Transfer of Jeffrey Epstein ranch property raises questions
A shadowy deed filed last year in New Mexico claims ownership of parts of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, a sprawling 21,000-square-foot desert mansion on nearly 10,000 acres of land, according to a report.
The deed claimed the land was sold to a nonprofit church in
Florida called Love and Bliss for just $200, KRQE-TV in Albuquerque reported.
Daniel Weiner, an Epstein estate attorney, said Love and
Bliss are the same people who filed a fraudulent deed for Epstein’s estate in
Florida, which "cost the estate money and court time to get it thrown
out."
The New Mexico deed, claimed to have been created in April
2019, has both a purported stamped notary signature and Jeffrey Epstein’s.
Epstein was arrested in July that year on sex trafficking charges and died that
August in a New York City jail cell.
The deed was filed last October in Santa Fe County.
A deeper look into the Love and Bliss church, a 501(c)(3)
organization founded in 2018, reveals its headquarters appears to be a small
home in Redington Beach, Florida, and its president is a 22-year-old who was
arrested on a stalking charge in 2017 and a battery charge in March, KRQE
reported.
The address for the Florida attorney listed on the deed is
an unrelated realty office and a New York attorney’s number listed was also a
fake, linking to a sales office with no such attorney, the station reported.
A Florida judge reportedly deemed the deed for Epstein’s
Palm Beach, Florida, mansion to be "invalid and unenforceable" and
the church was later ordered to cease and desist after it filed a second
fraudulent deed for the Florida property under the name Hung Shungli, according
to KRQE.
Weiner said the church doesn’t have a legal claim on the New
Mexico property either.
"If Love and Bliss filed a warranty deed clouding our
ability to sell the property, then we’ll definitely have to go to court to get
rid of it," he said.
First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies told
the station the church may have filed the fraudulent deed because "they
think that they can get in and maybe then start selling off pieces and portions
of it and get away with it."
"And then it would just perpetuate the fraud because
new, innocent owners would come in, give these people money, and then be part
of this scheme and not actually own that," Carmack-Altwies said.
She said the estate will "absolutely" have
recourse over the allegedly fraudulent deed.
New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard
told KRQE she would like to see the estate go to a local ranching family and
have New Mexicans be able to use some of the land for recreation.
"We’ve even talked about some type of memorial site to
just recognize what young girls and women went through in this area and on
state land," she said.
Richard canceled a lease agreement Epstein had with the
estate for 1,300 acres of grazing land since the 1990s when she took office in
2019.
The Epstein estate says it has no buyers yet but plans to
sell the estate and donate the proceeds to a victims’ compensation fund.
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