This is verified — federal documents confirmed that a private investigator hired by Epstein's defense counsel removed more than 100 items of evidence, including computers and directories, from his Palm Beach home in October 2005, just before police raided it. The Department of Justice released documentation of this in early 2026. What's worth noting: prosecutors later agreed to abandon efforts to recover the evidence when Epstein accepted a 2008 plea deal that let him avoid serious jail time — so the missing computers never became part of the case against him.