Last Updated on December 1, 2021
Virgil Abloh, the prolific black designer who worked with Louis Vuitton and was CEO of Off-White, died after he reportedly lost a “two-year battle with cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare cancer” at 41 years old on Sunday, just one day before the criminal trial of alleged sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
National File has learned that Abloh was once named in a now-dismissed sex trafficking lawsuit against Mark Epstein, the brother of deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On August 21, 2020, the famous designer was named as a defendant in a civil suit filed against Jeffrey Epstein’s 1953 Trust, as well as Jeffrey’s brother Mark Epstein, by a woman named Charlene Latham, alleging that she had been a sex trafficking victim of Jeffrey Epstein and numerous high-profile socialites including Ghislaine Maxwell.
Mark Epstein appears to have been named in the lawsuit due to his major role in the 1953 Trust, the legal name given to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. Mark Epstein was the sole beneficiary of Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious fortune, and it was speculated last year that the estate may pay out up to $100 million to settle lawsuits with alleged victims.
The plaintiffs in the case were seeking damages, including the deed to Epstein’s $20 million Palm Beach mansion. More than two dozen prominent names were listed in the suit, including R. Kelly, Beyonce, and both Harvey Weinstein and his corporate entity.
The lawsuit was filed with the Southern District of New York, Charlene Latham v Mark Epstein, 1953 Trust, and was ultimately and swiftly shot down by a federal judge who claimed that the plaintiff filed a frivolous lawsuit. However, as of February 2021, the litigation was reportedly ongoing.
Critics of the lawsuit have reported that Latham claimed to have “visited both Epstein’s New York townhouse and Little St. James before he owned either property, while also alleging she flew in the Lolita Express long before Epstein had acquired the aircraft.”
Some particularly explosive claims alleged in the suit include accusations that “all of the Defendant’s decades long and continuing criminal conduct” consisted of a “sociopathic, decades long scheme of human trafficking, criminal sexual assault, financial exploitation, psychological torture, harassment,” among other allegations, including sexual crimes against minors.
In criminal court this week, prosecutors accused Ghislaine Maxwell of being Jeffrey Epstein’s “partner in crime,” procuring and grooming girls, including minors, for illegal sexual activity. The British socialite faces six counts of sex trafficking-related charges, including enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking of a minor, and three counts of conspiracy.
Mark Epstein, once referred to by the Daily Beast as “The Man Who Could Inherit Jeffrey Epstein’s Millions,” strangely offered up his own Florida condo as collateral for Jeffrey Epstein’s bail prior to the billionaire’s suspicious death, but denies any connections to Jeffrey’s businesses despite his properties repeatedly being named in sex trafficking lawsuits.
Mark Epstein’s wealth is reportedly “unexplained,” and he has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity, including the Humpty Dumpty Institute in 2014, where he served as a board member and remained affiliated with the organization until as recently as December 2020, as National File previously reported.
One of HDI’s focuses seems to be attracting members of Congress to its ranks, and Epstein’s group successfully recruited Mark Meadows years before he would go on to serve as Chief of Staff for President Trump.
Mark Epstein’s HDI has strong links to a Beijing-headquartered partner, the Taihe Institute, a think tank whose key figures include multiple high-level Chinese Communist Party members, globalist elites and transhumanist corporate technocrats. National File recently uncovered the Taihe Institute’s claims that the organization has “research centers” operating in the United States.
The extent of the Epstein brothers’ prominence was revealed further when The Sun released a photograph believed to be from the early 2000’s depicting Jeffrey and Ghislaine kneeling before Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, perhaps coincidentally around the same time that Mark Epstein’s HDI colleague, Joseph Merante, worked closely with the Vatican via his role at the U.S. Department of State.
