New documents show Microsoft booted Jeffrey Epstein from Xbox Live, as part of a sweeping ban against registered sex offenders.
After millions of new files were released last week, relating to paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, some unexpected ties to Xbox have been discovered.
Epstein, who died in a New York prison in 2019, was ‘permanently suspended’ from Xbox Live ‘due to harassment, threats, and/or abuse of other players’ in December 2013, according to an email from Microsoft.
While this makes it sound like Epstein was an active Xbox player at that time, a separate email from the same day (December 19, 2013) reveals this suspension was tied to a wider ban against registered sex offenders on the platform.
‘This message is to notify you that Xbox Live has permanently suspended the Xbox Live account associated with this email address,’ the second email reads. ‘This action is based on the New York Attorney General’s partnership with Microsoft and other online gaming companies to remove New York registered sex offenders from online gaming services to minimise the risk to others, particularly children.
‘As a result, any Xbox Live account associated with this email address will not be able to connect to Xbox Live.’
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As reported by The New York Times in 2012, Xbox was one of several companies who agreed to close the accounts of more than 3,500 registered sex offenders in New York, to prohibit them from speaking with children through online games.
Others who took part in the agreement were Sony, EA, Warner Bros., Disney, Blizzard, and Apple.
Epstein became a registered sex offender in 2008, after pleading guilty to solicitation of prostitution and procuring a child for prostitution. For his crimes, he was given an 18-month prison sentence, as part of a controversial plea deal, but was released after only 13 months.
It’s unclear if Epstein personally played Xbox, but another email suggests he didn’t join Xbox Live (now known as Xbox Network) until October 2012. The agreement between New York State and Microsoft, to purge sex offender accounts, was announced in April 2012, so based on these emails, it took them over a year to ban Epstein’s account.
There are other emails relating to Epstein’s Xbox activity. In July 2014, Epstein asked his executive assistant Lesley Groff, ‘Do we have an Xbox 360 Kinect?’, while another email dated December 24, 2016, appears to show an exchange about buying an Xbox One S console for someone’s birthday.
The story’s circulation prompted a response from former Xbox Live senior director Larry Hryb, also known as Major Nelson. ‘Our team was thorough, I’ll give them that,’ he wrote on Bluesky.
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