Fake Video of Jeffrey Epstein Attempting Suicide Appears, Then Gets Deleted, from DOJ Files By Chris Spargo

A fake video emerged Monday afternoon that appeared to depict Jeffrey Epstein in his prison cell during the final hours of his life.

The 12-second video, which appeared with a Justice.gov URL and briefly surfaced alongside other files released by the agency, was time-stamped Aug. 10, 2019, at 4:29 a.m. and appeared to show Epstein in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York.

At 6:30 a.m. that same morning, a prison guard found Epstein dead in his cell after the convicted child sex criminal hanged himself with his bedsheets.

But the briefly released video was a fake.

While the video appeared to show the man trying to hang himself, it did not depict the manner in which Epstein was later found, as specified by a Bureau of Prisons report on the prison’s procedural failings that night, released in June 2023 after a lengthy internal investigation.

According to the report, no camera was recording video inside Epstein’s cell on the night of his death.

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In the report, the BoP noted that there was no camera in the facility that had a clear view of Epstein on the night of his death.

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The report noted that “recorded video evidence for August 9 and 10 for the SHU (special housing unit) area where Epstein was housed was only available from one prison security camera due to a malfunction” — but that one camera did not provide a view inside Epstein’s cell.

The lights in Epstein’s cell are also on in the video, which is standard practice for inmates on suicide watch. However, on the night in question, Epstein was no longer on suicide watch, according to the BoP report. According to the report, Epstein was removed from suicide watch on July 24 — one day after a guard entered his room shortly after 1 a.m. to find him  with an orange cloth around his neck. The BoP wrote that Epstein’s cellmate confirmed he had attempted suicide the night of July 23.

Visually, the video has multiple red flags. The door in the video does not resemble photos of Epstein’s cell released by the BoP.

Visually, aspects of the video lack three-dimensional depth, appearing more like animation than actual footage. The cluster of orange, white and gray shapes near the top center is especially telling — they appear flat and not three-dimensional at all.

PEOPLE reached out to the Department of Justice to ask about the video — which has since been taken down — but did not receive comment as of publication time.