By Francesca Maglione, Tom Schoenberg, Maya Davis and Silla Brush, Bloomberg News
In early 2013, Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, was stressed about her U.S. visa status. Later that year, she married an American citizen and her worries were gone.
A Green Card followed, and, in 2018, citizenship. Then Shuliak divorced her spouse: a woman named Jennifer who had been in a relationship with Kimbal Musk after Epstein connected them.
“Now that she’s an american you should throw her a big ole party,” one of Epstein’s go-to immigration lawyers messaged on the day of Shuliak’s naturalization interview. “with a mechanical bull, red white and blue balloons, and deep fried snickers bars on flag toothpicks.”
Shuliak’s immigration story — and the stories of several other women revealed in a cache of files released by the U.S. Department of Justice — show how Epstein used student visas, English language courses and sham marriages to make sure the women in his orbit stayed right where he wanted them.
The convicted pedophile had arranged for Shuliak’s admission to Columbia University’s dental school, as a transfer student from Belarus who hadn’t finished her degree, via a complicated process that began in 2011. After she got in, communications between her and members of the Ivy League school’s international student office show her immigration case was another hurdle to clear.
“I am so sorry if you were given the run a round with the immigration office today,” an official at Columbia’s dental school wrote to Shuliak in July 2012. “At this time I believe that everything is fine with your immigration status.” Columbia and the official didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Epstein, apparently, wanted to be sure of Shuliak’s immigration status. He reached out to his network seeking help to quietly restore her student visa.
“I don’t want to ask as I prefer her not to be a part of my file,” Epstein wrote in late 2012 to Ian Osborne, a British investor who appears multiple times in the files. “I recall you had a good lawyer friend for immigrarion in washington.”
Osborne said he had someone with links to the highest level at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That person, Osborne said, was Greg Craig, then a Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom partner, and former White House counsel to President Barack Obama.
Craig “uses an excellent specialist immigration law firm — and then gives Ali Mayorkas over at INS the heads-up,” Osborne wrote, name-dropping the then-head of the U.S. immigration agency, who later served as Secretary of Homeland Security under President Joe Biden. “I will call you later today to coordinate.” Osborne appears to use the old name for the current U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The email led to Skadden lawyers meeting with Epstein and Osborne on a conference call and enlisting help from an immigration company they brought in. Craig, according to one message, was also scheduled to join the call. It’s unclear if he did. One Skadden lawyer later suggested Epstein could contact the immigration company himself, or Skadden could reach out to another one.
Mayorkas isn’t mentioned again in the messages, and there’s no indication he was ever aware of the matter. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I wholeheartedly regret that I ever met, or had any association whatsoever with, Epstein,” Osborne said in a statement, adding that he was not aware of Epstein’s illegal behavior. Craig, now at another law firm, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
After some back and forth, the feedback that Epstein received was far from straightforward: Shuliak had overstayed her student visa — making reinstatement difficult — and even if she left the country and applied for a new one it might not be granted, one of the lawyers relayed. She also had a pending asylum case, which the lawyer called “directly inconsistent with a temporary intention to remain in the U.S. and return to one’s home country after studies.”
Epstein had a decision to make.
“We will need to decide if pushing the asylum and redoing it, is a more like path to sucess than the prosecutorial descretion re the reinstatement,” Epstein wrote back.
Skadden declined to comment. A person familiar with the situation said Skadden was never engaged to represent Epstein. The Skadden lawyers, this person said, referred Epstein to another law firm and received no payment for their involvement.
It’s not clear exactly when Epstein stopped communicating with Skadden, but the messages dried up.
By August 2013, Epstein was emailing directly with another immigration lawyer: Arda Beskardes.
“We should also talk about the marriage asap. are you in NYC?” Beskardes wrote to Epstein and a redacted email address that month.
A month later, Shuliak was in touch: “ Can we meet sometime tomorrow? That will be me and Jen,” she wrote to the lawyer.
On October 9, 2013, Shuliak got married in New York. The name of the person she married was redacted on their certificate of marriage registration, but both of them were listed as living at 301 East 66th Street in New York, an address that appears repeatedly in the files as somewhere that many women and prominent guests associated with Epstein stayed.
