---
title: "5,507 Files"
subtitle: "What the FBI seized from Jeffrey Epstein's properties — and what was already gone."
description: "The FBI seized 5,507 images and videos from Epstein's properties, plus recordings spanning decades on VHS, cassette, and micro VHS. A DOJ memo confirms he videotaped encounters and blackmailed powerful people. One device was wiped clean. The FBI never made an inventory."
date: "2026-03-25"
author: "Unsealed Research Team"
image: "5507-files-fbi-seized.jpg"
color: "#d32f2f"
tags: ["fbi", "evidence", "blackmail", "surveillance", "seized", "devices"]
series: "blackmail-files"
series_title: "The Blackmail Files"
series_order: 2
---
A 2011 DOJ internal memo — marked "Highly Confidential" and titled "Preliminary Investigation of Additional Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Others" — contains a single paragraph that explains everything that follows:
> "Ms. [redacted] also reports that the encounters were videotaped by Epstein and, at the end of each encounter, Epstein would debrief Ms. [redacted] and take notes. These allegations are consistent with information received during our investigation that Epstein made his millions by getting dirt on important people and blackmailing them. Ms. [redacted] also reported that Epstein gave her Xanax to keep her emotionally malleable."[1](#sources)
Videotaped encounters. Post-session debriefings. Notes. Xanax. And the DOJ's own characterization of his business model: *getting dirt on important people and blackmailing them.*
That's not our language. That's the United States Department of Justice, in an internal communication, describing how Jeffrey Epstein made his money.
The same memo names the people: Governor Bill Richardson, Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, Senator George Mitchell, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Les Wexner, Ghislaine Maxwell, Glenn Dubin, and "a Nobel Prize winning scientist from Harvard."[1](#sources)
So what happened to all that material?
---
## The Number
When Ghislaine Maxwell's defense team negotiated evidence access for her 2021 trial, the discovery correspondence revealed the scale of what the FBI was holding:[2](#sources)
- **5,507 electronic images and videos** — designated Highly Confidential
- **7 hard-copy physical images** — also Highly Confidential
- **2,100 additional electronic images** — recovered during a responsiveness review not completed until November 2020, more than a year after Epstein's death
- Recordings in formats requiring a **VCR, cassette player, CD player, adapter for micro VHS tape, and microcassette player**
Read that equipment list again. VCR. Cassette player. Micro VHS adapter. Microcassette player. These are not files from a laptop. This is physical media spanning decades — from the era of handheld camcorders through the digital age. Someone was recording for a very long time.
The prosecution noted that some Highly Confidential items contained "both nude and non-nude portions." The defense was told they could photograph the non-nude portions. For the rest, they needed specific authorization from a federal prosecutor.[2](#sources)
Among the physical evidence the FBI was storing: **massage tables, plaster busts of female torsos**, a stuffed dog, and framed pictures seized from Epstein's New York residence.[2](#sources)
Plaster busts of female torsos. In the evidence locker. Next to 5,507 images.
---
## Palm Beach, October 20, 2005
The first law enforcement search of an Epstein property produced six pages of evidence receipts. The Palm Beach Police Department logged what they found at 358 El Brillo Way:[3](#sources)
| Item | Location |
|---|---|
| VHS tapes, CDs marked "Happy Birthday" | Main house |
| 8mm video tapes | Main house |
| ZIP CDs, compact flash cards, flash cards from cameras, floppy disks | Bookcase, guest house |
| 3 CPUs | Main house office + 2 in guest house |
| "GREEN PHOTO FRAME with NAKED GIRL" | Listed separately on final page |
| School transcript | Master bedroom desk |
| "Twin Torpedo" sex toy | NE bedroom |
| 2 massage tables | Master bedroom, men's bedroom |
| 11+ CDs from office off kitchen | Kitchen office area |
| Phone message books (multiple) | Kitchen, office, foyer |
Three computers. Flash cards from cameras. CDs labeled "Happy Birthday." A framed photo of a naked girl. A school transcript in the master bedroom.
The police found what they found. But the house had already been worked over.
