It wouldn’t be shocking to learn that international pedophile sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Nygard were acquainted. Although Epstein once denied a connection, it’s certain the two shared a dark kinship.

In addition to being convicted sexual predators, they angled their way into elite social circles that at times overlapped. Both found it easy to charm suspected pedophile playboy Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The former prince and United Kingdom trade envoy is suspected of sharing confidential government information with Epstein.

Former neighbors in the Bahamas, self-styled business guru Epstein and Canadian fashion mogul Nygard both recruited girls by accessing beauty pageants and modeling agencies. Nygard enjoyed the advantage of being in fashion, an industry forever in need of new talent. Epstein was partial to pageants, including one in the Virgin Islands where he was a judge and the Miss Teen USA Pageant when it was owned by his friend Donald Trump.

The record shows the two also lived large during separate visits to Las Vegas. Epstein’s connection to Leon Black, former CEO of Caesars Entertainment operator Apollo Global Management, in 2013 opened doors for him at Caesars Palace. Nygard and his traveling harem found comfortable accommodations at The Palazzo, where he met privately with future Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie just before the country’s 2012 election.

With help from partner in crime Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein recruited high school girls to his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion, located 1.6 miles from Mar-a-Lago. Nygard, meanwhile, had little difficulty coaxing aspiring models and financially desperate girls to his island estate. As one who knew Nygard well said, “He preys on poor people’s little girls.”

It’s no wonder he’s been called “Canada’s Jeffrey Epstein.”

The two men also shared a strange fascination with genetic research, stem cell editing and procreation. Epstein solicited the latest research from some of the scientists, geneticists and academics he cultivated and corrupted. Nygard was suspected of investing in a stem cell research company in the Bahamas.

Today, Nygard, 85, is serving an 11-year sentence in a Canadian prison after a 2024 conviction of four counts of sexual assault. More than 100 women have sued him for rape, sexual abuse and assault, and he has also been accused of raping girls as young as 14. He is under federal indictment in New York. He continues to deny all charges.

None of Epstein’s high-flying contacts saved him. He died, officially by suicide, in August 2019 at age 66 while in detention on federal sex trafficking charges.

Whatever their relationship, when New York FBI agents went looking for leads in their investigations of Nygard, they called on the Las Vegas FBI for assistance, according to partially redacted email exchanges included in the Justice Department’s voluminous release of documents in association with the Epstein case.

One particularly interesting document is a redacted internal email dated Sept. 10, 2019, in the Las Vegas FBI office whose unredacted recipients included veteran agent Elena Iartarola. At the time, Iartarola had recently returned to the Las Vegas office as its coordinator for the Crimes Against Children and Human Trafficking programs.

In addition to the redactions, the documents are coded in what one highly informed source I spoke with calls “Bureau-ese.” Once deciphered, the mentions of Las Vegas and Nygard are linked to ongoing investigations in Miami, Cleveland, San Francisco and Dallas in addition to New York. The background information was accessed by the Las Vegas office’s Field Intelligence Group (FIG) analysts using the FBI’s Sentinel internal case management system and virtual library.

Among the findings:

A nascent federal public corruption inquiry out of the Miami field office included a 2016 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol interview of a longtime Nygard hospitality employee in Toronto. The source reported witnessing a plane land at Nygard’s estate from Las Vegas carrying aboard “approximately 10 girls … and some of them appeared to be under 18 years of age.” The public official suspected of corruption was unnamed.

From the Cleveland office, an interview by a Las Vegas-based assistant U.S. attorney was conducted with a former Nygard girlfriend as part of a separate and ongoing investigation by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents. The 2017 investigation sought information “regarding international sex trafficking of adults and juveniles.”

That investigation lasted less than a year before it was “unexpectedly closed down by HSI management,” according to the memo. FBI efforts to gather information from HSI’s investigation were unsuccessful at that time. The notation raises the question of whether the federal law enforcement agencies were competing instead of cooperating.

A partially redacted email sent on Jan. 2, 2020, by a supervisor in the Las Vegas office to the New York FBI may shed light on the closed HSI investigation: “We’ve had some interest from our USAO (United States Attorney’s Office), dating back to September [2019] when we did some quick checks and determined we had nothing new, but continued to find some HSI taint, leading our USAO wanting us to reinterview (name redacted). … Before we do anything, I want us to chat, because I’m not seeing a big nexus here, but don’t want to miss any opportunities for you guys or the bigger case.”

Perhaps the strangest Sentinel return emanated from the Dallas FBI office, which had opened an inquiry using a source associated with Tekstratex, a Dallas-based private security and executive protection company, then registered as a business in Nevada with the secretary of state’s office. The company was hired by hedge fund billionaire Louis Bacon, who was locked in a protracted civil dispute with his neighbor Nygard, to persuade authorities to investigate his pedophile predilections.

The sourcing was decidedly thin, but the item of interest was certain to raise eyebrows: The source “was told the Tekstratex employees identified a young female boarding Nygard’s plane and departing Fort Worth, but due to low light, they were unable to get a good photograph of the girl. They could not determine how old she was.”

Another partially redacted memo lauds the efforts of an unnamed Las Vegas FBI analyst: “Just wanted to let you know that (redacted) helped our squad out a lot today. … (Redacted) called me regarding some time-sensitive checks on a high profile individual tied to Epstein.”

The identity of the “high profile individual” is not disclosed.

The analyst “spent most of her morning pulling stuff on Peter Nygard and determined the scope of his nexus to Vegas. She did an awesome job finding everything even though some of it was gross/disturbing to read.”

The FBI estimates more than 1,000 girls and young women were victimized by Epstein. Nygard investigators claim his toll of victims is even higher, with some dating as far back as the late 1960s.

The press, public and political class continue to be fascinated by Epstein’s proximity to the powerful, including a current president and a former president. Stripping away the grotesquery of lies and felonies, the bold-faced names, speculation, conspiracies and outright mysteries, at the core are two pimps and extortionists who groomed and exploited girls and young women.

At some point, I hope we take more than a moment to focus on the wider issue of human trafficking and the toll it takes on its victims. Because most of the time, those victims don’t make the news and are rarely represented by outraged members of Congress.

The understandable intrigue surrounding Epstein and Nygard notwithstanding, I pray they’re always remembered as the pedophile pimps they were.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.