Vincent Frazer

Vincent F. Frazer is a U.S. Virgin Islands lawyer who was Attorney General of the territory from 2006 to 2015, through both terms of Governor John de Jongh. As head of the Virgin Islands Department of Justice, which kept the territorial sex-offender registry, he received a 2009 request from Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers to take over supervision of Epstein's Florida sentence, and in July and August 2012, after meeting Epstein's lawyers, he waived the 21-day advance notice of travel required by a newly passed sex-offender law and allowed Epstein to give 24 hours' notice by email. The arrangement stood until March 2019. He was later senior counsel at the Virgin Islands Port Authority, and was named in a federal trafficking suit that was dismissed in 2025.¹²³

The 2009 Supervision Request

In 2009, before the start of the year of community control that followed his Florida jail sentence, Epstein's counsel wrote to "The Honorable Vincent F. Frazer, Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands," asking for help in transferring Epstein's supervision from Florida to the Virgin Islands. The letter described Epstein as "a full-time resident of the Virgin Islands, who maintains his home at Little St. James," and stated that "his place of employment was, and still is, Financial Trust Company, Inc., located at Red Hook Quarter in St. Thomas." It acknowledged that Epstein "is required, at least under Florida law, to register as a sex offender," but argued that "as his state charge was a non-violent offense, i.e., procuring a minor for prostitution, Virgin Islands law would govern as to Mr. Epstein's registration requirements." It named the interstate compact coordinators for Florida and the Virgin Islands and Epstein's Florida probation officer, and gave July 22, 2009 as the start of his supervision.²

The 2012 Travel Waivers

In 2012 the Legislature of the Virgin Islands passed Bill 29-0239, enacted as Act No. 7372, which amended chapter 86 of title 14 of the Virgin Islands Code to expand the monitoring of sex offenders and set a 21-day advance notice requirement for travel, with discretion for the Attorney General to reduce it. The Rules and Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the bill on June 21, 2012. On July 13, 2012, before the governor signed it, Frazer met the St. Thomas attorney Maria Tankenson Hodge and Epstein's lawyer Darren Indyke to discuss its implementation. Hodge wrote to Frazer on July 16 asking that Epstein be allowed to continue his practice of notifying the department by email or fax "immediately prior to Mr. Epstein's departure," giving only "the general geographic areas of his travel," and that his existing practice be "deemed compliance with the new law" until Frazer ruled.³

On July 25, 2012 Frazer accepted the letter as a request "for the Attorney General to waive the 21 day prior notice requirement," and wrote: "Based upon your representation and that of Attorney Darren Indyke, we will grant the waiver of the (21) twenty one day notice requirement to the Department of Justice when Mr. Epstein is traveling out of the Territory." He set conditions, including 72 hours' notice and the addresses of temporary lodging, and added: "I do recognize that these conditions vary from the former conditions. However in light of the discretion given to the Attorney General by Act No.7372, we are forced to take a closer look at the waiver conditions."³

Hodge replied on July 30 that the 72-hour rule and the address requirement were "unduly restrictive," and wrote that "both you and Senator Russell stated during the hearing on the Act before the Rules and Judiciary Committee on June 21, 2012, that the travel notification requirements of this Act were specifically not intended to be penal in nature." On August 14, 2012 Frazer wrote that "in light of the justification set out in your letter of July 30, 2012, I have decided to shorten the notice period": Epstein would "be allowed to notify the Department of Justice of his intention to travel out of the Territory twenty four (24) hours prior to his departure," could continue to notify the department when staying at one of his "stateside homes," and when staying with "an associate" needed to give only the city and state or country. Frazer required copies of Epstein's driver's licenses, identification cards and passports, and closed: "I trust that the foregoing conditions will be workable for your client, in light of his frequent trips out of the Territory on business."³

Revocation

Acting Attorney General Carol Thomas-Jacobs revoked the arrangement by letter of March 14, 2019, after Epstein was detained and refused entry in the Dominican Republic in February 2019, and required 21 days' notice in person for travel outside the United States. On April 30, 2019 the firm of Epstein's territorial counsel, Erika Kellerhals, asked the incoming Attorney General, Denise George, to reinstate "the proven travel notification procedures," attaching the Frazer correspondence. George answered on June 2, 2019: "While my predecessors have apparently had differing interpretations of Title 14, Section 1724(b)(4) of the Virgin Islands Code, it is my understanding that the 21-day in-person notification for international travel can only be waived upon a showing of 'reasonable and reliable proof satisfactory to the Department of Justice'... In this particular case, I have not been presented with any documentation of such proof, nor does the VIDOJ have any record of such documentation ever having been submitted to the VIDOJ." She asked for "the documentation that was originally submitted to Attorney General Frazer that validated such a waiver."³

In an October 2, 2023 interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, released by the Justice Department in January 2026, George said she "believed that Frazer was pressured by then Governor John De Jongh" to grant the waiver. De Jongh's wife, Cecile de Jongh, was the office manager of Epstein's territorial companies throughout her husband's two terms. Frazer was deposed in the territory's suit against JPMorgan Chase, and, like the other officials deposed, said he had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes.⁴⁵

Litigation and Later Career

On November 22, 2023 six women identified as Jane Does named Frazer, with the territorial government, the de Jonghs, Governor Kenneth Mapp, Celestino White, Carlton Dowe and Stacey Plaskett, in a suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alleging that the defendants made the territory a "safe haven" for Epstein's trafficking; the complaint alleged among other things that Epstein had been labeled a Tier 1 sex offender when he should have been Tier 2. On March 21, 2025 Judge Arun Subramanian dismissed the claims against Frazer and the other defendants except Plaskett for lack of personal jurisdiction in New York. The court's mailing receipt for its September 2025 dismissal order was addressed to "Attorney General Vincent Frazer" at a post office box on St. Thomas.¹⁶

In October 2022 the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands publicly reprimanded Frazer, then senior counsel at the Virgin Islands Port Authority, after a complaint that, while representing the seller of a business, he had unilaterally disbursed a disputed good-faith deposit held in escrow to his client and deducted his fees. He consented to the reprimand, the return of the funds to escrow and six additional hours of continuing legal education, on pain of a six-month suspension. The Port Authority's executive director, Carlton Dowe, was a co-defendant in the 2023 trafficking suit.¹⁷⁸