---
## "Cleaned Up"
The task card on the Blackmail Files report notes a critical sequence: Sandy Berger — Bill Clinton's former National Security Advisor — called Epstein on October 2, 2005, requesting a callback. Berger had flown on Epstein's jet just eight days earlier, on September 24. Eighteen days after Berger's call, when Palm Beach Police finally executed their search warrant on October 20, they described the house as "cleaned up."[4](#sources)
Federal prosecutor Ann Marie Villafana documented what happened even more bluntly:
> "William Riley is the person who removed the computers from Mr. Epstein's house after Epstein or Roy Black somehow found out that a state search warrant was coming... He also was one of the private investigators who investigated the agents and probably me during the investigation."[5](#sources)
Computers removed before the warrant. By a man who also counter-surveilled the federal agents. Someone inside the system — suspected to be a court reporter — tipped Epstein off. By the time police arrived, the house was cleaned up and the computers were gone.
What the Palm Beach search produced was what was left after the cleanup.
---
## Little Saint James, August 12, 2019
Fourteen years later, two days after Epstein's death, the FBI searched his private island. The photographic log documents 569+ photographs across the property:[6](#sources)
- Rooms and electronics throughout the compound
- Massage tables
- Girls' photos and scrapbooks
- Photograph #515: **"Leon D. Black financial documents from Room M"** — the library
Leon Black. The Apollo Global Management billionaire who paid Epstein at least $158 million in fees for "advice." His financial documents were in Room M of Epstein's island compound. The FBI photographed them.
---
## The Wiped Drive
Of the dozens of electronic devices seized from Epstein's properties, the FBI's forensic examiners processed them one by one, extracting images and video files to hand drives for the prosecution team. On October 15, 2020, an Assistant U.S. Attorney reviewed the latest batch and noticed something:[7](#sources)
> "I've looked through all the drives, and it appears that the folders for device number NYC024342 are empty. Is it right that there were no images or videos extracted from that device?"
The FBI's Senior Forensic Examiner, the NY CART Coordinator, replied the next morning:
> "As for NYC024342, that was a wiped drive. There is no data on it."
A wiped drive. Zero data recoverable. Among the dozens of devices seized from a man the DOJ described as running a blackmail operation — one device had been completely erased.
The examiner also noted that several other devices (NYC024328, NYC024329, NYC024353, NYC024365) were still being processed. "Things unfortunately are going very slowly," he wrote a few days later. "All the other Macs were processed with the same machine, so we are stacked up here."[7](#sources)
---
## No Inventory
Here is the detail that ties the knot. When Maxwell's defense attorney Laura Menninger pressed the prosecution about reviewing the physical evidence, she made an observation that should have made national news:
> "I understand the FBI did not prepare an inventory of their evidence when they seized it from NY and LSJ, so I don't think we need to wait for them to now prepare an inventory before we start reviewing evidence."[2](#sources)
The FBI seized physical evidence from Jeffrey Epstein's New York residence and Little Saint James island. **They did not prepare an inventory.** No catalog of what was taken. No chain-of-custody log at the point of seizure. The defense attorney raised it not as an accusation but as a logistical point — we can't wait for an inventory that doesn't exist.
For an operation the DOJ itself described as a blackmail enterprise targeting heads of state, senators, governors, and billionaires — the FBI seized the evidence and didn't write down what they took.
---
## "At Least One Video Circulating"
While the FBI was slowly processing Epstein's devices, attorney Jeanne Christensen of the Wigdor firm — representing one of Epstein's victims — sent an email to the prosecution in March 2024:[8](#sources)
> "I strongly believe that there is at least one video circulating on some disgusting sex site."
Her client had been videotaped at a hotel with six men and forced to have sex with three of them. A stranger contacted the victim while she was playing an online game, telling her he'd seen a video of "one girl having sex with 3 men in a row" and it looked like her.
Christensen identified at least two of the men involved. One was a former friend of Leon Black's. Both likely knew Epstein.
The material didn't just sit in a safe. Some of it got out.
---
## The Corroboration
The DOJ memo wasn't the only internal document connecting Epstein to systematic recording.
On July 8, 2019 — two days before Epstein's death — the Eastern District of New York received a call from an individual who claimed to have known Epstein since he was sixteen or seventeen:[9](#sources)
> "Epstein made video recordings on Epstein's island in the British Virgin Islands. Epstein gave young women and some young males as well, liquor until they were drunk. They then engaged in sex acts with Epstein which were videotaped."
The caller claimed knowledge of "at least a dozen young runaway women, from Mexico and elsewhere, who complained of their abuse and were then taken away on a boat from the island and never seen again."
