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Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page139 of 258
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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 137 of 348

The next day, Villafaña asked Goldberger to change the plea agreement by inserting the word “imprisoned” after “6 months,” and Goldberger agreed to do so. Villafaña, however, did not ask that the agreement be amended to clarify that the reference to “the Palm Beach County Detention Facility” meant the jail, rather than the Stockade. The final signed plea agreement form further clarified the sentence, providing that after serving 12 months in the Palm Beach County Detention Facility, Epstein would be “sentenced to 6 months in the Palm Beach County Detention Facility . . . to be served consecutive to the 12 month sentence,” followed by “12 months Community Control.” The word “imprisoned” was hand written after “6 months” but then crossed out and replaced by “jail sentence.”¹⁷³

A. June 30, 2008: Epstein Enters His Guilty Pleas in State Court

Epstein, with his attorney Jack Goldberger, appeared in Palm Beach County court on June 30, 2008, and entered guilty pleas to the indictment charging him with one felony count of solicitation of prostitution and to a criminal information charging him with one felony count of procurement of a minor to engage in prostitution.¹⁷⁴ At the plea hearing, which Villafaña and the FBI case agent attended as spectators, Assistant State Attorney Belohlavek did not proffer the facts of the case; instead she only recited the charging language in the indictment and the criminal information:

[B]etween August 1, 2004 and October 31, 2005, the defendant in Palm Beach County did solicit or procure someone to commit [prostitution] on three or more occasions. And . . . between August 1, 2004 and October 9, 2005, the defendant did procure a minor under the age of 18 to commit prostitution in Palm Beach County also.¹⁷⁵

The court found this to be “a sufficient factual basis to support the pleas,” and engaged in a colloquy with Belohlavek regarding Epstein’s victims:

The Court: Are there more than one victim?

Ms. Belohlavek: There’s several.

...

¹⁷³ http://www.pbso.org/inside-pbso/corrections/general/. The “Stockade” was a “lower security ‘camp-style’ facility” co-located with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Both were administered by the Sheriff’s Office.

Plea in the Circuit Court, signed June 30, 2008, and filed in court. Villafaña complained to Goldberger when she learned later about the change from “imprisoned” to “jail sentence.”

¹⁷⁴ The Information is attached as Exhibit 5.

¹⁷⁵ State v. Epstein, case nos. 06-CF-9454 and 08-CF-9381, Transcript of Plea Conference at 41-42 (Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, June 30, 2008) (Plea Hearing Transcript). Belohlavek told OPR that reciting the statutory language of the charge as the factual basis for the plea was the typical practice for a state court plea.

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