Google co-founder Larry Page.
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The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands has tried without success so far to serve a subpoena on Google co-founder Larry Page for documents for its civil lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase related to sex trafficking by the bank’s longtime customer Jeffrey Epstein, a court filing revealed Thursday.
The USVI formally asked Manhattan federal court Judge Jed Rakoff to authorize the government to serve Page with that subpoena through so-called alternative means since its efforts to have a process server physically give it to him have failed to date.
Alternative service can include mailing the legal papers, publishing them on a public news site or emailing them.
“Larry Page —the co-founder and co-owner of Alphabet Inc. (Google LLC’s parent company)—is a high-net-worth individual who Epstein may have referred or attempted to refer to JPMorgan” as a customer, lawyers for the USVI said in their court filing.
The subpoena to Page demands “all documents” from 2002 onward related to communication between Page and JPMorgan regarding Epstein, and all documents between Page and Epstein related to the bank.
The USVI also demands from Page “all documents reflecting or regarding Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for commercial sex.”
CNBC has reached out to Page for comment.
The U.S. territory previously issued subpoenas to Page’s fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as well as former Disney executive Michael Ovitz, Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman, the billionaire real estate investor. The subpoenas likewise sought documents and other information about Epstein and JPMorgan.
Page and Brin are the top individual shareholders in Alphabet.
The Virgin Islands said elsewhere in Thursday’s filing that its investigation revealed that JPMorgan “financially profited” from deposits made by Epstein and entities he controlled, and “from the business opportunities referred to JPMorgan by Epstein and his co-conspirators in exchange for its known facilitation of and implicit participation in Epstein’s sex trafficking venture.”
The filing said that the USVI issued the subpoena on Page on April 11, and that it “made good-faith attempts to obtain an address for Larry Page, including hiring an investigative firm to search public records databases for possible addresses.”
“Our process server attempted service at the addresses identified by our investigative firm, but discovered the addresses were not valid for Mr. Page,” the filing said.
Page was CEO of Google’s parent Alphabet from 2015 through 2019, after previously serving as Google’s chief executive officer. He remains a director of Alphabet.
The U.S. Virgin Islands and a woman who says she was sexually abused by Epstein are separately suing JPMorgan, claiming the bank was complicit in his sex trafficking of multiple women.
Epstein for years had millions of dollars on deposit at JPMorgan, and used money from those accounts to facilitate the travel of women to his residence on a private island in the U.S. territory and elsewhere.
JPMorgan, whose CEO Jamie Dimon is due to be deposed in the case in late May, denies wrongdoing.
Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges. He previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from an underage girl in Florida.
JPMorgan didn’t sever ties with Epstein until 2013.
Epstein over the years had been a friend to many rich and famous people, among them former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.