Jeffrey Sloman

Jeffrey H. Sloman is an American lawyer who spent twenty years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, serving as First Assistant U.S. Attorney under Alexander Acosta from October 2006 while the office negotiated the Epstein non-prosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein. He personally negotiated and signed the agreement's October 2007 addendum, became the senior official supervising the Epstein matter when Acosta was recused in late 2008 over employment talks with Epstein's law firm, and then led the office as Acting and Interim U.S. Attorney until June 2010. He later practiced white-collar defense in Miami. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility named him one of five subjects of its 2019 to 2020 investigation and found no professional misconduct.¹²

Career in the Office

Sloman joined the office in 1990 as a line prosecutor. In 2001 he became deputy chief of the Narcotics and Violent Crimes Section of the Fort Lauderdale branch, in 2003 its managing Assistant U.S. Attorney, and in early 2004 chief of the office's Criminal Division, the post he held in July 2006 when the line prosecutor A. Marie Villafaña briefed him and Acosta on the new Epstein case. Acosta announced his appointment as First Assistant in September 2006, and he took office in October with a suite beside Acosta's in the Miami executive offices, supervising the Civil, Criminal and Appellate Divisions. His firm biography credits him with nearly 50 criminal trials to verdict, including "the prosecution of the largest Ponzi scheme in Florida history" and "the first post-September 11, 2001 prosecution of two radical Islamic fundamentalists."¹³⁴

The Investigation Opens, 2006

On July 24, 2006 Villafaña told Sloman that the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office under Barry Krischer had charged and arrested Epstein, and the FBI formally opened its case the same day. Sloman emailed Lourie that Operation Leap Year was "a highly sensitive case involving some Palm Beach rich guy." When Acosta asked whether it was "appropriate to approach [State Attorney Krischer] and give him a heads up re where we might go?", Sloman replied, "No for fear that it will be leaked straight to Epstein." He told OPR that he did not recall what he meant, but that it was likely "we didn't trust the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office" and that there might have been "some type of relationship between somebody in the [State Attorney's Office] and the defense team." When Lourie asked in August whether Sloman and Acosta wanted Villafaña "updating you on the case," Sloman answered, "At this point, I don't really care." In early November 2006 Sloman joined, at Villafaña's request, a telephone call in which a former U.S. Attorney for the district made an overture on Epstein's behalf.⁵

The Epstein Investigation, 2007

OPR found that Sloman "had relatively little involvement in the decisions and negotiations that led to the NPA and did not review it before it was signed." He told OPR that he had not done a "granular review" of Villafaña's proposed charges but believed Matthew Menchel and Andrew Lourie had, and had "obviously" concluded that "the facts and the law didn't suggest that the right thing to do was to automatically indict." When Villafaña asked him on May 15, 2007 whether "pestering Alex will not do any good," he answered "Yes," and when she asked on May 21 for "a sense of the direction where we are headed," he answered "Taken care of," a remark he could not explain to OPR.¹⁶

Epstein's defense team included lawyers with personal ties to the office's managers. Sloman told OPR that he knew Lourie was friends with a former U.S. Attorney for the district who represented Epstein and with that lawyer's law partner, but that his own attitude toward former colleagues on the other side "was that we would give them process, but we didn't pull any punches with them."⁷

The Addendum

The agreement signed on September 24, 2007 let the government select an attorney representative for the victims' damages claims, subject to the approval of Epstein's counsel. When Jay Lefkowitz objected in early October to the representative Villafaña had proposed, she was on sick leave, and Sloman and Acosta exchanged emails about an addendum. The "Addendum to the Non-Prosecution Agreement" was signed by Sloman for the office on October 29 and 30, 2007. Acosta wrote in a December 2007 letter that he had "sua sponte proposed the Addendum to Mr. Lefkowitz at an October meeting in Palm Beach," the breakfast of October 12; OPR recorded that "Sloman and Lefkowitz had been working on language for the Addendum before Acosta's breakfast meeting with Lefkowitz." When Lefkowitz later wrote that Acosta had promised at the breakfast not to intervene with the State Attorney's Office, contact witnesses or claimants, or intervene on Epstein's sentence, Sloman drafted a reply: "[S]uch a promise equates to the imposition of a gag order. Our Office cannot and will not agree to this." OPR found no evidence that the reply was sent.¹⁸⁹