The next day, Shuliak reached out to Beskardes and asked for an appointment. A little more than a week later, Beskardes reached out again, “so are we proceeding?”
“Yes Arda, sorry for the delay, waiting for the rest of the info from Jen,” Shuliak wrote back. Records from later that year show that Shuliak and Jennifer had a joint bank account. (Bloomberg News is withholding Jennifer’s last name for privacy reasons.)
In mid-2014, Shuliak applied for a “family based” Green Card, and by December, an interview was scheduled.
“I have received my green card!! Thank you so much for all your help!!!” Shuliak wrote to Beskardes in January 2015.
Three years later, Shuliak was in the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen. By May, she was an American, and Beskardes was suggesting party themes.
In October of the same year, Shuliak was already working on getting divorced. Less than a year later, it was done.
Beskardes, Shuliak and Jennifer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Almost a decade earlier, Shuliak had taken an important step in her immigration journey. In November 2010, a transcript shows, she started a course at the Spanish American Institute, an English-language school now in Midtown Manhattan.
The course, and others like it, appear to be a common first step that Epstein took to secure legal U.S. status for foreign women. In many cases, enrollment got the women the paperwork that was required to get a student visa — as long as they could demonstrate sufficient funds (as much as $20,000 today) — either in their bank accounts or from a financial sponsor.
Epstein sponsored and paid fees for multiple women, according to emails, Skype messages and bank statements.
“This is the english language school that anna in paris would like to join,” Epstein wrote in 2017 to a redacted email address, mentioning the American Language Communication Center, a school that closed in 2019. “Get an I 20 issued and get a visa shees russian but staying in paris.”
The English courses often helped them prepare for the TOEFL exam, a standard requirement for foreign students wanting to study at U.S. colleges. Epstein appears to have made sure that the women could study for the test wherever they were staying.
“Jeffrey is in need of TOEFL books again for the island,” one of his employees wrote in a 2015 email. “Can you please go to Barnes and Noble and buy 2 each of the below books (or something similar) Then Fed Ex them to the island for tomorrow delivery.” Epstein later requested 10 TOEFL prep books for his Paris apartment, emails show.
People in Epstein’s orbit also helped keep women in the U.S. Darren Indyke, Epstein’s longtime legal adviser, filed an application for a work visa on behalf of a woman whose name was redacted in the Justice Department files. The letter cited her work with Epstein’s foundation on a volunteer basis and also referenced her career as a model.
In a separate case, Beskardes provided a lengthy explanation for why someone described as an interior designer should be granted a work visa, after the immigration service requested more information.
The O-1 visa — reserved for foreign workers with “extraordinary ability or achievement” — was a common category that Epstein’s circle used to apply on behalf of various women. Several lawyers, including Arda, filed petitions for the visas, citing the applicants’ extraordinary abilities in fashion modeling, communications and public relations and art curation. It’s unclear how many were successful.
Epstein at one point guaranteed a $1 million credit line to agency MC2 Model Management, according to a sworn deposition by a former company bookkeeper. The agency’s founder, Jean-Luc Brunel, was alleged in a civil lawsuit to have brought girls as young as age 12 to the U.S. for sexual purposes and provided them to his friends including Epstein. Brunel died by suicide in 2022 while facing rape charges.
“Mr. Epstein was paying for the visas. But, you know, all the visas were done through — through Karin’s or MC Squared,” the former bookkeeper said in the deposition, referring to the agency’s former name.
In 2012, Epstein exchanged emails about an unidentified woman’s student visa status. “Call immigration, does she need an I 20 with her visa ???” he wrote.
The messages show two people with redacted addresses scrambling to try to get an answer before a flight that was due to leave the following morning, and later expressing relief that the woman didn’t end up getting on the plane.
“I am glad she didn’t go,” one of the people wrote. “I felt sick at the thought of her coming back on Je plane and something going wrong.”
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(Amanda Albright and Dana Hull contributed.)
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