Fourteen years after she wascaught on a hidden camerastuffing $40,000 (£32,000) into her handbag, Sarah Ferguson is back in the headlines. This time, it is not her own words causing the damage. It is Jeffrey Epstein's.
Newly released documents from the convicted sex offender's files contain emails in which Epstein suggested Ferguson should check into a rehabilitation facility and publicly admit to 'medication abuse,'the Mirror revealed.
The suggestion was brazen. A convicted sex offender, already under a cloud of his own legal troubles, is actively coaching a member of the royal household on how to spin a scandal. And the spin he landed on was prescription drugs.
The 2010 sting, run by theNews of the World's undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood, caught Ferguson on film offering access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew in exchange for money. She accepted a $40,000 (£32,000) cash deposit in a hotel room and told the fake businessman 'that opens the door' to the prince. The asking price was £500,000 ($625,000).
Ferguson apologised quickly. Called it a 'serious lapse of judgement'. Andrew's office distanced itself. But the duchess was drowning. Reports at the time put her debts north of £5 million ($6.25 million).
Epstein saw an opportunity to manage the mess. He wrote that Ferguson should 'admit her medication abuse' and enter rehab, framing the footage as the behaviour of someone struggling with prescription drugs rather than someone desperate for cash, according toThe Daily Mail.
She never did. No rehab, no public statement about medication. The plan, whatever it was, went nowhere.
But Epstein's involvement did not stop at unsolicited advice. Prince Andrew arranged for Epstein to wire £15,000 ($18,750) towards Ferguson's debts. That came out in 2011 and proved deeply embarrassing for Andrew, who later admitted the introduction to Epstein had been a mistake.
The latest batch of emails paints a fuller picture of how entangled things actually were. Epstein was not some distant figure writing cheques. He had positioned himself as a fixer for the Windsors, someone who expected to be consulted when things went sideways. The rehab suggestion makes that clear. This was a man trying to shape the public narrative around a member of the British royal family.
Ferguson, 66, has never been accused of involvement in Epstein's crimes. Nobody is suggesting she knew anything about his offending. But her financial connection to him, brokered entirely through Andrew, means her name keeps surfacing every time another tranche of documents is unsealed.
Source: International Business Times UK
