Jeffrey Epstein’s jail guards make deal with prosecutors to avoid jail time

NEW YORK CITY — Two jail guards responsible for monitoring wealthy financier and accused child predator Jeffrey Epstein on the night he committed suicide in 2019 have made a deal with prosecutors to avoid jail time, according to court records.

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In a letter filed Friday in court, prosecutors said they planned to enter a deferred prosecution agreement with Michael Thomas and Tova Noel in which they would serve no jail time. Instead, the agreement would require them to complete 100 hours of community service and to cooperate with an ongoing probe by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Authorities charged Thomas and Noel with falsifying records at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York to make it appear as though they carried out checks on Epstein every half-hour on Aug. 9 and 10. However, authorities said the pair actually spent “substantial portions of their shifts” sitting at their desks, browsing the internet and sleeping.

On Friday, prosecutors said Thomas and Noel “admitted that they ‘willfully and knowingly completed materially false count and round slips regarding required counts and rounds in the Special Housing Unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center on August 9, 2019 and August 10, 2019.’”

The deal would have to be approved by a judge. Prosecutors asked that a hearing be held next week to discuss the agreement.

Epstein’s death was considered a major embarrassment for the Bureau of Prisons, according to the Associated Press. In its wake, U.S. Attorney General William Barr vowed to investigate the death and some “serious irregularities” in the 66-year-old’s treatment at MCC. Later, Barr announced the acting director of the Bureau of Prisons had been replaced and reassigned.

Epstein died weeks after an earlier suicide attempt in which he apparently tried to hang himself with a strip of bedsheet, according to investigators. He was briefly placed on suicide watch after the attempt, though that status had been lifted before Epstein’s suicide in August 2019.

Epstein had been housed at MCC since his arrest in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. He had been accused of sexually abusing and exploiting dozens of girls as young as age 14 between 2002 and 2005.

He had pleaded not guilty and was preparing to argue that he could not be charged because of a 2008 deal he made to avoid federal prosecution on similar allegations in Florida.

Epstein’s death prompted a whirl of conspiracy theories from people, including members of Epstein’s family and some of his alleged victims, who questioned whether it was possible that he’d killed himself in such a high-security setting.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cox Media Group