Google co-founder Larry Page.
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The U.S. Virgin Islands government has attempted to serve a subpoena without success Google Co-founder Larry Page for documents for his civil suit against JPMorgan Chase in connection with sex trafficking by the bank’s longtime client Jeffrey Epstein, a court filing revealed on Thursday.
The USVI formally asked Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jed Rakoff to authorize the government to serve Page this subpoena by so-called alternative means, as their efforts to get a process server to physically deliver it to him have so far failed.
Alternative service may include posting the legal documents, posting them on a public news site, or emailing them.
“Larry Page — the co-founder and co-owner of Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google LLC) — is a high net worth individual who may have referred or attempted to refer Epstein as a client to JPMorgan,” attorneys for the USVI said in their court filing .
The subpoena to Page requests “all documents” from 2002 related to communications between Page and JPMorgan regarding Epstein, as well as all documents between Page and Epstein related to the bank.
The USVI also requests from Page “any documents reflecting or pertaining to Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for commercial sex.”
CNBC reached out to Page for comment.
The U.S. territory previously issued subpoenas for Page’s Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as well as former Disney exec Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels chief executive Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor. The subpoenas also requested documents and other information about Epstein and JPMorgan.
Page and Brin are Alphabet’s largest single shareholders.
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Elsewhere in Thursday’s filing, the Virgin Islands said its investigation found that JPMorgan “benefited financially” from deposits made by Epstein and companies controlled by him and “from the business opportunities presented to Epstein and his co-conspirators referred to JPMorgan in exchange for his well-known facilitation of, and implicit interest in, Epstein’s sex trafficking company.”
The filing states that the USVI issued Page’s subpoena on April 11 and “made good faith attempts to obtain an address for Larry Page, including hiring an investigative firm to search public databases for possible addresses.”
“Our process server attempted to serve the addresses identified by our investigative firm, but determined that the addresses were not valid for Mr. Page,” the filing reads.
Page was CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet from 2015 to 2019, having previously served as Google’s chief executive officer. He remains a director of Alphabet.
The US Virgin Islands and a woman who says she was sexually abused by Epstein are separately suing JPMorgan, alleging the bank was involved in his sex trade with multiple women.
Epstein had deposited millions of dollars with JPMorgan for years and used money from those accounts to facilitate women’s travel to his residence on a private island in US territory and elsewhere.
JPMorgan, whose CEO Jamie Dimon is set to be fired in the case at the end of May, has denied wrongdoing.
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was arrested on federal child trafficking charges. He previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl in Florida.
JPMorgan only severed ties with Epstein in 2013.
Epstein had been a friend of many rich and famous people over the years, including former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
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