And the FBI itself drew the explicit comparison. In an April 2025 internal communication about a man named Frank Moyle Creer who collected information on members of a high-end sex club called "Sanctum" for the purpose of blackmail, the FBI agent wrote:[10](#sources)
> "CREER... collected information on members of 'Sanctum' for the purpose of blackmail, **similar to JEFFREY EPSTEIN.**"
Similar to Jeffrey Epstein. The FBI's own words. In an internal document. Comparing another blackmail operation to Epstein's as a known reference point — the way you'd say "a Ponzi scheme, similar to Madoff."
---
## What We Know and What We Don't
Here is what is documented:
**5,507 electronic images and videos** seized and designated Highly Confidential. **2,100 more** found during a belated review completed fifteen months after Epstein's death. **7 hard-copy images.** Physical recordings spanning VHS through microcassette — decades of media. DVDs from a personal safe [organized by name](/articles/kleenex-boxes-labeled-dvds). Hidden cameras [purchased from a spy store](/articles/kleenex-boxes-labeled-dvds) and installed in Kleenex boxes. A DOJ memo confirming videotaped encounters, debriefings, and blackmail. An FBI comparison calling it out by name.
And then the gaps: A device wiped clean. Computers removed before a search warrant. A house described as "cleaned up." An FBI that seized the evidence without making an inventory. An attorney who believes at least one video is already circulating on the internet.
The question has never been whether Epstein ran a blackmail operation. The DOJ said he did. The FBI said he did. The physical evidence — the cameras, the DVDs, the 5,507 files — confirms the infrastructure.
The question is what happened to the rest of it. And who has it now.
---
*This article is part of [The Blackmail Files](/reports/surveillance-blackmail-investigation) series. Previously: [Kleenex Boxes and Labeled DVDs](/articles/kleenex-boxes-labeled-dvds) — how Epstein ordered hidden cameras in writing and kept DVDs organized by name in a personal safe. Next: The Heat Map — Epstein's counter-surveillance and intelligence operation.*
## Sources & Documents
1. **EFTA01249058** — DOJ internal memo, March 9, 2011. "Highly Confidential — Preliminary Investigation of Additional Crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Others." Confirms videotaped encounters, debriefings, Xanax, names Richardson, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz, Mitchell, Barak, Wexner, Maxwell, Dubin. [View →](/doc/EFTA01249058)
2. **vol00009-efta00093448-pdf** — Maxwell trial discovery correspondence, 2021. Evidence logistics for US v. Maxwell, 20 Cr. 330 (AJN). Details 5,507 electronic images, 2,100 additional images, 7 hard-copy items, recording formats, physical evidence catalog. [View →](/email/vol00009-efta00093448-pdf)
3. **EFTA01326210** — Palm Beach Police Department property receipt / search warrant return, October 20, 2005. Six-page evidence log from 358 El Brillo Way. [View →](/doc/EFTA01326210)
4. House Oversight Committee letter, September 16, 2025. Sandy Berger call to Epstein, flight log, "cleaned up" characterization.
5. **vol00009-efta00208494-pdf** — Federal prosecutor Ann Marie Villafana memo, March 30, 2011. Documents William Riley removing computers and counter-surveilling federal agents. [View →](/email/vol00009-efta00208494-pdf)
6. **EFTA01301654** — FBI photographic log, August 12, 2019. Little Saint James island search, 569+ photographs including "Leon D. Black financial documents from Room M." [View →](/doc/EFTA01301654)
7. **vol00009-efta00091388-pdf** — FBI forensic examiner correspondence, October 2020. Confirms device NYC024342 "was a wiped drive. There is no data on it." [View →](/email/vol00009-efta00091388-pdf)
8. **EFTA02731515** — Attorney Jeanne Christensen (Wigdor firm) email, March 7, 2024. Reports belief that at least one victim video is circulating online. [View →](/doc/EFTA02731515)
9. **EFTA00092078** — EDNY memo to file, July 8, 2019. Telephone conversation with individual claiming knowledge of Epstein's videotaped sex acts on island. [View →](/doc/EFTA00092078)
10. **EFTA00129096** — FBI internal communication, April 3, 2025. ARMS Reach vetting for Timothy Draper; agent describes Creer's blackmail operation as "similar to JEFFREY EPSTEIN." [View →](/doc/EFTA00129096)