A recently released FBI sting video has cast fresh light into Jeffrey Epstein's network, showing how his former house manager tried to sell an address book of alleged victims and contacts.
The footage, released by the US Justice Department this month, shows Alfredo Rodriguez in a Boca Raton hotel, offering the 97-page 'little black book' for £37,176 ($50,000) to an undercover agent posing as a victims' lawyer representative. He claimed it had over 1,500 names, including underage girls and powerful figures.
The stinghappened in November 2009, when Rodriguez, who was Epstein's Palm Beach butler from 2004 to 2005, contacted an undercover FBI agent he believed was representing victims' attorneys. After being fired, he kept the book as 'insurance', fearing Epstein could make him 'disappear'.
The operation unfolded on 3 November 2009 in a Boca Raton hotel room, captured in a 46-minute video recently released by the Justice Department. In the footage, the undercover agent shows Rodriguez a bag of cash about two minutes in. Rodriguez then produces the book from an envelope, describing it as the 'real McCoy' and insisting 'Epstein himself' created it, with copies once kept in Epstein's cars, plane, and other locations but later destroyed.
He flips through the pages, pointing out entries for prominent people and giving details on Epstein's household. He was arrested for obstruction of justice for not providing the book to investigators, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison – longer than Epstein's 13-month term from his 2008 plea deal. Rodriguez decided to sell the book instead of handing it over freely, which led to the FBI setting up the sting.
Newly released video from the Justice Department shows Jeffrey Epstein's former house manager, often called his butler, attempting to sell Epstein’s address book, or “little black book,” to an undercover FBI employee in a 2009 sting operation. CNN’s Kara Scannell reports.#cnn#cnnnews#epsteinfiles
The video includes Rodriguez's claims of hidden cameras in every room of Epstein's mansion, and a computer database managed by Ghislaine Maxwell containing nude photos of young girls.
'You will see a lot of important people here,' he says, adding that the book includes phone numbers for underage girls who gave massages that turned sexual. He describes how Maxwell downloaded the explicit images from the cameras.
Rodriguez also speaks about Epstein's attraction to teens, with some as young as 14 visiting the Palm Beach home. Al Jazeera English posted about the videoon X, noting it shows Epstein's operations long before public awareness. The details support survivor accounts and Maxwell's 2021 sex trafficking conviction.
The sting video is from a collection of documents unsealed from Virginia Giuffre's 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell. Since January 2026, the Justice Department has released millions of pages, photos, and videos, despite redaction difficulties.
Source: International Business Times UK
