---
alias:
- U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida
- United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida
- Southern District of Florida
- SDFL
- USAO-SDFL
- Miami U.S. Attorney's Office
category: U.S. Government
created: 2026-09-25
location: Miami, Florida
relations:
- end: 2020-11
  fn: 4
  reverse: true
  start: 2019-02-06
  type: investigated
  with: '[[Office of Professional Responsibility]]'
start: 1929
summary: Federal prosecutor's office for South Florida, headquartered in Miami, which
  investigated Jeffrey Epstein from 2006 and resolved the case in 2007 through a non-prosecution
  agreement immunizing his co-conspirators.
tags:
- Organization
- DepartmentOfJustice
- Prosecutor
- JeffreyEpstein
- NonProsecutionAgreement
- Miami
updated: 2026-09-25
---

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida is the [Department of Justice](/organizations/department-of-justice/) office that prosecutes federal crimes and conducts federal civil litigation in the nine southernmost counties of [Florida](/places/florida/), from Key West to Vero Beach. Headquartered in [Miami](/places/miami/) with staffed branches in [Fort Lauderdale](/places/fort-lauderdale/), West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce, it opened a federal investigation of [Jeffrey Epstein](/people/jeffrey-epstein/) in May 2006, drafted a 60-count indictment, and under U.S. Attorney [Alexander Acosta](/people/alexander-acosta/) resolved the case on September 24, 2007 with the [Epstein non-prosecution agreement](/events/epstein-non-prosecution-agreement/), which required a state guilty plea and bound the [United States](/places/united-states/) not to charge "any potential co-conspirators of Epstein." A federal judge found in 2019 that the office had violated the [Crime Victims' Rights Act](/concepts/crime-victims-rights-act/) by concealing the agreement from victims, and the Justice Department's [Office of Professional Responsibility](/organizations/office-of-professional-responsibility/) found in 2020 that Acosta's use of it "constitutes poor judgment."[^1][^2][^3][^4]

### The Office

The first U.S. Attorney's office in Miami opened in 1929 at 100 N.E. 1st Avenue and moved in 1932 into the federal courthouse, where the sole federal judge, John W. Holland, was a former U.S. Attorney. In 1952 the office had two part-time Assistant U.S. Attorneys and three support staff. The Fort Lauderdale office opened in 1975, West Palm Beach in 1978 and Fort Pierce in 1990, and since 1993 the headquarters has been at 99 N.E. 4th Street in Miami. The number of prosecutors grew from nine in 1965 to approximately 223 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and 41 Special Assistants. The district covers 15,197 square miles and more than 7 million residents in Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River, Okeechobee and Highlands counties; the office describes the district as having "ties to [Latin America](/places/latin-america/), the Bahamas, and other Caribbean nations" and as home to federal enclaves including the U.S. Southern Command and Homestead Air Reserve Base.[^1]

During the Epstein investigation the office had about 200 prosecutors and 200 support staff. The First Assistant U.S. Attorney was second in command, supervising the Criminal, Civil and Appellate Divisions, and the West Palm Beach branch, about 70 miles from Miami and covering Palm Beach County, had two criminal sections under a managing Assistant U.S. Attorney. The Justice Department's report describes one of Epstein's Miami lawyers, identified by the first name Guy, as a former career prosecutor in the office who was U.S. Attorney from 2000 to 2002 and then for two years Director of the [Executive Office for United States Attorneys](/organizations/executive-office-for-united-states-attorneys/). A December 2018 account of Epstein's early defense team listed "former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis" among its members.[^2][^5][^6]

### Leadership During the Epstein Case

Acosta was appointed interim U.S. Attorney in June 2005, at 36, after serving as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights; he was confirmed on August 3, 2006 and sworn in that October. In September 2006 he named [Jeffrey Sloman](/people/jeffrey-sloman/) First Assistant and [Matthew Menchel](/people/matthew-menchel/) chief of the Criminal Division. [Andrew Lourie](/people/andrew-lourie/), a deputy chief of the Criminal Division, managed the West Palm Beach branch, and [A. Marie Villafaña](/people/ann-marie-villafana/) was the line prosecutor. Menchel left in August 2007 and Lourie moved to a Criminal Division post in Washington in September 2007, while the agreement was being negotiated. On December 8, 2008 the Justice Department approved Acosta's recusal from matters involving Kirkland & Ellis, Epstein's law firm, because he had begun discussing employment with it, and Sloman became the senior official on the case. Acosta left in June 2009 to become dean of the law school at Florida International University; Sloman served as Acting and then Interim U.S. Attorney until June 2010.[^2][^7]

### Operation Leap Year

The [Palm Beach Police Department](/organizations/palm-beach-police-department/) referred the Epstein case to the [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) in West Palm Beach after the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office obtained a single state solicitation count. Villafaña opened an office file on May 23, 2006, naming the investigation "Operation Leap Year." On July 24, 2006 Sloman described it to Lourie as "a highly sensitive case involving some [Palm Beach](/places/palm-beach-florida/) rich guy," and when Acosta asked whether to give State Attorney [Barry Krischer](/people/barry-krischer/) "a heads up," Sloman answered, "No for fear that it will be leaked straight to Epstein." Villafaña's immediate supervisor told the Office of Professional Responsibility that "Miami" had "purposefully assumed all the 'authority' for the case," which the supervisor regarded as "highly unusual."[^7]

The Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section reviewed Villafaña's May 2007 prosecution memorandum favorably, but the office's managers did not approve an indictment. Epstein's defense, which grew to include [Alan Dershowitz](/people/alan-dershowitz/), [Kenneth Starr](/people/kenneth-starr/), [Jay Lefkowitz](/people/jay-lefkowitz/), [Gerald Lefcourt](/people/gerald-lefcourt/), Roy Black, [Lilly Ann Sanchez](/people/lilly-ann-sanchez/) and [Jack Goldberger](/people/jack-goldberger/), pressed for meetings with Acosta. On July 31, 2007 the office offered to end its investigation if Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, served two years, registered as a sex offender and agreed to a damages mechanism for victims. The final terms, including the co-conspirator clause and a provision that the agreement "will not be made part of any public record," were negotiated by email in September 2007. The office did not tell victims of the agreement before or after it was signed and, in the court's later finding, led them to believe that federal charges remained possible.[^3][^8]

After Epstein's June 30, 2008 state plea, the office objected to his placement on work release by the [Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office](/organizations/palm-beach-county-sheriffs-office/) in October 2008, and on June 9, 2009 Villafaña sought approval to notify Epstein of a breach; no indictment was returned. The office told Epstein's lawyers in September 2009 that it would treat a transfer of his supervision to the [U.S. Virgin Islands](/places/us-virgin-islands/) as a violation. In August 2011 the Justice Department recused the office from "all matters, to include the investigation and potential prosecution, relating to Jeffrey Epstein's alleged sexual activities with minor females," and assigned them to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, whose records include "a declination of the matter due to the NPA."[^8][^9][^10]

### Litigation and Review

In [Doe v. United States](/events/doe-v-united-states/), a suit filed by two victims on July 7, 2008, Judge [Kenneth Marra](/people/kenneth-marra/) ruled on February 21, 2019 that "[p]articularly problematic was the Government's decision to conceal the existence of the NPA and mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility." The Justice Department then recused the office from the litigation and reassigned it to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia. The Office of Professional Responsibility opened its review of the office's handling of the case on February 6, 2019, and in November 2020 found no professional misconduct by Acosta, Sloman, Menchel, Lourie or Villafaña, while concluding that Acosta's decision "constitutes poor judgment" and that the government's "lack of transparency and its inconsistent messages" gave the public "the misimpression that the government had colluded with Epstein's counsel to keep the NPA secret from the victims."[^3][^4]

In [Ghislaine Maxwell](/people/ghislaine-maxwell/)'s prosecution in New York, the Second Circuit held in 2024 that the co-conspirator clause bound only the Southern District of Florida, and the Supreme Court declined her petition in October 2025.[^11]

[^1]: U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida, "About" and "About the District." https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/about
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284, Prior DOJ Disclosures, report, Office of Professional Responsibility, "Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and Its Interactions with Victims during the Investigation," November 2020, pp. 2, 4 to 7, 22 and n. 34 (EFTA02847311, EFTA02847313 to EFTA02847316, EFTA02847331). https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/Prior%20DOJ%20Disclosures/Memos.%20&%20Correspondence/EFTA02847284.pdf
[^3]: Opinion and Order, *Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 v. United States*, No. 9:08-cv-80736-KAM (S.D. Fla. Feb. 21, 2019), ECF No. 435 (Marra, J.), reported at 359 F. Supp. 3d 1201, quoting ECF No. 407 and the agreement (ECF No. 361-62). https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.317867/gov.uscourts.flsd.317867.435.0.pdf
[^4]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284 (see note 2), Executive Summary pp. v to xi and p. 6 n. 3 (EFTA02847290 to EFTA02847296, EFTA02847315).
[^5]: "Daily Dicta: Why Jeffrey Epstein's All-Star Defense Team May Be the Victim of Its Own Success," *ALM Media* via *Yahoo Finance,* December 5, 2018. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/daily-dicta-why-jeffrey-epstein-062720798.html
[^6]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284 (see note 2), pp. 150 to 152 (EFTA02847459 to EFTA02847461).
[^7]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284 (see note 2), pp. 18, 21 and nn. 21, 28 to 31 (EFTA02847327, EFTA02847330).
[^8]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284 (see note 2), pp. 28 to 30, 114 to 118 (EFTA02847337 to EFTA02847339, EFTA02847423 to EFTA02847427).
[^9]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA00224943, DataSet 9, "Epstein Investigation Timeline," Exhibit A-1, privileged chronology of the federal investigation, May 2006 to August 2011, pp. 45 to 51. https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00224943.pdf
[^10]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein Library, EFTA02847284 (see note 2), Methodology, p. 289 (EFTA02847598).
[^11]: *United States v. Maxwell*, No. 22-1426 (2d Cir. Sept. 17, 2024); "Ghislaine Maxwell loses sex trafficking appeal," *BBC,* September 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0glxd0gxko ; "Supreme Court declines to hear Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal," *SCOTUSblog,* October 2025. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/10/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-ghislaine-maxwells-appeal/