SideQuest Drew/Youtube; Reuters; U.S. Department of Justice; Alyssa Powell/BI
When billionaire Stephen Deckoff purchased a pair of Caribbean islands that once belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, he saw it as a potential paradise. In a press release, Deckoff said he planned to open a world-class destination resort befitting the territory's "natural grace and beauty."
Over four years since the purchase, no resort has been built, but the islands are still attracting visitors from around the world — unwelcome ones.
Deckoff, the CEO of asset management firm Black Diamond Capital Management, has sued nine social-media influencers, content creators, and conspiracy theorists, accusing them of trespassing on the property to capitalize on the islands' notoriety.
Epstein used one of the islands, Little St. James, to build a sprawling compound, a site where accusers say he made them feel trapped and raped them. On one end of the island is a temple-like building that has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. Epstein painted it with blue and white stripes and topped it with a golden dome.
Through his lawsuits, filed in US Virgin Islands court through a limited liability company, Deckoff is seeking damages from YouTubers who have undertaken what they describe as quests to unravel the islands' mysteries. Over the past year, influencers have taken videos of themselves renting jet skis, climbing onto shore, and unfurling banners demanding that the Trump administration release the Epstein files.
Deckoff's staff has, at times, responded to the camera-wielding interlopers with violence, law-enforcement agencies have said in court filings.
Ann Rodriquez, whom Epstein employed to manage the property — and who continued to manage it for Deckoff — was arrested on false imprisonment and assault charges in April after law enforcement officials found one content creator "hog-tied and totally naked" on a boat, according to a sworn statement filed to court. Another interloper said in a podcast interview that employees detained him and put him in what he said Rodriquez called the island's "dungeon." Deckoff's employees also destroyed two rental jet skis while they apprehended content creators, a US Virgin Islands-based rental company alleged.
REUTERS/Marco Bello
A spokesperson for Deckoff told Business Insider that the presence of "intruders" on Little St. James has been "dangerous for the people who live and work on the island."
"We are concerned when those criminally trespassing on private property and endangering our staff are given a platform for their misconduct," the spokesperson said.
In their videos, the influencers have cast themselves as truth-seeking warriors. Andrew Petersen, one of the YouTubers whom Deckoff accused of trespassing, said it was absurd that he's facing legal consequences while the Justice Department continues to take no law enforcement action against friends of Epstein who may also have abused girls or women.
"Trespassing is illegal, and we definitely trespassed," Petersen told Business Insider. "It's like, what's the bigger story here?"
Petersen and other interlopers haven't responded to the lawsuits in court. Petersen told Business Insider he and the friends and influencers he traveled with never meant to "mess up" Deckoff's property or damage his reputation — only to seek the truth about what was going on at "one of the most horrific islands in human existence, in our opinion."
"For me, that's like buying a concentration camp from the Holocaust and like, 'Yeah, we're going to turn this into a resort.' What are you talking about?" he said.
At the time Epstein purchased Little St. James in 1998, Ghislaine Maxwell was both his girlfriend and estate manager.
REUTERS/Marco Bello
Epstein tasked Maxwell with making the island habitable. It was an enormous undertaking, one of her former assistants testified in Maxwell's 2021 Manhattan criminal trial in which she was convicted of trafficking girls to Epstein for sex.
Maxwell arranged to ship not only home furnishings, but also sand and palm trees. ("He wanted more sand on the beach," the assistant testified.) Maxwell, along with Epstein's private jet pilots, took helicopter lessons so they could ferry passengers between Little St. James and nearby St. Thomas, where Epstein's planes landed at the airport.
Over the years, Epstein used the island to draw powerful friends, nicknaming it "Little St. Jeff's." One accuser, Virginia Giuffre, wrote in her memoir that then-Prince Andrew had sex with her there. (He settled a lawsuit with Giuffre without admitting wrongdoing.) Records from the Epstein files show he hosted Google co-founder Sergey Brin, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and now-Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Elon Musk emailed Epstein about visiting the island to "party," though he later said he never went there. Emails show Epstein used his connections with local politicians to cut red tape and make it easier to obtain visas for young women he wanted to fly in.
Brin, Hoffman, Lutnick, and Musk haven't been accused of wrongdoing related to Epstein. Brin hasn't publicly commented on visiting the island. Hoffman has said his visit was part of a fundraising trip for MIT. Lutnick told members of Congress he and his family had lunch on Little St. James while sailing by on a vacation.
After Epstein killed himself in 2019, while in jail awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, the executors of his estate hired Randall Bell to evaluate Little St. James and Great St. James, the neighboring island Epstein purchased in 2016. Bell specializes in appraising real estate locations where atrocities have occurred, such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Sandy Hook school shooting.
THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT / Getty Images
Epstein's estate put the two islands on the market in 2022 for $125 million. Deckoff, a resident of the US Virgin Islands, bought them about a year later for $60 million. The estate used some of the funds to pay creditors, including victims and their attorneys who brought lawsuits against the estate. Deckoff and Epstein never met, and the two had no preexisting relationship, a spokesperson for Deckoff told Business Insider.
Since Deckoff bought the islands in 2023, his plans to build a resort seem to have gone nowhere. The only construction permit Deckoff has requested is for a warehouse, a spokesperson for the US Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources told Business Insider. One visible change is that the temple-like building — where Epstein played music, according to a piano tuner — was repainted and lost its distinctive blue stripes.
On August 17, 2025, Petersen and five other influencers and friends climbed into kayaks and pushed off from St. Thomas, headed to Little St. James.
A Category 5 hurricane was pummeling the US Virgin Islands. The high waves and wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour had foiled their previous plan to use air mattresses as rafts with pool noodles tied around their waists in case they capsized. Petersen and his crew believed the worst of Hurricane Erin was over and decided to make another attempt, this time with kayaks and life vests.
Courtesy of SideQuest Drew
Petersen told Business Insider he was dead-set on landing on Little St. James because he wanted to seek the truth about the island once owned by a famous pedophile who kept company with royalty, heads of state, and billionaires. Conspiracy theories about underground tunnels and child sacrifices proliferated online. Deckoff's announcement that he wanted to build a resort didn't make sense to him. The Trump administration, at the time, was refusing to release the Epstein files. The Justice Department has since released millions of Epstein-related records.
"The main thing we were really kind of after is, let's just make noise with this," Petersen said. "Let's put up this 'Release the Files' flag on the island since the government's trying to hold back all the Epstein files and they're still holding it back to this day."
Petersen said that the group anticipated potential legal consequences, including possibly jail time for misdemeanor trespassing. He viewed it as necessary for his work as a self-described independent journalist.
"If we end up going to jail for 30 days, that would be pretty insane," Petersen said. "But we just thought this is something that we don't think anyone else would want to do."
They landed on the island's beach, walked over to Epstein's so-called "temple," then made their way to the main house.
Petersen and his group then realized they made a "huge miscalculation," he told Business Insider. The storm was getting worse again. They decided to stay the night.
Videos the group posted to YouTube and Patreon show them poking through rooms, staring aghast at a statue of a suffering woman, and lamenting the lack of snacks in the kitchen cabinets.
Petersen said he found no underground tunnel system on Little St. James.
"We checked out all these little structures that people claimed were the entrance, and they definitely were not that," he told Business Insider. "So our conclusion on that end is: I don't think there's any crazy underground tunnels."
When morning came, they took videos of themselves tying a "Release the Files" banner to a palm tree outside the temple. As they paddled away from the island, members of the island's security team yelled at them from the shore.
Other influencers followed. In February, YouTuber Ashton Hall, who goes by "Ash Alk," rented a jet ski and swam ashore with a camera.
"This is exactly how I managed to sneak onto Epstein's island, step by step," Hall said in a video he later posted to YouTube.
Courtesy of SideQuest Drew
On Little St. James, Hall staged what he called a "protest" to ask "whoever to unredact the files." Much of the video was spent complaining that he didn't have the proper footwear for the rocky beach. He urged Deckoff not to sue him.
"I'm not anyone special or important," Hall said in the video. "I'm just a YouTuber, bro. Please don't sue me. I'm not that important."
This year, Little St. James's caretakers began taking more aggressive tactics against unwelcome visitors.
On March 1, two YouTuber brothers, Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho, approached the island on rented jet skis. Marcel Gil Sancho has nearly a million subscribers to his YouTube channel, which has titles like "I spent 24 hours with the MOST DANGEROUS TRIBE in AFRICA" and "2 HEADS and 1 BODY! How do they live? Who's in charge?"
The brothers flew a drone over the island to take footage for a documentary, Eloi Gil Sancho later told law enforcement officials. It landed on the island's beach, and Marcel swam ashore to retrieve it, then returned to his jet ski, Eloi Gil Sancho told US Virgin Islands police, according to a sworn statement filed to court.
According to Eloi Gil Sancho's account, they were then intercepted by a boat piloted by Rodriquez, the island's caretaker. She pulled out what looked like a Glock handgun, pointed it at Marcel, and ordered him to swim to her boat, according to Eloi.
