Latest / The Epstein Chronicles / Inside The OIG Interview: The Testimony Of The Electrical Engineer From MCC (Part 1) (4/23/26)

Transcript

Inside The OIG Interview: The Testimony Of The Electrical Engineer From MCC (Part 1) (4/23/26) · The Epstein Chronicles

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to hear from
• 0:06
  another employee from MCC who was interviewed by the OIG
• 0:10
  inspectors about the circumstances leading up to and the death
• 0:15
  of Jeffrey Epstein. And this time we're going to be
• 0:18
  hearing from the electronics technician. And like usual, I'll say question,
• 0:23
  and that's going to be the investigator asking the questions.
• 0:26
  And when I say answer, that means that the technician
• 0:29
  is responding. Question. What's the highest level of your education?
• 0:34
  Answer some college? Question? What college? Answer? Community college? Like
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  first year question? Do you know the name of the college? Redacted? Question? Okay,
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  is that in New York City? Answer? Yes? Question and
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  was there a specific major answer electrical engineer question okay,
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  What did you do prior to working for the BOP? Answer?
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  I worked at TSA. I was a Transportation security officer.
• 1:00
  Question okay, and do you have any military service? Answer yes.
• 1:06
  Question how long have you served with the Federal Bureau
• 1:09
  of Prisons Answer since March twenty fourth, twenty thirteen to
• 1:14
  the present. Question and you were working at TSA directly
• 1:18
  before this? Answer yes. Question all right, what was your
• 1:23
  entry on duty date? Answer to here is March twenty fourth,
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  twenty thirteen, I believe. Question when did you graduate from
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  BOP training? Answer? I don't know. That was probably, I
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  don't know, probably the following March, so maybe March of
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  twenty fourteen. Question okay, and were you with the MCC
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  the whole time? Answer No. I started off in Brooklyn
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  as a correctional officer from twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen,
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  and in twenty fifteen to about twenty seventeen, I went
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  to Terry Hate and that's when I became an electronics technician.
• 2:00
  Question where did you go? Kerry Hote, Indiana a federal complex,
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  another prison, and that's where I became an electronics technician.
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  And I stayed there for about a year and a half.
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  Then I moved back to New York City. Question did
• 2:15
  you come back to the MCC? Answer MCC new York
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  as an electronics technician. Question what year did you come
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  back to the MCC? Answer? I believe four or five
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  years ago, so twenty sixteen, around that time twenty seventeen,
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  I'm not too sure of the dates. Question and you've
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  been here at the MCC since then. Answer, yeah, I've
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  been here since then. Question and what was your what's
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  your current position? Answer electronics technician? Question okay, and what
• 2:46
  shift were you on normally? What's your normal shift? Answer?
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  My normal day is six to two question six to
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  two answer day watch question just before we go on?
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  As an electronics technician, what did you actually become that?
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  Answer on twenty fifteen in March of twenty fifteen. Question
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  and does that involve like specialized training? Answer? Yeah, what
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  the Bureau gives you and my background because I did.
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  Before I started with the Bureau, I had about fifteen
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  years in electronics with a military and government contractor and
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  in the private sector. I did electronics for about fifteen
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  years before. Question okay, so what training did you receive
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  specifically in that field? Answer in the bureau? Question just overall,
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  since you said you only did you did college, I
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  mean it doesn't have to be specifically, I mean just
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  like in general. Answer, well, I could troubleshoot certain cores
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  at component level, like a starter use hand tools. Questions
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  So are you talking about like on the job experience? Answer? Yeah,
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  everything's pretty much on the job. And then in the
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  redacted I went for training for about a year in electronics.
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  Question oh so one electronic one year with or adacted?
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  And then what about with the BOP? Did they provide training? Answer?
