How Jeffrey Epstein used a Philippine team to wipe his criminal past from the internet

According to US Department of Justice documents, Jeffrey Epstein, a child sex offender, employed a Filipino crew to clear his name online.

Among these papers are emails between Epstein and Al Seckel, the spouse of the sister of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime lover and procurer.

By filling online search results with links to websites that are sometimes deceptive but favorable, Seckel's team successfully masked unfavorable information pertaining to his alleged criminal conduct; this is essentially what is currently known as search engine optimization (SEO).

Seckel informed Epstein that "the greater the number of links, then the higher the ranking."

In an email dated December 7, 2010, Seckel wrote, "Google suggests has gotten rid of two negatives: the jeffry epstein jail and one jeffrey epstein pedophile – another thing I've had the Philippine work on since day one."

In an email message from October 2010, Seckel stated, "Our group in the Philippines is building links and links to our sites, pseudo sites, and the other Jeffrey Epsteins of the world."

The squad established a number of connections to websites that purportedly demonstrate his participation in science, athletics, and charity. In addition, they cleaned up the "toxic" words on Epstein's Wikipedia page.

"Wikipedia was an important victory, as it will always be at the top of the search engine results. Now the headlines do not mention convicted sex offender or pedophile. Instead, Philanthrophic work, Epstein Foundation, Promotion of Scientists," Seckel wrote in an email on December 16, 2010.

"We have stopped the hacking on your wiki site, and that was a major effort. Your wiki entry now is pretty tame, and bad stuff has been muted, bowlerized, and pused to the bottom,"

In 2019, Epstein was taken into custody on suspicion of conspiracy to engage in the sex trafficking of children and sex trafficking of children. According to reports, he committed suicide in his jail cell while he was waiting for his trial.