BREAKING NEWS: New Mexico Sues Epstein’s Lawyer and Accountant, Moves to Block $75 Million Inheritance

The suit, State of New Mexico ex rel. Raúl Torrez v. Darren K. Indyke, et al., No. 1:26-cv-03543, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico and signed by Solicitor General Aletheia Allen. It names Indyke and Kahn as individuals and as administrators of the 1953 Trust, the vehicle Epstein amended two days before his death to receive everything he owned. The estate and the trust are also defendants.

The State brings five counts: participating in a sex trafficking venture under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act; racketeering through kidnapping and through criminal solicitation under the New Mexico Racketeering Act; conspiracy to engage in racketeering; and unjust enrichment.

It seeks a jury trial, treble and punitive damages, disgorgement of the men’s earnings for survivors, and an order barring distributions from the estate while the case proceeds.

Under the trust, Indyke is eligible for $50 million and Kahn for $25 million. The estate is worth just over $107 million, according to the latest probate accounting cited in the complaint. When Indyke filed for probate in August 2019, he valued it at more than $577 million.

The money

Indyke received more than $16 million from Epstein and his companies between 2011 and 2019, the complaint says, along with a $7 million loan that was never repaid, help buying homes in New Jersey and Boca Raton, Fla., and payment for multiple rounds of in-vitro fertilization.

Kahn received more than $10 million over the same period, the State alleges. His firm, HBRK Associates, collected another $4.9 million from Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts. Epstein was HBRK’s only client.

By 2005, the two men held or managed at least 140 bank accounts for Epstein and his entities, according to the complaint, many of which existed only to pass money to other accounts.

The State alleges that more than $6 million in cash was withdrawn from Epstein’s accounts between 2002 and 2013. After Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida and registered as a sex offender, Indyke made 97 cash withdrawals from Deutsche Bank between 2013 and 2017, roughly $200,000 a year, each below the $10,000 threshold that triggers a federal currency report, the complaint says.

Indyke repeatedly asked Deutsche Bank how to withdraw cash without alerting the government, the State alleges. The bank ended its relationship with Epstein in December 2018. That year, Indyke withdrew $100,000 from a single branch and described it as money for tipping and household expenses, according to the complaint, which says the cash paid women in Epstein’s trafficking ring.

Kahn, a certified public accountant, testified to Congress that he was unaware of repeated $9,800 withdrawals, each $200 under the reporting limit. The complaint calls that testimony implausible.

The complaint also alleges:

• An internal JPMorgan document concluded Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring and identified Kahn as a primary actor in moving his money.
• In 2017, Kahn emailed Epstein about paying a batch of medical expenses for girls, asking only whether Epstein wanted to review the bills.
• In 2018, Kahn told Deutsche Bank that wires to Moscow-based Sberbank were tuition payments for a friend.
• In 2019, HBRK requested a next-day cash pickup of 50,000 euros.
• Ten days before his 2019 arrest, Epstein tried to buy a $27.7 million palace in Morocco, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Kahn canceled the purchase after the arrest.

The ranch

The State ties both men to the ranch through companies registered or operating in New Mexico.

Epstein bought the roughly 7,600-acre property in 1993 from the family of then-Gov. Bruce King, through an Ohio trust, and acquired state grazing leases for public lands around it the same year, the complaint says.

Indyke handled the transfer of the ranch’s title to Cypress Inc., a Virgin Islands corporation, by deed dated Dec. 19, 2011, according to the complaint. Indyke was Cypress’s vice president and secretary; Kahn was its treasurer. Cypress also leased adjacent state land.

Indyke was secretary of Zorro Development Corp., registered at 49 Zorro Ranch Road, and a signatory on its bank account from December 2016 to July 2019, the State alleges. That company paid a New Mexico massage therapist whom Epstein sexually assaulted at the ranch, according to the complaint.

Kahn oversaw the ranch’s sale in 2023, the complaint says.

Sierra Nevada Property Management LLC, the company THE PUGILIST previously linked to the ranch’s private microwave network and FCC licenses, does not appear among the entities the complaint names. Previous reporting here showed Sierra Nevada Property Management LLC to have been registered in the state of Nevada under the name of Christy Carbon-Gaul. A Christy Carbon-Gaul is the current sitting probate judge in Bernalillo County, but it has not been confirmed that they are the same person, and no such name appears in today’s filing from Torrez.

The survivors

The complaint describes seven women identified as Jane Does who say they were abused at Zorro Ranch between 1996 and 2010. Flight records show girls and young women traveling there from 1997 to 2018, it says.

Jane Doe 1 was a high school junior in 1996 when Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell flew her to Santa Fe, telling her they were planning a volunteer trip to Thailand, according to the complaint. The ranch manager picked her up at the airport. She was the only guest on the property, where the State says Maxwell and Epstein groomed and abused her.

Jane Doe 3 was 15 when she flew to the ranch on Epstein’s plane in 2004 and was assaulted for hours, the complaint says. Afterward, another girl told her that nobody at the ranch ever got in trouble for anything.

The FBI found compact discs in Epstein’s Manhattan home, some labeled “Zorro,” according to the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that in 2011 or 2012, Epstein directed a survivor to give a “massage” to Jes Staley, then head of JPMorgan’s private bank, and that Staley raped her. Staley is not a defendant.

Survivors Julia Molchanova and Anouska De Georgiou appeared with Torrez at Wednesday’s announcement.

