Jeffrey Epstein may have gamed the US immigration system to secure legal status for multiple foreign women. The disgraced financier acted as sponsor for his girlfriend and others — using student visas, English language courses and sham marriages to ensure they remained in the country. Newly released details from the Epstein files also outline many of his interactions with lawyers, government officials and close associates to ensure the naturalisation process.
According to a Bloomberg report citing the files, Epstein had taken steps to secure legal US status for multiple foreign women in his ambit. They were enrolled at English language schools well before the lengthy naturalisation process — with the documents later allowing them to get a student visa.
“Jeffrey is in need of TOEFL books again for the island. Can you please go to Barnes and Noble and buy two copies each of the below books (or something similar)? Then FedEx them to the island for tomorrow’s delivery,” read an email from an employee in 2015.
The Karyna Shuliak case
Much has been said about former Belarusian citizen Karyna Shuliak as the release of nearly three million files brought the Epsitein case back into public discourse. The 36-year-old Belarusian dentist was the last girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein and reportedly the final person he talked out outside prison before committing suicide. Email exchanges and banking details document nearly a decade of travel arrangements, funding for her family and support of academic degrees in the United States. She was also the prime beneficiary of a will Epstein signed only two days before death — bequeathed a $100 million from his estate.
Epstein had helped several women immigrate to the United States through questionable means — including his girlfriend Karyna Shuliak. Data released by the Department of Justice reveals the convicted pedophile had arranged for her admission into the dental school of Columbia University through a complicated process that began in 2011. She was a transfer student from Belarus who was yet to finish her degree, and communications with the college indicate her immigration case was also in jeopardy.
“Karina is now in dental school at Columbia University. I need her to get a reinstatement of her F1 after applying for asylum…it requires a discretion decision…it is important to me…I don’t want to ask as I prefer her not be part of my file. I recall you had a good lawyer friend for immigration in Washington,” Epstein wrote in emails to British investor Ian Osborne in late 2012.
Osborne had suggested Epstein connect with Greg Craig — the former White House counsel to President Barack Obama. He also claimed that the lawyer would give the head of the US immigration agency (Ali Mayorkas was heading the department at the time) a “heads up” about the case. Meetings with lawyers and extensive back-and-forth had eventually made it clear to Epstein that the case was far from straightforward. Shuliak had already overstayed her student visa (which made reinstatement difficult) and had a pending asylum case that clashed with all suggestions that she would return home after studies.
By August 2013, he and Shuliak were talking to immigration lawyer Arda Beskardes about marriage. She married a woman named Jennifer less than two months later in New York — paving the way for a legal stay in the United States. She eventually applied for a “family-based” Green Card in mid-2014 and wrote to Beskardes about her successful application in January 2015. Shuliak became an American citizen in May 2018 and documents show divorce proceedings underway by October that year.