Nine East 71st Street Corporation

Nine East 71st Street Corporation was formed as a New York domestic business corporation with its principal registered address at 41 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio — the L Brands corporate headquarters where Leslie Wexner operated his retail empire ¹. On September 6, 1989, the corporation acquired the property at 9 East 71st Street (Block 1386, Lot 10) from Birch Wathen School for no recorded consideration ²³. This was not an isolated transaction: ACRIS records confirm that Wexner-addressed entities also controlled the adjacent property at 11 East 71st Street (BBL 1/1386/12), acquired through SAM Conversion Corp — also registered at 41 South High Street — from Xandra Corporation N.V., a Netherlands Antilles offshore entity, in 1988 ⁸⁹. Parkview Financial Inc, another entity at the same Columbus address, appears in ACRIS as a mortgage-assignment intermediary on the adjacent property ¹⁰¹¹. The three entities — Nine East 71st St Corp, SAM Conversion Corp, and Parkview Financial Inc — formed a coherent Wexner real-estate infrastructure for the 71st Street block ¹²³.

Epstein's entry into the 11 East 71st Street chain preceded the Nine East transaction: ACRIS shows SAM Conversion transferred the adjacent property to "Epstein Jeffrey E Trustee / 11 East 71st St Trust" at the same Columbus address in December 1992 for no recorded consideration ¹³¹⁴. Epstein then moved that property through two more entities before it reached Howard Lutnick in January 1998 via the Comet Trust, trusteed by Guido Goldman ¹⁵¹³. This establishes that Epstein had been operating inside Wexner's NYC property structure for at least six years before he acquired Nine East 71st Street Corporation itself.

The mechanism for transferring Nine East 71st Street Corporation from Wexner to Epstein was a stock sale rather than a property deed — a structure that preserved the existing corporate shell and avoided recording a new deed in ACRIS. GRM filing index EFTA00300480 documents the complete transaction binder titled "Leslie H. Wexner Sale of Nine East 71st Street Corporation to NES, LLC." The binder contains: a General Ledger dated September 30, 1998; Vorys legal reviews; a Draft Contract of Sale; a Nominee Agreement; NES LLC Articles of Organization; a Lease Agreement; a Biennial Statement; a Purchase & Sale Agreement; a Promissory Note; a Guaranty; an Assignment & Assumption Agreement; a Stock Power; a Stock Certificate; Wexner's resignation letter as director; a Settlement Statement; and Closing Documents ⁴. The General Ledger date places the transaction in the fall of 1998.

NES LLC — the acquiring entity — was an Epstein USVI entity that appeared across JPMorgan bank records as a payroll and operational vehicle. JPMorgan records show regular ADP payroll processing debits from NES LLC's account (JPM account 739121472), and the entity appears in the 2006 JPM data-tape entity master list alongside 22 other Epstein-affiliated accounts ¹⁶. Deutsche Bank later conducted AML due diligence on NES LLC, and the entity maintained a Deutsche Bank account balance of approximately $504K as of August 2014 ¹⁷. In the December 2019 estate liquidation, the NES LLC balance transferred to Southern Trust Company was $1,345,169 ¹⁸. The Nominee Agreement included in the 1998 binder is significant: its presence confirms that the stock transfer included a formal understanding about Epstein's status as the beneficial owner while the Wexner-era corporate form was preserved.

During the roughly thirteen years between the 1998 stock transfer and the 2011 deed transfer to Maple Inc, Nine East 71st Street Corporation was the formal owner of the premises where federal civil complaints allege Jeffrey Epstein conducted commercial sex trafficking. The Katlyn Doe complaint (1:19-cv-07771 SDNY) names the corporation on a standalone negligent-security count (Count III) based on its property ownership during the abuse period, identifying its principal place of business as 575 Lexington Avenue, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10022 ⁶⁷. That address is the same fourth-floor suite occupied by Richard Kahn's HBRK Associates and Darren Indyke's DKIP PLLC ¹⁹.