"E. Gil Sancho stated that Ann Rodriquez was operating the boat and repeatedly yelled 'I will kill you' at them," a US Virgin Islands detective wrote in a sworn statement.
A coast guard member who responded to the scene found Eloi "hog-tied and totally naked" in the back of the boat, according to the sworn statement. Marcel was taken back to one of the islands, Eloi told him.
The weapon turned out to be a BB gun "designed to resemble a Glock 19-style handgun," according to another sworn statement. Rodriquez said she threw the Gils' memory cards with the drone footage into the ocean, according to the affidavit.
In May, the US Virgin Islands Attorney General's office brought false imprisonment, assault, and destruction of property charges against Rodriquez. She hasn't entered a plea. Reached by phone, Rodriquez declined to comment.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
"Hell no, have a good day," she told Business Insider.
On April 25 — weeks after the Sancho brothers' expedition to the island — a similar scene played out with two other men, Benjamin Owen and Ryan Dalton.
Dalton is the founder of Closed Horizon, a sort of GoFundMe for solving conspiracy theories. Its website says 160 users have contributed $54,112.90 toward a $100,000 goal for an investigation to prove that Epstein is still alive. He told Business Insider he took the trip to bring attention to the campaign.
"It's ground zero for the Epstein Criminal Network, and it's iconic," Dalton said. "And it's a place where we felt that it'd be really powerful to announce the reward program for proof of life."
The two rented a boat, and Owen and Dalton swam ashore. Owen planned to plant a flag bearing the logo of his organization, We Fight Monsters, which assists victims of human trafficking and opioid addiction, he said in a June podcast interview.
When they saw the temple-like building on the island, they "got a little excited" and "kind of forgot that you're not allowed to go beyond the beach," Owen said in the interview.
A group approached on all-terrain vehicles. Owen and Dalton ran back to the water to swim to their boat, Dalton told Business Insider. Dalton made it, but when he turned around in the water to look, Owen was surrounded, Dalton said.
One of the people on the island, Emery Poleon, called her mother, Rodriquez, Owen said on the podcast.
"Mom tells her to duct tape me and put me in the dungeon," Owen said. "And I'm thinking in my head, 'What an awful choice of words for somebody who works for a billionaire trying to rebrand this island from what it used to be. Why would you call it the dungeon? That is a strange thing to say."
Owen said that his wrists were zip-tied together. Law enforcement officials found him "restrained with duct tape," a police detective said in a sworn statement. Poleon later told a law enforcement officer that she had conducted a "citizen's arrest."
US Virgin Islands prosecutors brought a trespassing charge against Owen and an assault charge against Poleon's boyfriend, Paul J. Arnold III, who prosecutors allege struck Owen. Arnold hasn't entered a plea. His attorney, David Cattie, declined to comment. Poleon declined to comment.
Deckoff's holding company, LSJVI, LLC, has filed lawsuits against Owen and Dalton, Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho, Hall, and Petersen and the passel of influencers he traveled with.
Courtesy of SideQuest Drew
Deckoff's lawsuits seek to disgorge the influencers and content creators of any money they made from their videos. Petersen told Business Insider his group had already donated $30,000 of revenue from the videos to Polaris, an organization that fights human trafficking. Hall and Eloi and Marcel Gil Sancho haven't publicly responded to the lawsuits and didn't respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.
The suit against Owen and Dalton, filed in May, accused them of trespassing and called them delusional fame-seekers.
"Defendants believe that they are entitled to trespass and burglarize property in their search for evidence that a man who died seven (7) years ago is alive and (maybe) living on Little St. James," the lawsuit says.
The LLC is represented by Cattie, the attorney who represents Rodriquez and Arnold in their criminal cases. Cattie referred questions about the lawsuits to a spokesperson for Deckoff.
Deckoff "will continue to pursue every legal remedy, particularly for people who film themselves trespassing and make money off subsequent videos," his spokesperson said.
THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/ Getty Images
The office of US Virgin Islands Attorney General Gordon Rhea declined to comment on the prosecutions.
Owen told CBS News he found it "scary" that there's "a billionaire coming after me." He declined to comment for this story.
"My attorney got pretty upset with me for talking to media while my criminal case is still pending," Owen told Business Insider.
Owen's attorney declined to comment. Dalton declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Dalton said Little St. James will remain "a lightning rod for truth-seekers."
"Our federal government has abdicated their duty to show the American people what happened there and prosecute the people involved," he said. "And so in absence of that, I think that there are a lot of people who are willing to go there and try to understand it."
from All Content from Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-island-influencer-stephen-deckoff-sidequest-drew-ash-alk-2026-8
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