The redactions

Eleven numbered paragraphs of the complaint are redacted in full, and others are cut mid-sentence.

• Paragraph 67, part of the description of the ranch
• Paragraphs 87 and 90, part of Jane Doe 2’s account
• Paragraphs 112 through 115, the entirety of Jane Doe 7’s account
• Paragraphs 131, 132, 134 and 135, in the sections on Indyke’s cash withdrawals and Kahn’s congressional testimony
• A dollar figure in paragraph 122, the red flags at Deutsche Bank in paragraph 136, and a name on a “Zorro” disc in paragraph 118

The complaint names no New Mexico resident who assisted Epstein, Indyke or Kahn. The ranch manager, household staff and Epstein’s personal assistants appear without names.

Gary King, Bruce King’s son and New Mexico’s attorney general from 2007 to 2014, is not mentioned. THE PUGILIST has previously reported on Epstein’s donations to Gary King and on the King family’s sale of the ranch land.

Groff was one of four Epstein employees named as potential co-conspirators in his 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement. The new complaint does not name her.

THE PUGILIST has asked the NMDOJ whether the redacted paragraphs refer to New Mexico residents, why the banking sections are sealed, and whether its criminal investigation includes anyone in the state who helped Epstein. As of publication time, we had not received a reply.

The federal record

The complaint says New Mexico opened a criminal investigation of Zorro Ranch in 2019 and halted it at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which promised to share its findings. Federal prosecutors breached that promise, the State alleges. Hector Balderas, the attorney general of New Mexico at that time, has repeatedly told the media in the past year that he was forced to stand down by the feds, but former New Mexico attorney general Patricia Madrid told THE PUGILIST that Balderas’ claim was not factual. A federal prosecutor can ask a state prosecutor to stand down, but because the two judicial systems are distinct and separate, the attorney general is not required to comply and, if they do stand down, may reopen the investigation at any time. Balderas’ misleading characterization of his role has been oft-repeated by New Mexico congresswoman Melanie Stansbury and members of the New Mexico Epstein Truth Commission, including its embattled chair, state representative Andrea Romero.

Torrez, the one bright light of hope in New Mexico’s efforts to hold at least some people accountable for Epstein’s crimes here, reopened the state investigation in February — something Balderas or any other attorney general could have done without permission from the feds. Investigators searched the ranch in March with the consent of its current owners. Disappointingly, it was not a warrant search. In August, Torrez sued the U.S. Department of Justice for withholding unredacted Epstein files. The criminal investigation remains open, his office said Wednesday.

The federal U.S. attorney for New Mexico during much of the ranch’s early years was John J. Kelly, who had served as Epstein’s attorney-in-fact on the 1993 purchase and was introduced to Epstein by then Gov. Bruce King, Gary King’s father. Kelly’s office never investigated Epstein, and as of this year Kelly was still serving as member of the Board of Ethics for the city of Albuquerque, the largest city in the state, appointed to that board by Mayor Tim Keller. Kelly was only removed from the board when he died on July 22, 2026.

Torrez’s father, Presiliano Torrez, was a career assistant U.S. attorney in Albuquerque. Court records show him arguing for the government in 1995 with Kelly on the briefs. THE PUGILIST found nothing linking the elder Torrez to any decision involving Epstein. But in a state like ours, it’s probably good to keep in mind.

The response

Indyke and Kahn have denied knowing about Epstein’s crimes, including in testimony before Congress. Earlier this year, the estate agreed to pay up to $35 million to settle a 2024 survivor class action against the two men, without admitting wrongdoing. Their lawyer said then that they had done nothing wrong and settled to achieve finality.

CNN has reported that the two men are under federal investigation.

What’s next

The State has asked for a freeze on estate distributions but has not yet filed a separate motion seeking one. The estate is being probated in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The defense is expected to argue the claims are too old. The complaint argues that the men’s concealment, and the slow release of federal Epstein files since Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025, kept the facts hidden.

The legislature’s Survivors’ Truth Commission has issued multiple subpoenas in its own Zorro Ranch inquiry but none to Indyke or Kahn, CNN reported.

Karyna Shuliak, a Belarusian-born dentist and the largest beneficiary of Epstein’s 1953 Trust, goes unmentioned in the State’s 49-page complaint. Under the trust, she stands to receive $50 million outright, another $50 million through an annuity, and Epstein’s properties, according to trust documents released by the Justice Department. She met Epstein in 2011, at 21, while studying in New York on a student visa, and stayed with him until his death. Columbia University’s dental school rejected her in February 2012 because she lacked a bachelor’s degree. Epstein then told school officials he was considering a $5 million to $10 million donation, and Columbia admitted her as a transfer student that May. The university later acknowledged she was admitted through an “irregular process” that coincided with fundraising solicitations, and it disciplined two dental school officials. After she graduated in 2015, Shuliak applied for dental licenses in New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the two places Epstein kept his largest properties, and the proposed name for her practice was “Zorro Smiles,” the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. New Mexico’s dental board approved her license in a one-line email, and she held it from 2015 until about 2021. Released records show she also coordinated Epstein’s household staff and had broad access to his money, and that Epstein directed Kahn to wire $15,000 to her mother in January 2013. The freeze the State is seeking would halt her inheritance along with Indyke’s and Kahn’s. THE PUGILIST has asked the NMDOJ why the complaint omits her. If they answer, we’ll let you know.

For more, please see the NMAG’s press release here, which includes the full but redacted filing.

Source: https://alisav.substack.com