Last week, two years after his July arrest, West Palm Beach billionaire and money manager Jeffery Epstein has pleaded guilty to hiring underage girls for erotic massages and prostitution. The billionaire, counts among his many influential friends former President Bill Clinton. In March of 2005, a law suit was brought against Epstein by a girl who claimed to have been found by Epstein's assistant, Haley Robson, and solicited for sexual service. The girl, who at the time was fourteen, later dropped her case, but she was not the only one to come forward about her experience with Mr. Epstein: three other girls filed cases against him, seeking over $50 million each. Epstein was arrested after an 11-month police investigation turned up considerable evidence that he had illegally hired multiple underage girls for erotic services and prostitution. The prosecution considered the evidence weak, and a grand jury offered only a single felony charge. The frustrated Palm Beach chief of police, made the decision to turn the case over the FBI.

THE INVESTIGATION:

According to the investigation, young women in the employ of Mr. Epstein were paid $200-300 for each "referral," recruiting other young women, "the younger the better." According to Epstein's lawyers, including, ironically is Kenneth Starr (of the Starr Report on former President Clinton's sexual indiscretions), Mr. Epstein was unaware that his masseuses were underage. This was confirmed by a lie detector test. In addition, Epstein's lawyers presented information gleaned from private investigators and from the girls' MySpace pages to cast doubt on the accusers' credibility. The investigation of Mr. Epstein's Palm Beach residence, however, turned up nude photos of young girls- among whom several had been interviewed by the police- and transcripts of phone conversations and numerous interviews taken under oath with alleged victims and witnesses contradict the lawyers' statement that Mr. Epstein did not know the girls he'd hired were minors.

EPSTEIN'S GUILTY PLEA:

On June 30^th of 2008, Epstein submitted a guilty plea to two counts: procuring an underage person for prostitution, and for the felony of offering to commit prostitution. He will spend eighteen months in prison for soliciting sex from minors, followed by a year of house-arrest with a required curfew, hourly activity log, and a stern warning not to possess any pornographic material related to the nature of his crimes. Epstein has also been warned not to have any contact with his victims. Do you think this billionaire got off lightly? The maximum penalty for Epstein's crimes is 15 years in prison. In comparison, eighteen months in jail and year of house arrest sounds like a walk in the park, but Epstein, 55, will be designated a sex offender and required to annually register with Florida's Department of Law Enforcement, and still faces civil law suits on behalf of his victims. A noted philanthropist, several organizations have already returned Epstein's donations.

WHAT TO TAKE AWAY FROM EPSTEIN'S CRIME:

Just because an offer is glamorous doesn't mean you should take it. The promise of making a lot of money very quickly appeals to young people, but that promise can be used to take advantage of people too by luring them into a situation where they are being exploited. This is what Mr. Epstein, no doubt feeling invincible as only a billionaire could, did to his underage victims. He paid young women like Haley Robson to take advantage of other young women, including minors, for the purposes of prostitution.