Epstein’s shadow in Mexico: A diplomat under scrutiny, thousands of videos and alleged ties to drug trafficking

The declassification of files belonging to convicted sex offender and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial, has profoundly affected various political figures and governments, primarily in the United States and Europe. The latest batch of documents from the financier’s archive — more than three million pages, 2,000 videos, and around 180,000 images, according to the U.S. Department of Justice — has triggered investigations, resignations, and reputational crises at the highest levels of power.

Epstein’s shadow is long, and Mexico has not been spared. Emails from witnesses and victims, as well as documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), expose his visits to Mexican territory, especially to destinations like Puerto Vallarta and Cancún. There are also accusations that the financier used the country on more than one occasion to carry out crimes related to child sex trafficking.

Diplomatic connection

According to testimonies and emails from Kenneth Turner, an FBI informant, both Richard Marcinko, a former U.S. Navy SEAL commander, and Earl Anthony Wayne, who served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico between the presidencies of Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto, from September 2011 to July 2015, are linked to Epstein’s abuse scheme in Mexican territory.

Turner, who according to Epstein’s documents was a former Air Force veteran and assistant defense attaché in the Office of International Affairs (OIA) of the U.S. Department of Justice, sent at least 18 emails to Detective Walter E. Harkins of the New York Police Department. In this exchange, which took place between July 19 and September 10, 2019, the FBI informant alleges that during a party hosted by Marcinko and Epstein in Ciudad Juárez in 2014 — at a housing unit run by the U.S. Consulate — Wayne sexually abused an 11-year-old girl, who became pregnant.

The informant told Harkins, without providing any evidence to support his claims, that Wayne was sentenced in Mexico to life for child abuse, but that thanks to a deal reached between the State Department and a judge, and after “a huge payoff,” Marcinko took his place to serve his sentence. The same informant, who claimed to have collaborated with Mexican federal authorities in the investigations against Epstein in that country, told Harkins that since he had identified Wayne for these alleged crimes, U.S. embassy personnel had been keeping him under surveillance.

There are no official records from that time, nor any current ones, to show that the Mexican government conducted a federal investigation, or any investigation with other countries, into the allegations made by Turner against Epstein, Marcinko or Wayne. In early February, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum stated that her administration would cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice investigations if formally requested.

Marcinko died in 2021. There is no public record of any accusations against him. In an email sent on February 3, 2026, to journalist Marc Caputo of the news outlet Axios, Wayne denies the accusations against him. “The claims originate from a disjointed email chain that makes outlandish claims, including international conspiracies and other events that demonstrably never happened, as they would have been matters of public record or reported in the media at the time they occurred, and they were not,” reads an excerpt from the message.

Being named in these files does not imply criminal guilt, but reactions to the accusations against Wayne were swift. In a protest on February 6, students at American University in Washington, D.C., demanded transparency regarding the allegations against Wayne, who teaches at the university’s School of International Service (SIS). According to the college newspaper, The Eagle, the institution conducted a due diligence review of the accusations against the former ambassador. SIS’s interim dean, Rachel Robinson, stated in a message to students and faculty that the university had not corroborated Turner’s unverified claims.

Videos of abuse

In a standardized report for documenting and verifying leads, phone calls, or threats received by the FBI, dated July 19, 2019, it is mentioned that Turner contacted the U.S. Embassy, ​​but they refused to acknowledge what was happening. “A month ago, Turner and the Mexican Federal Police found what Turner calls ‘a vault’ containing approximately 10,000 videos of minors from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and some girls who were later determined to have been brought to Mexico from South Africa by Mr. Nissan, now convicted and imprisoned in a Mexican prison,” reads an excerpt from the document.

In the same report, Turner said that a month earlier (June 19, 2019), sex tapes and videos featuring Jeffrey Epstein were found in one of Marcinko’s secret locations. “Turner assumes that Marcinko would likely use them to blackmail him,” the report clarifies.

In an internal FBI communication dated September 10, 2019, a month after Epstein’s death, the federal investigative agency followed up on Turner’s testimony. This document mentioned that the investigation against Marcinko included video evidence, in the possession of Mexican law enforcement, showing the financier engaging in sexual acts with minors, some of whom were also possibly U.S. citizens.

Another accusation from this FBI informant is that he found the financier’s flight log showing him leaving Mexico for the Virgin Islands to transport girls there. “In 2005, Epstein flew to Mexico, landed at Cancun airport, stayed overnight, and filled up his tank, which is highly unusual because refueling isn’t necessary for a return flight to Miami of only an hour and a half,” the report states.

Epstein and the Sinaloa Cartel

These accusations are not the only ones against Epstein. The file also reveals a chain of five emails where the sender’s and recipient’s identities are redacted. The subject of this exchange is a complaint alleging Epstein abused a 17-year-old girl. The communication, dated between November 21 and 22, 2019, states that the young woman, from Calderitas, a town in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, was abused by the financier on “numerous occasions” at his home in New York and at his Caribbean residence in the Virgin Islands. “Both [her guardian and the victim] have expressed their interest in requesting that I register her claim as a victim in any case related to Mr. Epstein’s estate, over which she believes she may have a claim,” reads an excerpt from the correspondence.

Another FBI document, dated June 21, 2021, states that a witness accused Donald Trump of having knowledge of the abuses committed by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the financier’s main collaborator and accomplice. This witness, whose identity is redacted in the document, claimed in an interview with a federal agent that he was a member of the Sinaloa Cartel and that he had recordings of Trump, Epstein, and Maxwell discussing marketing strategies for high-profile sex parties at the mogul’s golf course.

However, the document says, he mailed the recordings to a lawyer in the Cayman Islands. He managed to distance himself from the cartel because of his relationship with Epstein and Maxwell. In the recordings, Trump stated that he was aware of the sex parties with minors and took the money earned by the golf course to finance them, according to the declassified document.

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