We Tracked Every Visitor to Epstein Island | WIRED

Even in death, the secrets of Jeffrey Epstein remain tightly guarded. But earlier this year, I spearheaded a Wired investigation that uncovered the data of almost 200 mobile phones belonging to visitors to his infamous pedophile island. The data was so precise we were able to map the paths of these visitors to within centimeters, including their neighborhoods, buildings of origins, and the paths they took to get to the island. These digital trails document the numerous trips of wealthy and influential individuals, seemingly undeterred by Epstein's status as a convicted sex offender. Wired's analysis of the data is ongoing, and it raises profound questions about privacy and surveillance.

This is Epstein Island's secret data on the grid. This is Little St. James, AKA Epstein Island. These red dots on the map represent some of the 11,279 coordinates I obtained. They were left exposed online by a location data broker with ties to the defense department called Near Intelligence, now known as Azer. Between 2016 and Epstein's final arrest in 2019, Near collected data on more than 200 cell phones that visited the island. We don't know why they did that or which client or prospective client of Near decided to query the data in this way to produce the maps. But the maps you'll see in this video show where visitors to Epstein Island spent most of their time.

Let's take a step back. You might be wondering, where is Epstein Island anyways? Well, it's here. Little St. James is a private island that is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the Caribbean Sea. Epstein purchased Little St. James in 1998 for $7.95 million. It's about 71 acres, the size of 54 football fields. He made the island his primary residence and soon after began welcoming visitors and throwing infamous parties, where he was accused of having groomed, sexually assaulted, and trafficked untold numbers of women and girls.

The maps of the data collected by Near, and which we had Wired recreate here, indicate the most visited spots on the island. From the main house here with the pool to the beaches and the large sundial, it's all on display, including the enigmatic hilltop temple site over here, which has been the focal point in speculations about Epstein's mysterious activities on the island. But the tracking of phones wasn't contained to Little St. James. Surveillance continued long after the visitors left. The data reveals the locations of visitors 30 minutes before and after arriving on the island, which shows us the exact routes everyone took to get there.

Some landed here at the Cyril E. King Airport on neighboring St. Thomas Island, with its private jet and VIP terminals. It was the go-to hub for Epstein's 200-cater Boeing 727 plane dubbed Lolita Express. We see data points clustered at various area beaches, hotels, and luxury resorts, including the Ritz Carlton Hotel here. To get to Epstein's Island, many visitors got on a boat at a designated dock at the American Yacht Harbor, a private marina on St. Thomas co-owned by Epstein at the time.

From there, we see a flow of movement through Great St. James Island, the larger island just to the north, which Epstein purchased in 2016 for $22 million. He had hoped to develop it but was met with legal challenges after damaging the island's coral reefs and protected habitats. The data then traces visitors' movements as they were fed to Epstein's private dock on Little St. James. Epstein also had a helipad on the island and owned at least one helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76, which he used often to transport himself, guests, and victims from the airport or elsewhere, according to legal documents and testimony.

It's worth noting that the data reveals a regular flow of traffic to and from Little St. James between 2016 and 2019. A lot of people were visiting the island even after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2018 and served jail time for procuring a minor for prostitution. If we keep following the data trail and we widen our view, we'll see that the tracking of visitors continues once they have left the island and presumably gone back home.

The Near Intelligence data we uncovered pinpoints 166 locations throughout the United States and 80 cities across 26 states. Topping the list were Florida, Massachusetts, Texas, Michigan, and New York. The data points are labeled as common evening locations or common daytime locations, typically their homes or work. Many of the visitors were likely wealthy, as indicated by coordinates pointing to gated communities in Michigan, as well as homes in Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket in Massachusetts. We even have data points from a downtown Miami nightclub and also the sidewalk across the street from Trump Tower in New York City.

Before you jump to conclusions, some sources have highlighted interactions between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at social events. But after Epstein's 2008 conviction, there are no verified reports of Trump maintaining a relationship with a convicted pedophile. Take a look at this point over here in New Mexico. This is a property that was owned by Epstein, a secluded 8,000-acre ranch. Another property of Epstein's is seen over here on Elbo Way in Palm Beach, Florida. This waterfront mansion was sold, demolished, and is now being rebuilt, but it was where prosecutors claimed Epstein trafficked numerous underage girls with the intention of molesting and abusing them.

But we don't just see the coordinates of wealthy homes amongst the data. The median household income of Palm Beach is more than twice that of nearby communities where we also see data points. Some of these points could represent victims or employees who worked on the island, which is why we're careful about revealing names and continue to carefully analyze the data. If we zoom out more, we notice something strange: there are no data points anywhere in Europe. Does this mean it was strictly Americans visiting Jeffrey Epstein on his island? No. We do see data points from the cach identifying origin cities in Australia, the Cayman Islands, and way over here in Kiev, Ukraine.

We know that Epstein himself had a place in Paris, and we know from victim testimony and flight logs that his associate, Jean-Luc Brunel, owner of a modeling agency in Paris, did visit the island. So why don't we see these data points? One possibility could be Europe's extensive privacy laws considered the strongest privacy and security laws in the world. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives Europeans robust rights to their personal data even outside of Europe.

Under comparatively lax U.S. privacy laws, Near Intelligence was able to source its location data for this precision surveillance. To explain how this data might have been collected in the first place, we need to talk about the world of digital advertising and data brokers. The reason you get a targeted ad displayed on an app or a website is because apps on your phone have been transmitting information about you to ad exchanges and real-time bidding platforms. That information often includes your location data.

Data brokers like Near Intelligence extract, repackage, analyze, and sell the data from these ad platforms. In fact, according to internal company documents from 2019, Near Intelligence, which has roots in Singapore and Bengaluru, India, claimed to have information on around 1.6 billion people in 44 countries. They offer a platform for searching that allows their clients to query their vast data set by drawing a box around a specific area, like Little St. James. Near then provides insights about the devices that were observed within the selected area. We don't know who or why someone searched Epstein Island, but the reports and maps they created were sitting unprotected and totally searchable as publicly accessible code, and that's where we found them.

And those aren't the only Near Intelligence data sets that we found. Google's web crawlers were able to locate at least two other reports: one geofencing the Westfield Mall in the Netherlands and another targeting a park in El Paso, Texas. This is data unrelated to our investigation about Epstein Island, but it shows how unsafe personal data can be; in some cases, it's just a Google search away. So, pro tip: If you don't want your personal data swimming around in the murky waters of programmatic advertising, make sure you limit ad tracking on your phone, disable location services and third-party cookies, and use an ad blocker.

So what happened to the island after Epstein reportedly committed suicide in a Manhattan federal jail while awaiting trial for sex trafficking? Well, in May of 2023, billionaire investor Steven Deckoff purchased both Little St. James and Great St. James for $60 million. He's currently building a luxury resort on Little St. James that he says could open as early as 2025. Also, Ghislaine Maxwell, former British socialite and Epstein accomplice, was convicted in 2021 on five counts, including sex trafficking of minors by force. Maxwell was arrested in Bradford, New Hampshire, tracked to a million-dollar home by federal agents using location data pulled from her cell phone.

I'm Drew Morra. The Wired investigation into the secret data of Epstein's Island continues.