CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, or his foundation, gave $360,000 to Ohio State University, a university review found. OSU will now donate that money to the Ohio Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Initiative.
Epstein faced a potential 45 years in 2019 for sex trafficking and conspiracy charges involving underage girls in the early 2000s. He had previously been convicted in Florida for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.
A new lawsuit brought against Epstein claims the influential money-manager trafficked girls in the Caribbean until 2018, the New York Times reported. Victims as young as 11 were involved, according to the lawsuit.
Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in August 2019. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
“All of the donations in question were made to the Wexner Center for the Arts at least two decades ago and many years before any questions about Epstein surfaced," a statement from the university reads. “However, the university has determined that, in light of Epstein’s reprehensible crimes, retaining these gifts would not be consistent with the university’s values.”
Reviewers also investigated a $2.5 million gift in 2007 from the COUQ Foundation to support the renovation of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. Epstein was a director and officer of that foundation.
“The review found that this gift.. originated from the Wexner Children’s Trust and the Leslie H. Wexner Charitable Fund and not from Jeffrey Epstein,” the university statement reads.
Billionaire Les Wexner is the CEO of L Brands, based in Columbus. L Brands includes Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works. Epstein was a financial advisor to Wexner for years, the New York Times reported.
Wexner said in 2019 he severed all ties with him “nearly 12 years ago” and that he was never aware of Epstein’s crimes, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The university contracted accounting firm Ernst & Young to conduct the review.