20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY FEBRUARY 26-MARCH 4, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com Following the delayed release of millions of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by the U.S. Department of Justice, connections to people and places in Monterey County began to emerge within the files. Aside from his primary connections to the area—Sophie Biddle Hakim, Gilbert Hakim and Dylan Hakim of Carmel Valley (see p. 16)—the files show that Epstein visited Monterey County for multiple meetings and events. According to flight logs of Epstein’s private plane, he traveled to and from Monterey Regional Airport in late February of 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. The trips were likely to attend TED Talks in Monterey, the city where the concept originated. (It has since moved to Vancouver for 11 years and will next relocate to San Diego.) Epstein came to town to attend TED Talks in late February 2004, according to a credit card statement, which also showed places he stayed and ate, including India’s Clay Oven, and other purchases like an $8.53 transaction at an auto parts store in Monterey. A draft article written by journalist Michael Wolff included in the files discusses how the writer tagged along with Epstein at a TED conference in Monterey, “We met several years before he became arguably the world’s most notorious sex offender,” Wolff’s draft reads. “In 2002, his plane, a meticulously appointed 737, ferried a group of people to the TED conference in Monterey.” The article goes on to mention members of the tech community who attended the conference and who converged at the Monterey Regional Airport. “Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with their company rising into the stratosphere, came out to see his plane on the Monterey tarmac and, with a few other Googlers, literally ran whooping from one end of the plane to the other.” Outside of his visits to Monterey to attend TED Talks, the files contain hints of other connections he had to Monterey County. In a 2012 email from Epstein to British consultant Ian Osborne, the sex offender tells the consultant about the “best massage in carmel,” with another email (in which Osborne’s name is redacted), replying, “Thank you very much.” In an email from 2014, author and literary agent John Brockman invites Epstein to a “Billionaire’s Dinner,” once hosted in Monterey in 1998, which changed names and locations over the years. A 2019 New York Times article included in the files, titled “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA,” mentions Brockman, Epstein and the dinner. “Mr. Epstein appears to have gained entree into the scientific community through John Brockman, a literary agent whose best-selling science writers include Richard Dawkins, Daniel Goleman and Jared Diamond,” according to the Times. “For two decades, Mr. Brockman presided over a series of salons that matched his scientist-authors with potential benefactors. (The so-called ‘billionaires’ dinners’ apparently became a model for the gatherings at Mr. Epstein’s East 71st Street townhouse, which included some of the same guests.) “In 2004, Mr. Brockman hosted a dinner at the Indian Summer restaurant in Monterey, Calif., where Mr. Epstein was introduced to scientists, including Seth Lloyd, the M.I.T. physicist. Mr. Lloyd said that he found Mr. Epstein to be ‘charming’ and to have ‘interesting ideas,’ although they ‘turned out to be quite vague.’” In 2012, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell—who is currently serving a 20-year prison term for child sex trafficking and other charges associated with Epstein—launched a nonprofit organization called the The TerraMar Project at the Blue Ocean Film Festival & Conservation Conference in Monterey. The event was held at multiple venues, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Golden State Theatre, among others. According to a 2012 press release from the organization that is included in the DOJ’s file library, “The TerraMar Project is an innovative web based nonprofit that has been set up to raise awareness for the High Seas. Created out of a frustration for a lack of awareness in the public eye on issues plaguing the high seas, TMP founders decided the high seas needed a new identity and TerraMar was born. The TerraMar Project has been created to protect the 64% of the world’s oceans which are classified as High Seas—territories that don’t belong to any countries, have no citizens and no protected status.” The announcement about the organization’s launch included a statement from Maxwell about the nonprofit: “The planet should be called water not earth, because water covers most of it.” Records of local donations to the project are included in the files, including two separate $1,000 donations in 2013 and 2018 from the Garland and Brenda Reiter Family Foundation, located in Salinas. The organization was short-lived, however. According to a 2021 article by The Independent, the nonprofit didn’t pay out any grants from 2013 to 2017 and “produced no tangible examples of successful ocean conservancy projects.” The TerraMar Project announced it would shutter in July 2019, about a week after Epstein was charged with new sex trafficking crimes. THE MONTEREY CONNECTION A billionaire’s dinner, TED Talks and a nonprofit—how Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s worlds intersected with Monterey County. By Aric Sleeper Ghislaine Maxwell (above left, on a plane with Jeffrey Epstein) had her own experiences in Monterey (not shown). Below, she and Epstein are shown with Bill Clinton in 1993. A 2003 email exchange between Ghislaine Maxwell and Sergey Brin references attendance at TED in Monterey. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE COURTESY RALPH ALSWANG_WHITE HOUSE, 1993 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
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