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  It's pretty much on the job. I went to one
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  telephone school and that was about it. And a fire
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  alarm training question okay answer, but everything's pretty much on
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  the job. Question thank you? On August ninth, twenty nineteen,
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  were you working? Answer? Yeah, August ninth. That's the Friday
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  or the Saturday? Question Friday? Answer? Yeah. Question and what
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  was your position on that day? Answer? Electronics technician? Question?
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  What schedule were you on? Answer? I believe six to
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  two question six to two morning watch? Answer six am
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  to two pm. That's day watch or yeah, day watch?
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  Question okay, and what is your position entail? What are
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  your daily duties? Answer? I just well, make sure anything
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  in the building so far as communications work. So the
• 5:00
  first thing you do is check the phone, radio, telephones, radios,
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  I said, make sure the cameras are recording if they're working,
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  and what else anything communication wise. If anybody's having a problem,
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  they usually get to me, even something as simple as
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  a voicemail. They'll say, hey, my machine isn't working, and
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  I go take a look at it and where somebody's
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  computer's not working. So question and since you mentioned also
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  daily when you come on the job at six you
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  check to see if the phone, cameras, everything is working. Answer,
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  I don't have to check. There's not set standard or like, okay,
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  you should come in and check it. You just like
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  kind of look to see what's going on. You kind
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  of know what hasn't been working and what's been working.
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  You kind of make a checklist for yourself. There's no
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  set standard of what you should do at that time.
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  Now there is more stuff that you do day to day,
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  where before there was really no standard of Okay, you
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  come in, you start and this is the first thing
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  you've got to go in do and know there was
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  never anything written down as far as what should be
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  done during your shift. Question when did that change? Answer
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  after Epstein pretty much. Question So that day when you
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  came in, do you recall I know it's been two years,
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  do you recall doing a checklist, like trying to see
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  if everything was working? Answer? I usually, because I don't
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  get a radio in the morning, I usually the first
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  thing I do is I call for the elevator, so
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  I know if the phones were working, and then I
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  go downstairs, turn on the radio, listen to radio traffic,
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  so I know the radios are working, and as far
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  as the cameras go, I have that time. I had,
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  like the old system that I had a screen at
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  my desk to make sure because it went to analog matrix.
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  It's going to sound a little confusing when I say
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  analog matrix and digital matrix, because the old system we
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  had was a mixture of both and kind of like
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  the new system too. It takes the old analog cameras
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  because we had a lot of old analog cameras. It
• 7:00
  takes all of that and then it transfers it to
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  make it digital so you can start recording and that's
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  how we'll get a video and look back for video.
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  But everything was analog, so I would have the analog
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  system in my office and I would pretty much look
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  to see if that's working. If that's working, I know,
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  I was pretty much good. Question now the analog if
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  before it was converted over to digital, how would the
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  analog be recorded? Answer the analog, I wasn't here, It's
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  not really well, it's converted. Well, they use the encoder
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  to take the analog signal and make it a digital
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  signal and put it on a recorder. Question okay, and
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  what was it recorded on? Answer the old hard drives.
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  It was two of them, two hard drives. Question was
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  it on a server? Answer? It was pretty much like
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  a server. Yeah, it was two computers, pretty much. Question okay.
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  And once it was recorded, do you remember checking the
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  cameras that day seeing if it was working? Answer? I
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  checked them. Later in the day, I went up to
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  the video room because we were having The thing about
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  this whole process was when I came here, the first
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  thing I saw in the video room, and the biggest
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  thing was all the equipment in that room was out
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  of date. It was old. I came from another institution,
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  like I said before, where everything kind of wasn't modern,
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  but it was more up to date than this. And so,
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  like the camera system I had was maybe five to
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  ten years old, and when I came here, this one
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  was over ten years old. And it was on three
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  hundred and sixty five a day, like twenty four hours
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  for like the last twelve years. The system was always on.
