An autism scholar from Boca Raton, Florida, faces up to 20 years in prison for fraudulently claiming $750,000 from a fund to compensate victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes.
More than half a billion dollars has been set aside for Epstein’s victims, and court records show that Jennifer Percival lied to secure a cut of the funds.
Percival, 46, pleaded guilty this week in a Manhattan federal courtroom to one count of wire fraud.
She admitted to creating a fake paper trail to help her gain access to a $290 million Epstein victim fund set up by J.P. Morgan. The J.P. Morgan fund is one of at least five separate funds amounting to a total of $594 million for compensating women and underage girls victimized by Epstein.
The FBI said Epstein “harmed more than 1,000 victims.”
Percival claimed to be one of them.
She is listed as the director of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Autism & Related Disabilities in Boca Raton.
It was not clear when or whether she ever met Epstein, who lived in Palm Beach. According to a New York Times Style section article about her 2025 wedding, Percival said she grew up in Chicago and earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.
She completed a master’s in counselor education and a Ph.D. in educational leadership and research methodology at Florida Atlantic.
Epstein began targeting and sexually abusing girls, many of them in high school, beginning in 2002. He pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from a minor in 2008 and was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. While awaiting prosecution, he hanged himself in a New York City jail cell.
One of the funds, the Epstein Victims Compensation Program, paid $121 million to about 150 women. It is now closed.
The fund received applications from 225 women claiming to be victims. The average payout was $800,000, according to figures cited by attorneys involved in the fund.
Percival admitted in court that she applied to the Epstein Victims Compensation Program in December 2020 and received a notice from fund administrators several months later that she “was not eligible to receive any payment.”
Percival nonetheless tried again in February 2024 to obtain money designated for Epstein’s victims.
She applied for compensation from the fund established in 2023 by J.P. Morgan, which was seeking to settle with victims and avoid massive lawsuits related to claims that bank executives turned a blind eye to money laundering and other financial misdeeds by Epstein, who made millions of dollars as a private financial adviser to wealthy clients.
To gain access to the J.P. Morgan funds, Percival doctored the 2021 rejection letter from the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund to indicate she had been found eligible for a $500,000 payout from that fund.
The letter cleared the way for her to qualify for a payout from the J.P. Morgan fund.
“The purpose of these actions was to obtain money, which gave me a sense of validation,” Percival told Judge Ona T. Wang.
The ploy worked. Three months after applying for the money, in May 2024, J.P. Morgan fund administrators wired Percival $750,000.
In November 2025, the FBI came knocking, according to the charging documents, and Percival continued to lie.
She told agents she had been found eligible for the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund and had been paid $500,000. When the FBI showed her the unaltered rejection letter from fund administrators, Percival claimed she had successfully appealed the decision. She sought to end the investigation by having her attorney submit “altered and fabricated emails” to the Justice Department.
“I know that my actions were wrongful, and I accept full responsibility,” she told the court this week.
Federal sentencing guidelines recommend a prison sentence of three to four years, but she could get up to two decades behind bars.
The Washington Times reached out to Percival’s attorney and Florida Atlantic University.
Percival is the author of three books on autism.
In February 2025, she married Emily Giske, a lobbyist for LGBTQ rights coalitions and vice chair of the New York State Democratic Committee.
Epstein victims can continue to apply for payouts from compensation funds.
In August, a federal judge in New York City approved Bank of America’s $72.5 million settlement fund, established after the bank was accused of “purposely and deliberately” failing to flag Epstein’s suspicious banking activity.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff agreed to grant the law firm representing the anonymous plaintiff 30% of the settlement. The rest will be divided among eligible victims.
“We all know there’s endless stuff online and in the media about ’why aren’t those who facilitated Mr. Epstein not being brought to justice,’ or some words to that effect,” Judge Rakoff said, according to Courthouse News. “A substantial number of Epstein victims are receiving substantial amounts of money, and some modest amount of justice is being achieved, not just talk.”
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