Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Push to Cleanse His Past Online
After he left jail in 2009, Mr. Epstein hired a host of people to make him look better on Google, Wikipedia and many other places on the web.
An email sent to Jeffrey Epstein in September 2010 presented an intriguing opportunity. “Would you be interested,” it read, “in having all that crap that comes up on Google search on your name basically disappear?”
Mr. Epstein had been released from jail about a year earlier after a conviction for sex crimes involving a minor. His online reputation was a shambles. Less than two hours after receiving the email, he responded:
“Yes.”
That helped kick-start a yearslong quest by Mr. Epstein to overhaul his online reputation, according to a New York Times review of thousands of pages of emails, financial records and other records released by the Justice Department. The documents make clear that Mr. Epstein became deeply invested in hiding his criminal past in Google searches and on Wikipedia.
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