The picture surrounding Jeffrey Epstein is more complicated than anyone realized.
Federal investigators knew more than they let on.
And a secret DEA file exposed another disturbing detail about Jeffrey Epstein.
The Investigation Washington Never Told You About
A 2015 DEA memo – surfaced this week in the Justice Department's Epstein files release – shows federal drug agents opened a case on December 17, 2010 in New York targeting Epstein and 14 other individuals whose names remain blacked out.
The file is 69 pages long, stamped "law enforcement sensitive," and still heavily redacted.
It describes approximately $50 million in suspicious wire transfers from 2010 to 2015.
Those transfers were "tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City," the DEA documented.
The operation had a name: Operation Chain Reaction.
It ran for at least five years – while Epstein walked free.
The DEA routed this case through an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces Fusion Center in Virginia – a Reagan-era clearinghouse built so federal agencies could share intelligence on major criminal operations.
Law enforcement sources told CBS News the request to that Fusion Center flagged this as a "significant" case, not a routine inquiry.
The file also identifies bank accounts linked to Epstein in Switzerland, France, the Cayman Islands, and New York – a financial web spanning four countries that federal investigators were quietly mapping while Epstein attended black-tie dinners with presidents and princes.
The memo notes the matter was still "judicial pending" five years after it opened – meaning in 2015, investigators were still actively working it, possibly awaiting court approval for search warrants or tracking an arrest connected to the case.
One name slipped through the redactions by accident: a Polish fashion model connected to approximately $2 million of those transfers, identified as both a target of the investigation and a survivor of Epstein's abuse.
Five Agencies. No Coordination. Zero Charges.
The DEA file also reveals three separate ICE investigations the public never knew about – one in West Palm Beach opened in 2006, one in Las Vegas opened in 2009, and one in Paris opened in June 2013 under the name Operation Angel Watch.
Add the FBI investigation that opened in 2006 and remained active through at least 2015, and you have five federal agencies with active Epstein cases running simultaneously.
None of them talked to each other.
Yet prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York – the team that finally arrested Epstein in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges – told CBS News they had no knowledge the DEA investigation ever existed.
The FBI received suspicious banking alerts from JPMorgan Chase as far back as 2002 – flagging over $1.1 million in payments to girls and women – and took no action.
Federal prosecutors prepared a 32-count indictment against Epstein in 2007, then let Obama-era U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta bury it with a secret sweetheart deal.
Epstein walked out of jail in 2009.
Trump's Files Are Exposing What Washington Buried
The DEA file is a stone that sat unturned for fifteen years – and it only surfaced because the Epstein files forced the release.
The same Washington bureaucracy that handed Epstein a sweetheart deal in 2008, directed the NYPD's Special Victims Unit to stand down five days after his 2019 arrest, and then watched him die in federal custody – that bureaucracy had a drug trafficking file in a Virginia fusion center the entire time.
Fifty million dollars in suspicious wire transfers. Fourteen unnamed co-conspirators. Five agencies. Zero coordination.
And the team that finally arrested him never knew any of it existed.
Former Trump State Department official Mike Benz has been making the case for months that Epstein's operation ran far deeper than blackmail.
After reviewing the released files, Benz documented that in 1994 Epstein personally negotiated the transfer of Southern Air Transport – a CIA proprietary airline previously busted running guns and drugs during Iran-Contra – from Miami to Rickenbacker Air Base in Columbus, Ohio.
Columbus is where Epstein held durable power of attorney over billionaire Les Wexner’s retail empire.
Benz's question is one Washington still hasn't answered: how does a private financier negotiate the relocation of a covert CIA airline unless he's already embedded in the operation?
The DEA's Operation Chain Reaction – $50 million in suspicious transfers, fourteen unnamed co-conspirators, drug and prostitution networks spanning the Virgin Islands and New York – fits directly into that picture.
This was never just a blackmail operation.
The evidence now points to something bigger: a network wired into drug trafficking, arms dealing, and four decades of intelligence work that powerful people in both parties spent years making sure you never saw.
Sources:
- Natalia Mittelstadt, "DEA doc in Epstein files includes probe into suspicious money transfers with illegal drugs links," Just the News, February 24, 2026.
- "Jeffrey Epstein was the subject of a DEA probe that spanned at least 5 years, heavily redacted document reveals," CBS News, February 24, 2026.
- "Attorney General Pamela Bondi Releases First Phase of Declassified Epstein Files," U.S. Department of Justice, February 2025.
- "Department of Justice Publishes 3.5 Million Responsive Pages in Compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act," U.S. Department of Justice.
- "AG Pam Bondi announces 'all' Epstein files have been released, listing over 300 high-profile names," Fox News, February 15, 2026.
- "Eight Epstein victims sue FBI over failure to investigate sex abuse tips as early as 1996," Courthouse News Service, September 2024.
