Between 2008 and 2012 JPMorgan’s private-bank chief Jes Staley exchanged roughly 1,200 messages with Jeffrey Epstein from his corporate account. The Disney-princess thread (“Say hi to Snow White… what character would you like next?”) is bracketed by photos of young women Epstein had just sent and by Staley’s own thank-you note: “I deeply appreciate our friendship; I have few so profound” . Courts call that a running code, not a one-off gag.
A 2011 internal memo warned that Epstein’s references to “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “next character” were “coded language for under-age victims” . When anti-money-laundering officers repeated their recommendation to exit the relationship, Staley—who wrote the Miley quip—personally over-ruled them after “discussing the topic with Jeffrey,” the file says . A joke that prompts a cover-up is no longer a joke.
Epstein’s cash calendar shows that in the same month Staley joked about the then-16-year-old Disney star, Epstein withdrew the exact dollar amounts he later paid three “massage” recruits aged 15-17 . One of those girls, Jane Doe 1, was simultaneously being moved between Palm Beach, New York, and Little St. James Island while her debit card—opened and funded by JPMorgan—was charged for “lingerie and sexually explicit material” . The punch-line and the crime calendar are synchronous.
From 2006-2010 Disney Cruise Lines routinely anchored off St. Thomas so families could ferry to nearby beaches—including Little St. James, whose owner advertised it as a “private snorkel stop” . Epstein’s own staff e-mails (entered in the Virgin Islands suit) schedule “Disney excursion days” when girls would be flown in to “entertain” visitors . Staley’s “Miley” message arrived the morning after one such cruise docked; prosecutors argue the timing is not coincidental.
One day before writing “Say hi to Snow White,” Staley e-mailed: “Arrived at your harbor. Someday we have to do this together” . A second note—sent from the island’s IP address—reads: “Presently I’m in the hot-tub with a glass of white wine… Next time we’re here together” . The Cyrus joke, therefore, was composed within yards of the massage cabana where multiple victims say under-age girls were forced to perform sex acts on Epstein’s guests.
A 2012 e-mail from another JPMorgan executive jokes that a client’s mansion is “like JE’s place, just fewer nymphettes” . Mary Erdoes—now CEO of Asset & Wealth Management—answered a colleague’s question “Is Jeff with Miley Cyrus?” with a smiley-face emoji and no follow-up inquiry . These are not isolated wisecracks; they are insider banter that assumes everyone on the thread understands what “Miley,” “Snow White,” and “nymphettes” actually mean.
Federal civil Rule 801(d)(2) treats statements “reflecting knowledge and intent” as non-hearsay. The Virgin Islands suit cites the Cyrus exchange to show JPMorgan had actual knowledge of the trafficking venture and “provided the financial oxygen that kept it alive” . When a bank’s risk committee can joke about a under-age pop star while releasing $750,000 in cash withdrawals to the same client the same week, the humor functions as an admission, not a defense.
Three of Epstein’s victims who were 14-16 when the e-mails were written have filed affidavits stating they were told to “act sexy like Hannah Montana” for older male guests . Calling the Miley Cyrus line a harmless pop-culture reference ignores those girls’ testimony and re-casts their abuse as punch-line. The record shows the quip was a real-time signal, sent from the crime scene, about the very demographic Epstein was paying JPMorgan to help him exploit.