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JAMES PATTERSON

Jeffrey Epstein. Finally, desperately, he tried to sell the information he’d stolen.
The papers named underage girls and the places where Epstein had taken them. The list included locations in California, Paris, New Mexico, New York, and Michigan. The papers also included the names, addresses, and phone numbers of famous individuals—Henry Kissinger, Mick Jagger, Dustin Hoffman, Ralph Fiennes, David Koch, Ted Kennedy, Donald Trump, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton, and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak among them.
This was intriguing, if not at all damning. Epstein made a habit of collecting such information for future use. But information pertaining to the girls would have bolstered the state’s case against Jeffrey Epstein, and by withholding it from the Palm Beach PD and the FBI, Rodriguez had committed a crime.
In his defense, Rodriguez would say that the papers were an “insurance policy.” Without them, he believed, Epstein would have made him “disappear.”
But now Rodriguez needed the money. And so a few weeks after Epstein’s release from the Stockade, he approached a lawyer who was representing some of Epstein’s masseuses. He had the “holy grail,” he insisted. A “golden nugget.” The names of hundreds of girls, he said, who had been abused by Epstein.
The lawyer told Rodriguez in no uncertain terms that he was obliged to turn whatever he had over to the authorities. By demanding money for the information, Rodriguez was committing another crime.
According to a sworn statement by Christina Pryor, a special agent with the FBI, Rodriguez “persisted that he would only turn over the information in his possession in exchange for $50,000.”

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FIL
*
Two months later, on Octobe
who insisted once more on b
lawyer told him that an associ
What the lawyer knew and
the associate in question was
the FBI. A few days later, on N
guez and sets up a meeting, wh
“During the meeting, Rod
book and several sheets of lega
ten notes,” Special Agent Pryor
continues:

Rodriguez explained that he
his former employer’s resid
2004 to 2005 and that the bo
working for his former emp
detail the information within
ant information to the UCE. I
he had previously lied to the
about the $50,000, took posse
counting it.
Rodriguez was then detai
Proceedings, Title 18, U.S. Co
tioned. After Miranda warning
Rodriguez waived his rights a
those rights. Rodriguez admitt
and book in his possession an
to local law enforcement or th

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