is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Would it surprise you to learn Microsoft booted Jeffrey Epstein from its online gaming platform? As spotted by XboxEra, the latest batch of Epstein’s emails shows that in December 2013, he was “permanently suspended due to harassment, threats, and/or abuse of other players.”
But it appears the real reason may be simpler: A second email from Microsoft to Epstein the very same day shows he was banned because he was a registered sex offender, and because Microsoft was among the companies that agreed to purge registered sex offenders from their systems.
Image: DOJ Image: DOJ
While Epstein became a registered sex offender years earlier, another email shows he may not have joined Xbox Live until October 2012. Microsoft joined New York state’s initiative to purge sex offenders from online platforms where they might bump into children back in April 2012, so it seems it didn’t ban his account for over a year.
It’s not clear if Epstein played Xbox himself, though. In July 2014, he asks his executive assistant “do we have an xbox 360 kinect?” and in 2016 this email appears to be a discussion of buying an Xbox as a surprise birthday gift for a boy. In 2019, a message reads, “Why is there a $25.24 charge on Xbox?”