While at the mansion of billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein sometime in the early 2000s, celebrity illusionist David Copperfield once asked one of the young women there if she was aware of Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme. That’s according to Johanna Sjoberg, the young woman in question who was one of Epstein’s victims and later testified against him in a 2016 deposition.
The story came to light Wednesday as part of several hundred pages of court documents related to Epstein, who died of an apparent suicide in 2019 while in a New York federal detention center awaiting trial for sex trafficking.
The documents include the unredacted names of several people within his orbit. They do not reveal any new details about Epstein’s operations, and the named affiliates were already known. More documents are expected to be released in the coming days.
Sjoberg’s comments about Cooperfield, who to be clear has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection to Epstein, came from a 2016 deposition given to the attorney representing another Epstein victim. She worked for Epstein from 2001-2006, but did not provide a specific date on which she met Copperfield. It’s known that prior to Epstein’s 2018 conviction on sex trafficking charges in Florida, Copperfield frequently visited his Palm Beach mansion.
Sjoberg said she and Epstein once had dinner with Copperfield, who performed magic tricks and appeared to be friends with Epstein. But, she alleged, he appeared to know about the nefarious activities being conducted elsewhere on Epstein’s watch.
“He questioned me if I was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls,” she said of Copperfield, according to the documents. It’s unclear from the deposition what Copperfield may have specifically meant by the question.
The murky circumstances of Epstein’s death continue to fuel speculation and numerous conspiracy theories. He was arrested in July 2019 and held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, one of the most secure federal detention facilities in America.
Nevertheless, he was found dead in his cell, in what was officially ruled a suicide by hanging, on Aug. 10, 2019. Notably, according to several reports at the time, the facility saw only one other suicide and three unsuccessful attempted suicides in the 40 years prior.
In 2023, a Department of Justice investigation identified “numerous and serious failures” by staff. Among these, Epstein wasn’t given a cellmate, despite recommendations otherwise, and he was allowed to make a phone call unmonitored just hours before his death. Staff also failed to comply with an order to check on Epstein’s cell every 30 minutes, and some of them even falsified records about such checks.
