TLDR
The Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA — a deal between prosecutors and a defendant in which the government agrees not to file federal charges in exchange for certain conditions) signed September 24, 2007 by the federal prosecutor's office in Southern Florida (SDFL — the Southern District of Florida) under U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta names four co-conspirators — Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross, and Nadia Marcinkova — and granted them immunity from federal prosecution. That immunity held for nearly twelve years until Epstein's arrest by the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan (SDNY — the Southern District of New York) on July 6, 2019.
The Document
Request No. 4 in the House Oversight estate records is a nine-page document that changed the trajectory of the Epstein case for over a decade (House Oversight Committee, 2026). The Non-Prosecution Agreement was negotiated between the Southern District of Florida and Epstein's defense team, resulting in Epstein pleading guilty to two state prostitution charges rather than facing federal sex trafficking prosecution.
The sentence: 18 months in the Palm Beach County Stockade. The reality: 13 months served, with work release six days per week that allowed Epstein to leave the facility for up to 12 hours daily (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). The NPA was made public via civil suit unsealing in 2009, but by then its terms had been in effect for two years.
Four Named Co-Conspirators
The NPA's most consequential provision was its extension of immunity to four named co-conspirators:
Sarah Kellen — Identified in court proceedings and the NYDFS consent order as playing a direct role in the trafficking operation. CO-CONSPIRATORS 1 and 2 (as designated in later regulatory documents) invoked the Fifth Amendment in prior proceedings (NYDFS, 2020, ¶14).
Lesley Groff — Epstein's executive assistant and scheduling gatekeeper. Despite her designation as an NPA co-conspirator, Groff continued serving in her role through at least 2017, as documented in Data Set 11 email samples where she coordinated travel, catering, and visitor appointments (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026b).
Adriana Ross — Widely reported as CO-CONSPIRATOR-3 in the NYDFS consent order (which uses anonymized designations), described as having "allegedly recruited underage victims" (NYDFS, 2020, ¶14). The NPA's immunity provision protected her from federal prosecution for the activities described in the Palm Beach investigation.
Nadia Marcinkova — Named alongside the other three co-conspirators. Text-recognition records in the entity database show eight name variants for Marcinkova, reflecting the OCR (optical character recognition) fragmentation that affects the entire corpus (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026c).
The Twelve-Year Shadow
The NPA was signed on September 24, 2007 (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026a). Epstein was arrested by the Manhattan federal prosecutor's office on July 6, 2019. The gap between these dates — 11 years and 9 months — represents the period during which the named co-conspirators operated under federal immunity. During this time, Epstein maintained his corporate network, continued financial operations through Deutsche Bank (2013-2018) and TD Bank (2015-2019), and accumulated the $47.3 million in suspicious activity documented in the TD Bank SAR (TD Bank, 2019).
The Manhattan prosecution was filed in a different federal district, which allowed it to circumvent the Southern Florida agreement. But the NPA's chilling effect extended beyond its literal terms. The existence of a federal non-prosecution agreement signaled to other agencies that the matter had been resolved, reducing the likelihood of independent investigations during the intervening years.
Acosta's Role
U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta negotiated the NPA. He would later serve as Secretary of Labor under President Trump from 2017 to 2019, resigning on July 19, 2019 — thirteen days after Epstein's Manhattan arrest brought renewed scrutiny to the 2007 agreement. The connection between the NPA negotiator and a cabinet-level appointment became one of the political threads that eventually led to the bipartisan passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026d).
The Victims' Rights Challenge
The NPA was negotiated without notifying Epstein's victims, in violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA) (18 U.S.C. § 3771). This violation became the basis for In re Courtney Wild, a federal case that addressed whether victims could access the terms of plea deals made on their behalf. The court ultimately ruled in the victims' favor, but the ruling came more than a decade after the NPA was signed (NYDFS, 2020, ¶33).
The nine-page document sitting in the House Oversight estate records is the instrument that created the twelve-year gap. It is the reason the co-conspirators were not prosecuted. It is the reason Epstein operated freely from 2007 to 2019. And it is the reason Congress ultimately passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act (Pub. L. No. 119-38, 2025) with a 427-1 vote — because the NPA represented a failure of prosecutorial discretion so severe that it required legislative correction.
Groff: Co-Conspirator to Scheduler
Perhaps the most striking detail is Lesley Groff's continued employment. Named as a co-conspirator in a document that acknowledged her role in criminal conduct, Groff continued working as Epstein's executive assistant for at least another decade. The Data Set 11 emails from 2017 show her coordinating routine scheduling — "cookies or small cakes. tea" for a noon appointment — as though the NPA designation had never occurred (PAPER TRAIL Project, 2026b).
The NPA did not merely protect the co-conspirators from prosecution. It allowed the operational network to continue functioning with the same personnel, performing the same roles, in the same properties, funded by the same financial infrastructure.
References
Crime Victims' Rights Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3771.
Epstein Files Transparency Act, Pub. L. No. 119-38 (2025).
House Oversight Committee. (2026). Epstein estate records releases (Request No. 4: Non-Prosecution Agreement, 9 pages). U.S. House of Representatives.
New York Department of Financial Services. (2020, July 6). Consent order: Deutsche Bank AG (Case Reference 1082293). NYDFS. Paragraphs 10-14, 33.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026a). NPA signing date and Palm Beach timeline [Corroboration report, Section 4]. CORROBORATION_REPORT.md.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026b). Lesley Groff 2017 email samples [Observation]. OBSERVATIONS.md, OBS-7.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026c). Nadia Marcinkova OCR variants [Database]. db=epstein_files, entities table.
PAPER TRAIL Project. (2026d). Transparency Act analysis [Research file]. transparency_act.md.
TD Bank. (2019, October 1). Suspicious Activity Report (BSA-31000155070501). Filed with Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Document EFTA01656524.pdf.