-reform advocate who served more than 11 years in federal prison after he and others bought postage stamps with counterfeit and stolen checks and resold them.

In the meantime, Epstein -- who has access to two private planes and owns a private island in the Caribbean -- will be doing what has been described as fairly hard time. Certainly relatively hard time. The contrast between his recent gilded existence and his life at the MCC is like “night and day,” said Alan Ellis, a consultant and criminal defense lawyer who wrote a guidebook on federal prisons. “And that would be understating it.”

Epstein, 66, probably has been assigned to a room no larger than 100 square feet equipped with only a bed, a toilet with an attached sink and a wedge of a desk, Sample said. For reference, Epstein’s Manhattan home is 50 feet wide and, according to the government’s detention memo, is worth more than $77 million.

If in fact he is still in 10 South -- the special unit where alleged terrorists and other high-profile inmates are held, sometimes for their own protection -- he is spending 23 hours a day confined to his cell and allowed out for one hour to exercise alone, said Sam Schmidt, a criminal defense lawyer in New York who’s represented al-Qaeda operatives who’ve been held there.

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