Jeffrey Epstein locked up in 'Guantanomo of New York' just three doors away from drug lord El Chapo
Jeffrey Epstein has found himself locked up close to arguably the most powerful drug trafficker in the world: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, aka, El Chapo.
We previously reported that the 66-year-old Epstein, a wealthy financier and registered sex offender, was arrested on July 6 in New York on new sex-trafficking charges involving allegations that date as far back as the early 2000s. The multi-millionaire is now being held at cell No 4. in the notorious solitary-confinement unit of Brooklyn's Metropolitan Correctional Center known as 10 South, according to the New York Post.
In cell No 1., just three doors down is El Chapo, who was convicted of running an industrial-scale criminal enterprise and other drug-related charges in February following a three-month trial that laid bare the grisly details of the workings of his Sinaloa Cartel.
The facility, which consists of 10 separate, self-contained housing units, is often referred to as the "Guantanomo of New York" and is mostly reserved for those accused of the most heinous crimes. The list of individuals held at the facility include the likes of Gambino crime family bosses John Gotti and Jackie D'Amico, drug kingpin Frank Lucas, Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff, and terrorists Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef.
And if Chapo's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, is to be believed, the facility is not one that the ultra-wealthy who are used to opulence would find welcoming. "The place is so f****** disgusting," Lichtman revealed. "In the winter, when it's 30 degrees outside, you're freezing your a– off because they’re blowing air conditioning on you."
"They don’t give you a toothbrush, you don’t get soap at the beginning," he continued. "I've heard stories about the mice running across the cells — who knows what kinds of diseases they carry."
Sources told The Post that Epstein, who was placed in the MCC without the possibility of bail, was being held at the facility for his "own safety". Lichtman, however, said the conditions inside the MCC were nothing like anything else you would come across anywhere else in the country.
"Until you're up there and see it, you can’t believe you're in America," he said. "If you don’t have human contact up there, you start losing your mind. Presumably, Epstein will have the ability to hire people to come visit him. Otherwise, he's going to go nuts."
El Chapo's stay at the MCC is set to come to an end next week when he is scheduled to be sentenced. While it is unclear where he will be incarcerated afterward, reports speculate that prison officials will send him to the country's most forbidding federal lockup, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.
Epstein, on the other hand, will head to court for his next hearing on July 15.