DOJ-OGR-00021398.pdf

--- Page 1 --- The extracted text is: Case 22-1426, Document 77, 06/29/2023, 3536038, Page226 of 258 SA-224 Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 204-3 Filed 04/16/21 Page 224 of 348 If you have additional questions which involve this matter, please contact the office listed above. When you call, please provide the file number located at the top of this letter. Please remember, your participation in the notification part of this program is voluntary. In order to continue to receive notifications, it is your responsibility to keep your contact information current. Sincerely, [redacted] Victim Specialist VNS data logs, correspondence maintained in the FBI's case management system, and FBI interview reports for the Epstein investigation reflect that, during the Epstein investigation, the FBI generally issued its victim notification letters after the victim had been interviewed by FBI case agents, but its practice was not uniform. 275 B. August 2006: The USAO's Letters to Victims During the time that the FBI Victim Specialist was preparing and sending FBI victim notification letters, Villafaña was also preparing her own introductory letter in anticipation of meeting with each victim receiving the letter. Villafaña told OPR that she was "generally aware that the FBI sends letters" but believed the FBI's "process didn't... have anything to do with my process." Villafaña told OPR the "FBI had their own victim notification system and their own guidelines for when information had to be provided and what information had to be provided." Moreover, Villafaña "didn't know when [FBI] letters went out" or "what they said."276 Nevertheless, Villafaña told OPR that she did not intend for the letters she drafted to interfere with the FBI's notification responsibilities. In August 2006, Villafaña drafted her letters to victims who had been initially identified by the FBI based on the PBPD investigative file. Villafaña told OPR that she "made the decision to make contact with victims early," and she composed the introductory letter and determined to whom they would be sent. Although these letters contained CVRA rights information, Villafaña mainly intended to use them as a vehicle to "introduce" herself and let the victims know the federal investigation "would be a different process" from the State Attorney's Office investigation in which "the victims felt they had not been particularly well-treated." Villafaña told OPR that in a case in which she "needed to be talking to young girls frequently and asking them really intimate OPR found no uniformity in the time lapse between the FBI's interview of a victim and the issuance of an FBI letter to that particular victim, as the span of time between the two events varied from a few days to months. Furthermore, not every victim interviewed by the FBI received an FBI letter subsequent to her interview, and some FBI letters were sent to victims who had not been interviewed by the case agents. Finally, OPR's review of FBI VNS data revealed some letters that appeared to have been generated in the VNS and not included in the FBI case file. OPR could not confirm whether such letters were mailed or delivered. Villafaña, who did not have supervisory authority over the FBI's Victim Specialist, told OPR that she did not review the FBI notification letters and did not see them until she gathered them for production in the CVRA litigation, which was initiated after Epstein pled guilty on June 30, 2008. 198