The Priscilla Doe complaint (1:19-cv-07772) and Lisa Doe complaint (1:19-cv-07773) also named the corporation as co-defendant alongside the Epstein estate, NES LLC, Financial Trust Company, Maple Inc, HBRK Associates, JEGE Inc, and LSJ LLC ²⁰. The complaint paras mapped a division of function across the corporate array: Nine East 71st Street Corp and Maple Inc owned the physical premises; NES LLC employed the staff who recruited, scheduled, and paid victims; JEGE Inc owned the Boeing 727 used to transport victims; HBRK Associates employed post-conviction staff who continued those functions after Epstein's 2008 Florida plea ⁶. During Epstein's work-release period, employees of HBRK Associates, NES LLC, and JEGE Inc transported a plaintiff to Florida to engage in commercial sex while Epstein was wearing an ankle monitor ²¹.

L.A.W. Plantation Management Corp., a Georgia corporation with Epstein as CEO and Indyke as Secretary, appeared in Deutsche Bank KYC searches alongside Nine East 71st Street Corp and Ghislaine Corp as part of the Epstein entity cluster. Its initials almost certainly reference Leslie A. Wexner, and its address (515 Abigail Plantation Rd, Albany GA) links to the Wexner naming pattern ²². The presence of both entities in the same KYC review reflects how Deutsche Bank encountered them as a single relational cluster rather than independent legal persons.

On December 23, 2011 — roughly three years after Epstein's Florida plea and during the period when he was reconstituting his operational structure — Nine East 71st Street Corporation transferred 9 East 71st Street to Maple Inc, a USVI corporation, for no recorded consideration. The deed records the grantor address as 301 East 66th Street, 10th Floor — the Ossa Properties address associated with Kahn and Epstein's operational office — rather than the original Columbus, Ohio address, reflecting the completed shift in administrative control ⁵¹. The Katlyn Doe complaint gives the transfer date as December 11, 2011; ACRIS gives December 23, 2011 — a minor inconsistency within the same complaint's paragraphs ⁶.

Maple Inc was one of four tree-named USVI entities Epstein used to hold real property: Maple Inc (9 E 71st St, NYC), Nautilus Inc (Little Saint James island, USVI), Laurel Inc (Palm Beach, FL), and Cypress (Zorro Ranch, NM). Richard Kahn's HBRK Associates at 301 East 66th Street, Suite 10F coordinated JPMorgan Chase bank accounts for all four entities ²³. Maple Inc was registered as USVI entity 581976 on November 22, 2011 — just one month before the Nine East deed transfer — and managed through Business Basics VI LLC, Erika Kellerhals's registered agent hub ²²⁴. The Epstein estate inventory valued the property at $55,931,000 ²⁵.

Following Epstein's death in August 2019, Maple Inc held the property through the estate administration. On March 8, 2021, Maple Inc transferred 9 East 71st Street to Back To NYC 71 LLC — registered at 24 Lansdowne Road, London W11 3LL — for $51 million, with a $30.6 million MERS mortgage taken simultaneously. That entity subsequently sold to Bolt 1 LP for $65.6 million on June 22, 2023 ²⁶⁵. The full recorded title history thus spans four parties over 34 years: Birch Wathen School (1989) to Nine East 71st Street Corporation (1989–2011) to Maple Inc (2011–2021) to Back To NYC 71 LLC (2021–2023) to Bolt 1 LP (2023–present).

The addresses attached to Nine East 71st Street Corporation across its corporate life function as control indicators. The 1989 acquisition deed lists 41 South High Street, Columbus, Ohio — Wexner's L Brands headquarters ¹. The 1998 Wexner-to-NES transfer binder includes the Articles of Organization for NES LLC, placing the transaction firmly within Epstein's corporate formation process ⁴. The 2011 deed transfer lists 301 East 66th Street, 10th Floor — Kahn's HBRK Associates office — as the grantor address. Federal court complaints document the principal place of business as 575 Lexington Avenue, Fourth Floor, where Indyke's DKIP PLLC and HBRK Associates both operated ⁷²⁷.

ACRIS document 2008012900966001 records a power of attorney from Abigail S. Wexner — at 15 Central Park West — to Darren Indyke dated January 23, 2008, on a separate NYC property parcel (BBL 1/1114/1507). This instrument establishes a direct Wexner-Indyke property-law nexus outside the Nine East chain itself, running through the same attorney who later served as Epstein's primary lawyer and co-executor of the estate ²⁸. The OCCRP Aleph dataset separately confirms Indyke as Secretary of the Wexner Foundation at 8000 Walton Parkway, New Albany, Ohio ²⁹, reinforcing the administrative overlap between the Wexner and Epstein organizations at the individual-officer level.