The video clip had been circulating on the internet for five years, and its creator admitted that it was created using 3D graphics
A phony video that claims to show Jeffrey Epstein trying to commit suicide in his prison cell has been included in the latest set of records regarding the convicted sex offender released by the US Department of Justice.
Last week, the DOJ uploaded thousands of documents to the internet under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a law signed by US President Donald Trump in November, which requires the agency to publish data related to federal criminal investigations into the disgraced financier and his long – time associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
Among the recordings, there was a 12 – second clip that showed a gray – haired man in an orange prison jumpsuit sitting on the floor of a prison cell and seemingly attempting to strangle himself.
The timestamp in the video indicated that it was made at 4:29 am on August 10, 2019. At 6:30 am on the same day, a prison guard found Epstein dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.
The clip was widely shared on social media on Monday, but it turned out to be a fake that had been circulating online for at least five years.
Several media outlets traced it back to its upload on YouTube in October 2020. In the caption, the creator of the clip admitted that it was made using 3D graphics and said he was “not that good at this kind of thing.”
The documents published by the DOJ also contained an email with the link to the clip sent by a man from Florida to federal investigators in March 2021, asking whether it was genuine or not.
The US Department of Justice has since removed the fake video from its website.
The Bureau of Prisons stated in its 2023 report that there is no video recording from inside Epstein’s cell on the day of his death because of a technical malfunction.
The convicted sex offender seemingly hanged himself with his bedsheets, but skeptics still maintain that he was killed to cover up for the powerful people allegedly involved in the case.