Epstein Island and the money: purchase prices, tax breaks and the estate

What the two islands cost to buy

Measured against everything that came after, the entry price was modest. Land and government records show that in April 1998 a company called L.S.J. LLC paid $7.95 million for the island then carried on the books as Mingo Cay; further filings list Epstein as its sole member ¹.

The second purchase, eighteen years later, took a detour. Documents obtained by the Miami Herald and McClatchy describe an opaque company that left the seller side believing a businessman from Dubai stood behind the offer; the agreed figure was $22.5 million ².

That total breaks into two transactions in January 2016: three parcels of just over 80 acres for $17.5 million, and twelve further parcels of roughly 81 acres for $5 million ³. What was later built there is covered in Great St. James.

Set beside the exit, the arithmetic shifts again. The May 2023 transfer brought $60 million for both islands as a package ¹⁸, against an acquisition cost of a little over $30 million in 1998 and 2016 together ^1,2.

Good to knowThe 1998 price comes from land and government records that reporters inspected. The deed itself is not publicly retrievable.

The Virgin Islands tax programme and the Southern Trust certificate

The U.S. Virgin Islands have courted companies with tax relief for decades. The Economic Development Commission, part of the territory's development authority, grants a bundle of exemptions to firms that undertake to invest and hire locally ⁴.

Southern Trust Co. filed its application in October 2012. At a public hearing on 15 November 2012, Epstein and his attorney described the business under oath as consulting work at the cutting edge of biomedical and financial informatics ⁴.

The certificate that followed ran ten years, from 1 February 2013 to 31 January 2023: a 90 percent exemption from territorial income tax and full exemption from gross receipts, excise and withholding tax ⁴.

Obligations came attached. The company undertook to invest more than $400,000 and to employ ten full-time staff by its sixth year, 80 percent of them residents of the territory ⁵. The certificate carries the signature of Albert Bryan Jr., then chairman of the development authority and later governor ⁴.

This was not the first such grant. In 1999 a predecessor agency approved a comparable package for another Epstein company, Financial Trust Co.: 90 percent off income tax, full relief on gross receipts and excise, again a ten-year term ⁴.

How the tax benefit turned into a repayment claim

After Epstein's death the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands, Denise N. George, brought Southern Trust into an expanded civil action under the territory's statute on criminally influenced and corrupt organizations, questioning whether the arrangements with the development authority were valid at all ⁴.

The filing gets specific about amounts. Between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2017 Southern Trust received $73.6 million in exemptions. Because the company was treated as an S corporation at the end of 2017, its earnings passed to its single shareholder, so $71.3 million of the total sat on Epstein's personal income tax ⁴.

The territory's daily paper worked out that a win would oblige the estate to repay more than $144 million in lifetime benefits, and quoted the Attorney General on the court's power to order disgorgement ⁴.

No ruling arrived. The settlement of December 2022 fixed the return instead: $105 million in cash, a share of the eventual island sale, a six-figure payment for environmental damage next door, and more than $80 million in benefits given back ⁶.

Which clauses of that agreement forced the islands onto the market is set out in the 2023 sale.

The estate, and why every figure needs a date

The will signed on 8 August 2019 lists assets of roughly $577 million, among them more than $56 million in cash, all of it directed into a vehicle named The 1953 Trust ⁷.

Later valuations ran higher. In the case against the territory, filings of March 2022 named a starting value of $656 million against $166 million still held, after roughly $175 million in taxes, about $150 million to victims and more than $15 million in legal fees had gone out ⁸.

In between sits an accounting the estate submitted to the probate court as of 1 February 2021, showing assets of about $241 million ¹⁹.

By early 2025 the figure had dropped below $40 million. Then the tax code helped. The estate had prepaid roughly $190 million to the federal revenue service in 2020, later sales fell short of the valuations behind it, and about $112 million came back, lifting the balance to around $150 million ⁹.

A court filing from October 2025 names yet another number, roughly $127 million ¹⁰. Each belongs to a different cut-off date, a different accounting and a different moment in the reporting. An estate value quoted without a date and a source is worth little.

Good to knowThe 2019, 2022 and 2025 numbers are snapshots from separate proceedings, not points on one curve.

Two funds for victims and a treasury account in the territory

The compensation programme, financed by the estate but administered independently, paid about $121 million to roughly 150 people before closing in August 2021. Around 225 claims came in, more than twice the number anticipated, and 92 percent of those offered an award took it ¹¹.

It did not run smoothly. In early February 2021 the programme's leadership said decisions on awards would be held back until at least 25 March, because the estate was short of liquid funds ¹².

Outside the programme the estate paid a further $49 million in individual settlements ¹³. February 2026 added an agreement worth up to $35 million, meant to close a class action filed in 2024 against the two co-executors, with no admission attached ¹³. A federal judge in Manhattan gave preliminary approval on 3 March 2026 and set the final hearing for 16 September 2026 ¹⁴.

The territory's own account is separate. According to its daily newspaper, the government took in $178.9 million altogether from the settlement with the estate and a further settlement with an investor ¹⁵.

Legislation of October 2024 turned that into two vehicles, the Southern Trust Company Settlement Fund and the Mental Health Healing Trust Fund, and laid down how $69 million was to be managed and allocated to projects ¹⁵.

How it was actually spent was still open in early March 2026. The Commissioner of Finance had promised the legislature a breakdown and did not produce one; a hearing in February 2025 established only that $33.6 million had gone to contractors who were not identified ¹⁵.

The current owner and his own tax dispute

These days the new owner argues with the territory about tax as well, though about his own. On 7 July 2026 Stephen Deckoff sued the government in the District Court of the Virgin Islands, maintaining that he has been resident on the islands without a break since 2012 ¹⁷.

The starting point was a federal audit opened in August 2024 over whether his tax home in 2021 really was the territory. If the answer is no, he owes the Virgin Islands nothing on income earned elsewhere, and what he paid must be refunded ¹⁶.

In November 2025 he lodged a refund claim for $5,757,038. The territorial tax bureau neither granted nor denied it, which is how the matter reached a courtroom; counsel for the Virgin Islands had until 19 October 2026 to answer ¹⁶.

The five-star resort used to justify the 2023 purchase was still unbuilt in September 2026 ¹⁶. Almost thirty years after the first contract, the same question is back: who counts as resident on these islands, and who gains from it in tax ^1,16.