Ronald R. Eppinger was a Miami-based sex trafficker who operated before and during the early period of Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise. Eppinger is significant because he trafficked Virginia Giuffre when she was 14 years old—before she encountered Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago.

Before Virginia Giuffre's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, she was trafficked by Ron Eppinger. At the age of 14, Giuffre ran away from her Florida home and encountered Eppinger. He reportedly operated a front business, a modeling agency named "Perfect 10," which was later raided by the FBI. Eppinger promised women work as models if they would leave their homes in Eastern Europe and migrate to the U.S., then put them to work as prostitutes.

On August 22, 2001, Ronald Eppinger pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to charges including smuggling aliens into the U.S. for purposes of prostitution, facilitating interstate prostitution, and money laundering. When Giuffre encountered Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago's spa in 2000 at age 16, she had already been victimized by Eppinger's trafficking operation.

Sources

MuckRock FOIA Request, "Ronald R. Eppinger (United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of Florida)" (Aug. 14, 2019); MuckRock FOIA Request, "Ronald R. Eppinger (Federal Bureau of Investigation)" (Aug. 14, 2019); NPR, "Her reporting exposed Epstein. She tells NPR why documents naming powerful men matter" (Jan. 4, 2024).