Fact Check-Executive misidentified as late financier Epstein in posts saying he received USAID funding

By Reuters Fact Check

A member of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan's board of directors named Jeff Epstein has been misidentified in posts implying late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein received money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) via one of the leading U.S. healthcare providers.

"Jeffrey Epstein was being paid by USAID as a Director," says an X post with a screenshot that mentions a person called Jeffrey E. Epstein, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, tax year 2023 and a figure of $265,915.

Facebook posts with the screenshot include captions saying, "Epstein is alive and accepting money from U S A I D!!!" or "We have been told, that Epstein is dead? Jeffrey Epstein was getting paid."

The posts were shared in the wake of funding suspensions and staff eliminations at the federal aid agency by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency.

The screenshot, however, matches a website that does not provide any evidence Kaiser Permanente or anyone named Jeffrey Epstein received USAID funding. The dollar figure does match the published salary of a Kaiser executive.

FORMER ORACLE CFO

Jeff Epstein, who is a member of the Kaiser Permanente board of directors, is not the same person as the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019, company representative Kathleen Chambers told Reuters.

Chambers sent a link to Jeff Epstein's LinkedIn profile via email. It says he has been involved with Kaiser Permanente since April 2013 and his profile picture shows he is a different person.

Contacted by Reuters, Epstein said in a LinkedIn message: "My name happens to be Jeffrey E Epstein, and I serve on the Board of Kaiser Permanente. I’m the former CFO of Oracle. Everyone calls me Jeff."

An entry on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website shows the same person with similar information in his profile, which says he is part of the Board of Directors of Kaiser Permanente and former CFO of Oracle.

THE SCREENSHOT

A search for the screenshot shared in the social media posts led to Data Republican, which describes itself as a website "connecting the dots between government grants, charities, and drawing connections to expose where the money flows".

A record that comes up when searching the name in a section that says, "search for NGO officers and salaries", visually matches the screenshot shared online.

One difference between the records is that the screenshot shows an underlined blue text saying, "Trace connections to USAID NGO's" whereas, at the time of publication of this report, the website includes a link that says, "See USAID Grant Flow".

Clicking on the Data Republican record showing the amount $265,915 leads to a page with a series of disclaimers or instructions, including, "FUNDING IS FUNGIBLE!!! That means USAID DOLLARS DO NOT LITERALLY FLOW INTO THESE NGOS!!!"

Searching the diagram displayed on the page for "Epstein" or "USAID" returns no related results or evidence regarding the claim.

A search on the website USAspending.gov, the official United States official open data source of federal spending information, also showed no results with the terms "Jeffrey Epstein" and "USAID".

The $265,915 figure instead coincides with Jeff Epstein’s "compensation", according to a 2023-dated Kaiser Foundation Health Plan tax record (Page 8) published by the investigative project ProPublica.

USAID did not respond to a request for comment.

VERDICT

Misleading. The image falsely links a Kaiser Permanente executive to USAID funding and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts.