TLDR
Jeffrey Epstein's last will — 10 pages, signed August 8, 2019, two days before his death — established the 1953 Trust with Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn as co-executors and bequeathed $3 million to Lithuanian citizen Simona Petreike. On the same day, $2.2 million in wire transfers flowed through Indyke's IOLA (Interest on Lawyer Account — a special bank account where attorneys temporarily hold client funds in trust), making August 8 the most financially concentrated single day in the corpus.
Two Days
The will was signed on August 8, 2019 (House Oversight Committee, 2026). Epstein was found dead in his Metropolitan Correctional Center cell on August 10, 2019. The two-day gap between signing and death is one of the most examined timelines in the case. Whatever one believes about the circumstances of Epstein's death, the legal and financial preparations that occurred on August 8 were deliberate, coordinated, and expensive.
The document itself is straightforward. Obtained as House Oversight estate records Request No. 2, the ten-page will establishes the 1953 Trust as the primary vehicle for estate administration and names Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn as co-executors (House Oversight Committee, 2026). These are the same two individuals who served as officers on the majority of Epstein's corporate entities, controlled the Deutsche Bank and TD Bank accounts, and managed the financial infrastructure documented throughout the corpus.
The 1953 Trust
The trust's name — 1953 — references Epstein's birth year. The choice to pour the estate into a trust rather than distributing assets directly through the will created a layer of privacy. Trust distributions, unlike probate proceedings (the public court process for administering a deceased person's estate), are not automatically public. By routing the estate through the 1953 Trust, the will ensured that the disposition of assets would occur in a forum with less public visibility than a New York Surrogate's Court probate (House Oversight Committee, 2026).
The co-executors who would administer this trust are the same individuals who had administered the financial network for decades. Indyke, as attorney, had managed 10 or more corporate entities and processed $14.66 million through his IOLA (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). Kahn, as accountant, had served as sole signer on HBRK Associates and maintained direct online portal access to the Southern Financial LLC Deutsche Bank account. The will formalized what had already been true in practice: these two men controlled the financial infrastructure.
The $3 Million Bequest
The will includes a $3 million bequest to Simona Petreike, a Lithuanian citizen (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026b). This bequest connects the estate documents to an active criminal investigation. Lithuanian prosecutors in Panevezys opened a pretrial investigation partly based on this bequest and on wire transfers to "Fors projektai" (EUR 75,000) and "Baleto Teatras" ($28,000) — entities linked to Petreike or her associates (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026b).
The $3 million figure is significant relative to the Lithuanian wire amounts. Where the operational wires to Lithuania totaled approximately $103,000, the testamentary bequest was 30 times larger — suggesting a relationship that extended well beyond the documented financial transactions.
August 8: The Financial Parallel
The will signing was not the only activity on August 8, 2019. Wire transfer records show that on the same day:
Indyke's IOLA sent $2,000,000 to "Representation Trust" in New York with the memo "legal fees." Representation Trust appears only in the TD Bank SAR (Suspicious Activity Report) — no corporate registration or prior corpus mention exists (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a).
Indyke's IOLA sent approximately $200,000 to Black Srebnick Kornspan & Stumpf with the memo "je retainer replenishment." The "je" abbreviation explicitly identifies the funds as being for Jeffrey Epstein's criminal defense (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a).
The combined August 8 wire activity of $2.2 million, plus the will signing, makes this the most legally and financially concentrated single day documented in the corpus. The simultaneity is not coincidental — it represents a coordinated preparation event.
Post-Death Consequences
The co-executors named in the will subsequently faced allegations of post-death asset concealment. According to the USVI Attorney General's complaint, Indyke and Kahn allegedly concealed approximately $13 million from the Butterfly Trust, transferring funds to three new entities naming themselves and their spouses as beneficiaries (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026c). The trust mechanism established by the August 8 will provided the legal framework through which this alleged concealment occurred.
The USVI v. Estate litigation resulted in a $105 million settlement in December 2022, naming ten Epstein entities (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026c). The will's designation of Indyke and Kahn as co-executors gave them the legal authority to negotiate that settlement on behalf of the estate — the same estate from which they had allegedly diverted funds.
What Ten Pages Contain
The last will is ten pages. It is shorter than the SAR (29 pages), shorter than the birthday book (238 pages), and shorter than the contact book (99 pages). But it is the document that determined who controlled the estate, how assets would be distributed, and what legal structures would govern the post-death disposition of a financial network spanning five jurisdictions and dozens of entities.
It was signed two days before the principal died. On the same day, $2.2 million moved through the legal accounts. The timing speaks for itself.
References
House Oversight Committee. (2026). Epstein estate records releases (Request No. 2: Last Will and Testament, 10 pages, signed August 8, 2019). U.S. House of Representatives.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026a). TD Bank SAR extraction: IOLA wire flows, Representation Trust wire, and Black Srebnick retainer [Research file]. td_bank_sar_extraction.md.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026b). Lithuania pretrial investigation: Petreike bequest, Fors projektai, Baleto Teatras [Stakeholder file]. STAKEHOLDERS.md, STK-5.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026c). Post-death Butterfly Trust concealment and USVI v. Estate $105M settlement [Research file]. ENTITY_OWNERSHIP.md.