Two guards who were on duty the night Jeffrey Epstein died have been charged with falsifying prison records and conspiring to defraud the U.S.
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Aug. 10. He was accused of sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage girls. The New York City medical examiner ruled his death a suicide by hanging.
The two Bureau of Prisons workers, Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, were supposed to check on Epstein every 30 minutes as required by jail policy. But the grand jury indictment says they didn't do those checks for several hours — and then falsified records to make it look like they had. U.S. Attorney General William Barr put Noel and Thomas on administrative leave after Epstein's death.
Sources told The Washington Post that Noel and Thomas both previously turned down plea deals.
