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have "notified [the victims] that that was an all-encompassing plea, that that state court sentence
would also mean that the federal government was not proceeding."

Sloman told OPR that he thought Acosta and Criminal Division Deputy Assistant Attorney
General Sigal Mandelker had agreed that the decision whether to notify the victims of the state
court proceedings should be "left to the state."323 Mandelker, however, had no memory of advising
Acosta to defer the decision to make notifications to the State Attorney, and she noted that the
"correspondence [OPR] provided to me from that time period" discussing such a decision
"demonstrates that all of the referenced language came from Mr. Acosta and/or his team, and that
I did not provide, suggest, or edit the language." Sloman told OPR that he initially believed that
"the victims were going to be notified at some level, especially because they had restitution rights
under § 2255"; but, his expectations changed after "there was an agreement made that we were
going to allow the state, since it was going to be a state case, to decide how the victims were going
to be notified."

Assistant State Attorney Belohlavek told OPR that she did not at any time receive a victim
list from the USAO. She further said she did not receive any request from the USAO with regard
to contacting the victims.

In response to Acosta's December 19, 2007 letter, Lefkowitz asserted that the FBI should
not communicate with the victims, and that the state, not the USAO, should determine who can be
heard at the sentencing hearing:

[Y]our letter also suggests that our objection to your Office's
proposed victims notification letter was that the women identified
as victims of federal crimes should not be notified of the state
proceedings. That is not true, as our previous letter clearly states.
Putting aside our threshold contention that many of those to whom
[CVRA] notification letters are intended are in fact not victims as
defined in the Attorney General's 2000 Victim Witness
Guidelines—a status requiring physical, emotional or pecuniary
injury of the [victim]—it was and remains our position that these
women may be notified of such proceedings but since they are
neither witnesses nor victims to the state prosecution of this matter,
they should not be informed of fictitious "rights" or invited to make
sworn written or in-court testimonial statements against Mr. Epstein
at such proceedings, as Ms. Villafaña repeatedly maintained they
had the right to do. Additionally, it was and remains our position
that any notification should be by mail and that all proactive efforts
by the FBI to have communications with the witnesses after the
execution of the Agreement should finally come to an end. We
agree, however, with your December 19 modification of the
previously drafted federal notification letter and agree that the

323 In his June 3, 2008 letter to Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, Sloman wrote, "Acosta again consulted
with DAAG Mandelker who advised him to make the following proposal [to defer notification to the State Attorney's
Office]." OPR found no other documentation relating to Mandelker's purported involvement in the decision.

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