Darren K Indyke

Indyke grew up in a middle-class family in Glen Cove, a small city on the north shore of Long Island. Childhood pals told The Daily Beast he was a sweet, normal guy who was actively involved with theater from a young age through high school. He graduated from Colgate College in 1986 and Cornell Law School five years later. After law school, Indyke did a four-year stint with Gold & Wachtel, a now-defunct boutique law firm, and represented several clients in copyright lawsuits. Gold & Wachtel represented Epstein at least as far back as 1988. Firm principal William Wachtel declined to discuss that but said he hired Indyke as a favor to the younger man’s father, Bernard Indyke, whom he described as a mailroom employee at a financial company that had retained Gold & Wachtel. Court records indicate Indyke’s father was in fact a manager and member of the board at Jackie Fine Arts, a Gold & Wachtel client that sold low-value art reproduction rights to the rich at high prices as a calculated tax dodge. Efforts to reach the founder of the company, Herman Finesod—once hailed as the King of Tax Shelters—were unsuccessful. The father of two worked as Epstein’s personal attorney since the 1990s, serving as an officer for the financier’s charities, handling feuds with unpaid contractors, and representing the businesses of women in Epstein’s circle. In 2012, he signed corporation paperwork for the design business of Sarah Kellen, an alleged co-conspirator of Epstein whom Palm Beach cops were ready to charge in their 2006 probe. (Kellen was a named accomplice in Epstein’s 2008 plea deal, which shielded her from prosecution.) As The Daily Beast has previously revealed, Indyke also represented the women’s empowerment business of Lana Pozhidaeva, a Russian model in Epstein’s orbit. In 2018, Indyke filed trademark paperwork and registered the website for Pozhidaeva’s business, WE Talks. Records show that weeks after Epstein’s suicide, Pozhidaeva swapped Indyke for another lawyer. Indyke’s name is also on corporation filings for the anonymous company that owned Maxwell’s East 65th Street townhouse. In 2000, Epstein’s friend Lynn Forester sold the residence to the LLC for $4.95 million, according to reports. He served as a trustee of Maxwell’s Max Foundation from 2001 to 2010, until he was replaced by Dana Burns, a woman pictured in society photos with Epstein and who also worked for Maxwell’s ocean nonprofit, The TerraMar Project. Meanwhile, Indyke was listed as secretary of The Wexner Foundation—a nonprofit founded by Epstein’s only known clients, ex-Victoria's Secret mogul Leslie Wexner and his wife Abigail—in SEC filings from 1998 to 2001. The nonprofit’s tax forms also listed Indyke as secretary through 2006. Two years later, Abigail Wexner gave Indyke power of attorney over her condominium at 15 Central Park West, property records show. In the past decade, Indyke and his wife have owned two different properties in Boca Raton, Florida—one of which they still own, having acquired it for $3.1 million without a mortgage in 2015. Another, bought in 2014 and sold four years after, sat in the exclusive enclave of Boca Grove Plantation; it required the pair to shell out at least $70,000 beyond the $460,000 purchase price for a “social equity membership in the Boca Grove Golf & Tennis Club.”