In late November 2007 Sloman moved to notify victims under the Justice for All Act of 2004. Lefkowitz objected that victims should not be invited to the state sentencing or "encouraged to contact law enforcement officials," and Acosta ordered the letters held. On November 29, 2007 Sloman forwarded an exchange with Lourie recording that the defense "originally agreed to plead to the state felony that they thought was unregisterable (but did not tell us knowing we thought it was), but then discovered they were wrong and tried to get out of it. They tried several times to knock down the jail time after agreeing to the time."¹⁰¹¹

Supervising the Sentence

On May 16, 2008, after the Justice Department's Criminal Division rejected Epstein's appeal, Sloman wrote to Villafaña, "We got approved," adding, "Alex called to tell me. He said the ltr needs to be tweaked which we'll do on Monday. I wouldn't call the FBI yet." On November 26, 2008 the office told the Department that Acosta was recused from matters involving Kirkland & Ellis because he was discussing employment with the firm, and Sloman became the senior official responsible for final decisions on Epstein. Roy Black, forwarding Villafaña's breach notice about Epstein's work release to Sloman, wrote that she "is very concerned about anything Epstein does" and that the defense would "abide by" Sloman's decision.¹²¹³

In March 2009 Sloman met Alan Dershowitz in Miami for what Dershowitz called "a relaxed drink and conversation." Dershowitz then thanked him for his "assurance that the feds will not interfere with how the Palm Beach sheriff administers" Epstein's sentence. Sloman replied that the office "will not interfere with how the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office administers the sentence imposed by the Court," but that "if contacted for our position concerning alternative custody or in-home detention . . . [t]o be clear, if contacted we will object." A week later Dershowitz thanked him for his "willingness to call the sheriff and advise him that your office would take no position on how he handled Epstein's sentence," adding, "[L]et's put any call off for a while." On June 9, 2009 Villafaña sent Sloman a memorandum titled "Operation Leap Year: Request to Provide Notification of Breach"; no indictment followed. In September 2009 the office told Black it would treat a transfer of Epstein's supervision to the U.S. Virgin Islands as a violation of the agreement, and three months later Sloman told Dershowitz in person that the office opposed early termination of Epstein's community control.¹⁰¹³

U.S. Attorney

When Acosta left in June 2009 to become dean of the law school at Florida International University, Sloman became Acting U.S. Attorney for the district, and in January 2010 the Attorney General appointed him Interim U.S. Attorney. He left for private practice in June 2010; his firm biography gives his tenure as U.S. Attorney as May 2009 to May 2010. The whole district office was formally recused from the Epstein matter in July and August 2011.¹⁴¹⁰

Private Practice

Sloman is a partner at the Miami litigation firm Stumphauzer Kolaya Nadler & Sloman, representing individuals and companies in white-collar defense and government enforcement matters. His biography records "a $5 million 'first-of-a-kind' verdict against Philip Morris USA, Inc." and a 1.3 million dollar verdict against G4S Secure Solutions, and a "Most Effective Lawyer" award from the Daily Business Review.⁴

The OPR Investigation

OPR interviewed Sloman under oath as one of five subjects. In December 2018 Villafaña had written that Sloman once told her that Epstein's lawyer Lilly Ann Sanchez "asked Mr. Menchel to 'do her a solid'" and convince Acosta to offer two years. Sloman did not recall saying so, said that if he had he could not have meant it seriously, and told OPR: "[I]t's not something that I would have believed. Him doing her a solid. I mean that's the furthest thing from my recollection or impression even after years later." OPR found no evidence that the two-year offer was a favor. Of Villafaña, Sloman told OPR that reports that she "was soft on Epstein . . . couldn't have been further from the truth," and that she "did her best to implement the decisions that were made and to hold Epstein accountable." OPR found no professional misconduct by any subject and faulted only Acosta, for "poor judgment."²⁷¹⁴