Jeffrey Epstein Fixer's Office Burglarized Hours Before Document Dump (Exclusive)

Sitrick & Company, the global crisis public relations firm who has a client list of the rich and powerful — including Jeffrey Epstein — was burglarized over the New Year's holiday by thieves who stole company computers just hours before a trove of long-sealed court documents related to the admitted pedophile were released.

Michael Sitrick said his penthouse offices at 11999 San Vicente Boulevard, along with other occupants of the four-story building in Brentwood that bears his company's name Sitrick & Co., was broken into by unknown thieves just as explosive new documents about Epstein's proclivities with underage girls were made public. 

"It didn't cross my mind," Sitrick told Los Angeles magazine over the phone Thursday when asked if he was concerned about the timing of the burglary, just hours before a years-long records fight ended when a judge ordered the release of roughly 900 pages of documents from the 2015 federal civil case Giuffre v. Maxwell. 

The records offer new insight into the allegations against Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, which includes previously undisclosed deposition transcripts, Palm Beach Police search warrant records, and the names of potential witnesses to their crimes. The new revelations were part of a  defamation suit filed by lawyers for Virginia Giuffre, who was underage when she says she was trafficked to powerful men, including Prince Andrew, by Maxwell. 

"It has to be a coincidence," Sitrick said of the theft, adding that there were no Epstein records in his office, or any compromising information about any of his clients among the items stolen. 

He added that he does not believe the crooks targeted his firm specifically. 

"There were several offices in the building, in addition to ours, which were broken into and robbed. All of our computers are all password and dual factor protected and encrypted. It's state of the art," he said. "No one is getting into them." 

The LAPD confirmed that officers responded to a burglary report on the 11000 block of San Vicente Boulevard on Jan. 2, which is when Sitrick employees returned to work. No other details about the break-in were made available.

Court records indicate Sitrick was engaged to represent Jeffrey Epstein by Miami lawyer Roy Black in 2005, just as Palm Beach Police initiated a child sex crimes investigation, and three years before the financier pleaded guilty to a charge of procuring sex from a 14-year-old minor in a secret plea deal ironed out by prosecutors, one that came despite allegations from dozens of young women who said they were assaulted by the billionaire at his West Palm Beach home. 

Florida federal prosecutors showed "poor judgement," a 2020 Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility Report report says, by making an NPA - or non prosecution agreement - a sweetheart deal that allowed Epstein to serve 13 months in a jail work-release program. He was a registered sex offender. 

But Sitrick told Los Angeles he began working with then convicted pedophile in 2011 after the New York Post ran a story about Epstein and Prince Andrew that started this way: "Meet Manhattan’s raunchy new odd couple — the prince and the pervert." The expose on the disgraced billionaire's relationship with Prince Andrew ran with a photograph of the men on a walk-and-talk through Central Park that came after Epstein admitted to his criminal abuse of a minor. 

Unsurprisingly, Prince Andrew is among the names of potential witnesses in the lawsuit. Giuffre produced a photo of her with Prince Andrew as evidence, and a Palm Beach Police report details a search warrant executed at Epstein's home at 358 El Brillo Way, describes a "lot of naked girls in photographs throughout the house," and notes that Epstein's attorney Alan Dershowitz had tried to malign at least one of the accusers cooperating with detectives. 

It's unclear if Sitrick played any crisis management role during the time of that police investigation, and the public relations wizard says that he was never in the same room with Epstein. Court records reveal a contract between Sitrick and Jeffrey Epstein dated November 4, 2005 with an agreed upon "non-refundable retainer of $30,000 as a minimum annual fee," plus "an hourly rate range of $165 to $650," depending on the person performing the services. There is also a "success fee" mentioned in the contract, customarily requested by Sitrick & Company "if we believe we have performed services for a client which result in significant benefits to the client beyond those we believe a normal public relations firm could achieve.”

It remains unclear how much Epstein was billed for Sitrick's services, or what his company did from the time his firm was engaged until Epstein, according to a lawsuit, stopped paying his bills which led to the lawsuit. 

"I never met Jeffrey Epstein," Sitrick said, adding that his business dealings with the convicted felon were conducted by phone with lawyers and the bulk of his work dealt with the New York Post story about Prince Andrew. "If Epstein documents still existed [at his firm] they wouldn't be on anything that was taken." 

Epstein, who authorities say took his own life in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges and conspiracy charges, was hardly Sitrick's only controversial client. 

His crisis management firm most recently made headlines when it repped Harvey Weinstein as allegations stacked up against the disgraced Hollywood mogul in the fall of 2017. Sitrick dumped Weinstein as a client in April 2018, years before an L.A. judge sentenced him to 16 years in prison last February. The 71-year-old movie producer is already serving a 23-year-sentence after a conviction on rape charges in New York. 

But it's not just the sexual deviants who seek out Sitrick when they are embroiled in a high-profile scandal. Los Angeles Times owner biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong is also represented by Sitrick. He called upon the firm when he was embroiled in two 2017 scandals. One involved a lawsuit filed by Cher that claimed he manipulated stock prices for a cancer drug. The second came when a public watchdog accused him of using an unusual donation to bolster his business at the University of Utah. 

Sitrick is also the go-to flack when Hollywood stars are under fire. Paris Hilton. Halle Berry. Christian Slater. Anybody who is anybody turns to Sitrick when they are in trouble. He even wrote a book called The Fixer: Secrets for Saving Your Reputation in the Age of Viral Media. Los Angeles described his firm this way in 2006:

The combination of elegance and pugnaciousness has attracted a vast assortment of clients, ranging from the embattled (the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles) to the weird (the Kabbalah Center)...to the arrogant (the Getty Center) to the overexposed (rock and roller Tommy Lee) to the shady (Carl Freer, the gun-wielding Swedish national whose business partner, Bo Stefan Eriksson, was jailed in April after totaling a $1 million Ferrari Enzo in Malibu).

It was a decidedly different time when Sitrick repped Cheers star Kelsey Grammer, who was accused of raping his family's babysitter in 1993. A grand jury would refuse to indict him, which a Somerset County prosecutor in New Jersey blamed on the woman's delay in reporting the crime. 

Politicians and media titans, including Rush Limbaugh after he was popped on drug charges, have also turned to Sitrick for counsel. He has kept his clients' secrets for 35 years and maintains that the burglars would have no way to access them with the stolen items. 

The lawsuit that led to this week's two document dumps was settled in 2017. After Epstein's death, Maxwell went on the run until she was tracked to a hideout in New Hampshire by the FBI and charged with a six-count indictment on federal charges related to “the sexual exploitation and abuse of multiple minor girls by Jeffrey Epstein." She was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving her sentence at a Florida federal prison. 

By then Sitrick's relationship with Epstein had ended with his company filing a lawsuit demanding payment of more than $71,000 in unpaid bills. "He paid the bill," Sitrick said this week. But that was the end of their business dealings.  

As far as suspects who could have broken into his penthouse office, Sitrick says he is perplexed as there was no sign of forced entry and no employee key card registered entry to the building. Sitrick said his IT staff met with the LAPD. 

"It's very strange," he said. "How did they get into the building?"

The LAPD declined to comment on the case.