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  And something as simple as shutting down the time and
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  change because you got to get a recording time right,
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  when the seasons changed. You would have to wait like
• 8:46
  a whole day to shut down a recorder. It takes
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  a whole day for it to come back after shutting
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  it down. And where I came from, that was not
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  the standard, Like it should not be like an hour,
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  maybe like thirty minutes, maybe even ten minutes. If it's
• 9:00
  a newer system, you shouldn't even have that much downtime
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  as far as the recording. So one of the first
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  things I did when I came here was I addressed
• 9:09
  that the recorders needed to be upgraded. Question and who
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  do you address that with? Answer? My facility manager. I
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  talked upper management. But like during this whole time, I
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  actually started the camera project and that's why I was
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  doing overtime around this time, and we had people come
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  from other institutions. There was a camera project to upgrade
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  the cameras. Everybody's fear was the actual cameras, not recording
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  software of the cameras. But I started over and over again.
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  And the problem you're going to have is the recorders.
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  And we even had the newer recorders. They were in
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  the warehouse, we have them stockpiled, they were ordered, but
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  we were on the bottom of the list as far
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  as install, So even though we had the new equipment,
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  we weren't a priority to get anything installed, so we
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  had to wait until something happened. Question and you said
• 10:00
  there was You mentioned that your facility of manager. Who
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  was at answer when I first got here it was
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  redacted and redacted was facility manager. I think we were
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  in between facility managers when this happened. We didn't really
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  have anybody. Question, so there was no one during August
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  ninth and tenth, there was nobody. Answer. I'm not too
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  sure if my new facility manager took over at that time,
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  but I don't believe he was here. I think he
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  came after. He was here visiting, but I don't think
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  he took the job. Question and you mentioned it to
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  upper management too? Answer? Yeah, question who in upper management
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  did you mention it too? Answer my old associate Warden.
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  Still he's no longer, he's retired from the bureau. Question
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  who's the old aw Answer associate Warden phonetic that was
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  his last name. I forget his first name, but I
• 10:54
  mentioned to him, and of course I talked to the
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  wardens about it. Who was the warden at that point? Answer?
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  It was redacted and before that it was redacted because
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  they wanted me, like to add more cameras and do upgrades,
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  and I'm like, well, you've got to spend money because
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  this stuff is old. Like, you can't just start adding
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  cameras to old systems. It's not going to work. Question
• 11:17
  and you said there was a project started around that
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  time before Epstein's death. Answer? Before Epstein's death. Yeah, question
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  how far before? Answer? I would have to look at documents.
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  I'm not too sure me And pretty much we have
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  an engineering tech redacted when we started because we had
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  problems with the recorders, where we submitted paperwork to the
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  regional office saying, hey, the recorders are going down, it's
• 11:42
  end of life. What can we do to upgrade? What
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  are the steps? And that's why we got funded all
• 11:47
  the money that we got to start the project. Question
• 11:51
  before Epstein's death, do you recall what exactly the project entailed?
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  What were you guys upgrading? Answer? We were trying to
• 11:59
  get from analog care cameras to IP cameras and trying
• 12:01
  to upgrade the recorders. The recorders were like the main thing,
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  upgrading the recording system. Question, but not the cameras itself.
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  Answer not the cameras itself, because they can still work
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  and they still work. Now, question were the majority of
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  the cameras working during that time? Answer? Yeah, pretty much
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  all the cameras were working. Maybe we had ten probably
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  that weren't working. But for the majority, all of the
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  cameras were working. They weren't being recorded, that was the problem. Question.
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  So the cameras were working, but it wasn't actually recording
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  into the system. Question now think I know it's been
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  two years. Do you recall which were the ten cameras
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  that weren't working? Answer? I have no idea. I would
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  have to look at the list there. Question how about
• 12:50
  during that time in the shoe where the cameras working. Answer? Yeah,
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  the cameras were working in the shoe. They were working.
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  They were recording. Well, they were working. They weren't recording,
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  but they were working. All right, we're gonna wrap up
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  right here, and in the next episode dealing with the topic,
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  we're gonna pick up where we left off. All the
• 13:09
  information that goes with this episode can be found in
• 13:12
  the description box.