Two federal workers who were on duty the night Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail were charged on Tuesday with failing to check on him every half-hour as they were supposed to and then lying about it on prison documents. The two federal Bureau of Prisons employees, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were expected to appear in United States District Court in Manhattan to face charges including conspiracy and making false records. The charges are the first to arise from a criminal investigation into the death of Mr. Epstein, the disgraced financier who hanged himself at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. The indictment charged Ms. Noel, 31, and Mr. Thomas, 41, with making false records and conspiring to defraud the United States. Specifically, the indictment said the two workers failed to make their rounds to check on detainees and instead “sat at their desk, browsed the internet and moved around the common area.”

Source: New York Times November 19, 2019 13:47 UTC