Lesley Groff

LMSBAND corpus analysis places Groff as the operational switchboard through which the Epstein enterprise communicated ². Her 564-file co-occurrence with Epstein exceeds that of Darren Indyke (42 co-occurrences with Groff) and places her alongside pilot Paul Morris (391 co-occurrences) and Deutsche Bank relationship manager Amanda Kirby (83 co-occurrences) as the most documented operational node ².

Her daily responsibilities encompassed every dimension of Epstein’s life. She tracked private aircraft N120JE via FlightAware alerts ¹⁰, booked commercial flights through AmEx Travel, arranged hotel stays at La Mamounia in Marrakech and the Mandarin in various cities ¹¹, and coordinated Eurostar pickups in Paris. She managed household staff across properties, directed Amazon deliveries to Red Hook in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and assigned apartments to guests — the phrase “2G is clean and ready for next guest” appearing in her communications ⁸. When Lawrence Summers’s office called in January 2014 to arrange a meeting between Epstein and the President of Mongolia, it was Groff who received the message and checked visa requirements ¹²¹³.

The scheduling function gave Groff unique visibility into the full scope of Epstein’s contacts. She coordinated meetings with Leon Botstein (President of Bard College, September 2017) ¹⁴, General Wesley Clark (March 2010, with instructions to “make sure he is bringing Meghan”) ⁸, Martin Nowak at Harvard (July 2009), and Robert Lawrence Kuhn (15+ meetings at 9 East 71st Street from October 2016 through June 2019) ¹⁵¹⁶. She served as the primary point of contact for Vincenzo Iozzo from 2015 to 2018, scheduling meetings in both New York and Paris with a warm familiarity (“Vincenzo, you are so good with your calendar!”) ¹⁷¹⁸ before that function shifted to Bebe Avdiu at Indyke PLLC in mid-2017.

Groff’s role extended beyond operations into the formal legal architecture of Epstein’s financial network. She served as co-trustee of The 2017 Caterpillar Trust from its formation on January 3, 2017, alongside Daphne Wallace, Epstein’s USVI office manager ³. Both trustees were required to co-sign authorization letters for Deutsche Bank to process trust checks ⁴. During the trust’s wind-down in April 2019 — just months before Epstein’s arrest — Groff joked about “keeping the check,” a remark documented in the trust correspondence ¹⁹.

She also served as signatory for Enhanced Education, the trade name of J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation — the entity through which Leon Black channeled a $158.5 million pledge and which disbursed grants to institutions including the International Peace Institute. In November 2015, Groff signed a conference room contract at the Fairmont Waterfront Vancouver on Enhanced Education’s behalf, using her personal email [email protected] ⁵. For Gratitude America Ltd, she used the foundation’s stationery for a school recommendation letter at Epstein’s direction, with Richard Kahn instructing her to use “no logo, use 6100 Red Hook address” — a detail that reveals deliberate management of how Epstein’s charitable entities presented themselves externally.

Groff held personal loans from Southern Financial LLC, the core Epstein-controlled financial entity. In one email to Kahn, she asked: “Can you confirm I am to pay all 3 of my loans to Southern Financial LLC — it is never to Southern Trust” ⁶. In another, she noted she needed to “re-write check to Southern Financial LLC and give to Rich” ²⁰. The existence of multiple personal loans from an entity controlled by her employer created a financial dependency that transcended normal employment — a structure that ensured loyalty through obligation rather than compensation alone.

FEC records reveal a pattern of coordinated political donations from the Epstein inner circle ⁷. Groff made two recorded contributions, both listing her employer as New York Strategy Group and her occupation as “Personal Assistant,” filed from New Canaan, Connecticut ²¹¹. The first, $2,300 to Chris Dodd for President on June 30, 2007, paralleled a separate $4,400 contribution from Kenneth Starr (Epstein’s financial manager, later convicted of fraud) to Friends of Chris Dodd in 2009 ²². The second and more significant contribution was $2,600 to Virgin Islanders for Plaskett on July 15, 2014 ¹.

The Plaskett donation is structurally revealing. Stacey Plaskett was the USVI delegate to Congress — the representative with direct oversight jurisdiction over the territory where Epstein maintained his island compound, Southern Trust Company, and multiple corporate entities. Darren Indyke made an identical donation to the same committee, also listing NYSG as his employer ¹. The use of New York Strategy Group as the common cover employer across FEC filings — an entity whose actual business operations remain opaque — and the targeting of a USVI delegate by multiple members of the inner circle are consistent with centrally directed political contributions in jurisdictions where Epstein’s operations were concentrated ⁷.

Groff’s communications document the full geographic scope of Epstein’s operations. She coordinated travel across at least five jurisdictions: New York (9 East 71st Street, the East 69th Street properties), Paris (Avenue Foch apartments), the U.S. Virgin Islands (Great St. James and Red Hook), Morocco (La Mamounia hotel) ¹¹, and Mongolia (the Advisory Board trip) ¹³. Her role in managing property assignments is documented in communications tracking which apartments were available, directing guests to specific units, and ensuring preparations were complete before arrivals ⁸.

The April 2019 New York-to-Paris flight manifest she compiled reads as a roster of the inner circle in its final months of operation: Darren Indyke, Richard Kahn, Groff herself, household staff members Valdson, JoJo Fontanilla, Merwin Dela Cruz, and Bella Klein ⁹. She coordinated with Maxim Churkin on Paris meetings and managed the logistics of an entourage that functioned as a self-contained traveling operation. Earlier, she had arranged tickets from St. Thomas to Miami ²³, managed FlightAware tracking of N120JE (Epstein’s Gulfstream) ¹⁰, and booked commercial flights for those not traveling on the private aircraft.

The Mongolia connection merits attention. In January 2014, Groff received word from Lawrence Summers’s office that “Larry wants you to meet the President of Mongolia on Friday Jan 24th at 5:30” ¹². By July 2014, she was checking visa requirements for Epstein’s own travel to Mongolia, linking to the Mongolia Advisory Board that Enhanced Education funded ¹³. She also managed wire instructions for the IJ Group through Bankwell bank and handled a 23andMe purchase for Sultan — likely Sultan bin Sulayem — at Epstein’s request in June 2017, with wire instructions routed through Bella Klein ²⁴. These tasks demonstrate that Groff’s operational role extended to managing financial transactions and international political access beyond calendar management.

Groff appears in the documentary record connected to Ghislaine Maxwell through legal proceedings ²⁵, though the specific nature of this connection is underdeveloped in the current evidence base. She also coordinated communications with defense attorneys Michael F. Bachner and Martin Weinberg, indicating awareness of and involvement in the legal defense apparatus that surrounded the Epstein operation ²⁶.

Her position as the person who managed travel bookings for young women, assigned apartment units, and ensured guests were received at Eurostar and other transit points placed her at the operational center of logistics that federal prosecutors later characterized as trafficking infrastructure. The documentary phrase “2G is clean and ready for next guest” ⁸ and the instruction to “make sure he is bringing Meghan” regarding General Clark’s visit ⁸ reflect a level of operational detail that extended beyond arm’s-length scheduling. She was named as one of four women who allegedly participated in recruiting and managing victims, alongside Maxwell, Sarah Kellen, and Adriana Ross.

Groff’s financial dependency on the network — the personal loans from Southern Financial LLC ⁶, the employment through DKIP LLC, the coordinated political giving ⁷ — created a web of obligations that would make cooperation with investigators personally costly. This dependency structure is consistent with patterns observed across Epstein’s inner circle, where financial entanglement served as a mechanism of control and ensured operational loyalty.