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If you have additional questions which involve this uzatter, please contact the office listed above. When
you call, please provide the file number located at the top of this leter. Please randinter, your participation in
the notification part of this progrens is voluntary. In order to costinue to receive notifications, it is your
responsibility to keep your contact information current.
διαταγ
Victim Specialis
VNS data logs, correspondence maintained in the FBI's case management system, and FBI
interview reports for the Epstein investigation reflect that, during the Epstein investigation, the
FBI generally issued its victim notification letters after the victim had been interviewed by FBI
case agents, but its practice was not uniform. 275
B. August 2006: The USAO's Letters to Victims
During the time that the FBI Victim Specialist was preparing and sending FBI victim
notification letters, Villafaña was also preparing her own introductory letter in anticipation of
meeting with each victim receiving the letter. Villafaña told OPR that she was "generally aware
that the FBI sends letters" but believed the FBI's "process didn't... have anything to do with my
process." Villafaña told OPR the "FBI had their own victim notification system and their own
guidelines for when information had to be provided and what information had to be provided."
Moreover, Villafaña "didn't know when [FBI] letters went out" or "what they said. "276
Nevertheless, Villafaña told OPR that she did not intend for the letters she drafted to interfere with
the FBI's notification responsibilities.
In August 2006, Villafaña drafted her letters to victims who had been initially identified
by the FBI based on the PBPD investigative file. Villafaña told OPR that she "made the decision
to make contact with victims early," and she composed the introductory letter and determined to
whom they would be sent. Although these letters contained CVRA rights information, Villafaña
mainly intended to use them as a vehicle to "introduce" herself and let the victims know the federal
investigation "would be a different process" from the State Attorney's Office investigation in
which "the victims felt they had not been particularly well-treated." Villafaña told OPR that in a
case in which she "needed to be talking to young girls frequently and asking them really intimate
275
OPR found no uniformity in the time lapse between the FBI's interview of a victim and the issuance of an
FBI letter to that particular victim, as the span of time between the two events varied from a few days to months.
Furthermore, not every victim interviewed by the FBI received an FBI letter subsequent to her interview, and some
FBI letters were sent to victims who had not been interviewed by the case agents. Finally, OPR's review of FBI VNS
data revealed some letters that appeared to have been generated in the VNS and not included in the FBI case file. OPR
could not confirm whether such letters were mailed or delivered.
276
Villafaña, who did not have supervisory authority over the FBI's Victim Specialist, told OPR that she did
not review the FBI notification letters and did not see them until she gathered them for production in the CVRA
litigation, which was initiated after Epstein pled guilty on June 30, 2008.
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