A Boca Raton woman has pleaded guilty to falsifying records to fraudulently obtain $750,000 from a fund set up to compensate victims of Jeffrey Epstein, federal prosecutors said.
Jennifer Percival, 46, was charged and entered a guilty plea in federal court in New York on Monday. According to a transcript entered into the court record Wednesday, Percival did not address whether she was an Epstein victim during her brief court appearance, and prosecutors did not say whether they had reached a conclusion on that question either.
Court records show Percival first applied in late 2020 to a fund established by Epstein’s estate to compensate his victims; that fund found her ineligible, though records don’t specify why. In 2024, she applied to a separate fund created by JPMorgan Chase, which had agreed to pay $290 million to Epstein victims to settle claims that the bank should have severed ties with him sooner. To support that application, Percival allegedly altered her actual rejection letter from the estate fund to make it appear she’d been approved and paid $500,000. Based on those misrepresentations, the bank’s fund wired her $750,000 in 2024.
After the FBI began investigating and confronted her with the real rejection letter in late 2025, Percival admitted in court that she falsely claimed to have successfully appealed and been found eligible, then provided her own attorney with altered and fabricated emails that were submitted to a federal prosecutor as part of a bid for a deferred prosecution agreement. “The purpose of these actions was to obtain money, which gave me a sense of validation,” Percival told a magistrate judge, according to the hearing transcript.
Percival brought a check covering the $776,031 in restitution she owes to the plea hearing and was released from custody to await sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled. A prosecutor said evidence for trial would have included her bank records, search warrant returns for her email account, and testimony from the administrator of the two Epstein settlement funds.
Percival is director of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities. Messages to Percival, her attorney, the center and university media contacts were not immediately returned.
Under the plea agreement Percival signed, federal sentencing guidelines call for three to four years in prison, though a judge is not bound by that recommendation. Her defense is expected to argue at sentencing that her career helping people with disabilities warrants leniency. Percival has pleaded guilty but has not yet been sentenced.
Compiled from reporting by: HuffPost
