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Who were the most frequent visitors to Little St. James island?
Executive summary
A 2024–2025 set of investigations, led prominently by WIRED, analyzed leaked location-data from a data broker and concluded that phones linked to visitors of Jeffrey Epstein’s Little St. James island were traceable to roughly 80 U.S. cities and 26 states between 2016 and 2019, with many coordinates pointing to wealthy neighborhoods and vacation communities — but the reports stop short of naming a verified list of the island’s most frequent individual visitors. The data indicate patterns consistent with repeated travel from specific regions and luxury addresses, yet the sources repeatedly caution that device-location records cannot, on their own, conclusively prove identity, intent, or criminal complicity [1] [2].
1. The hard claims the investigations make and why they matter
The core, repeated claim is that Near Intelligence (a location-data broker) collected precise mobile-device location records that placed nearly 200 devices on Little St. James and then tracked those devices to origins in 80 American cities across 26 states, plus some international points, between 2016–2019. Investigators map device pings to physical addresses that often correspond to gated communities, luxury homes, and resort locations, signaling that many devices likely belonged to affluent individuals or staff associated with Epstein’s operations. The reporting emphasizes that the dataset reveals the island’s most visited micro-locations — the main house, beaches, and the Hilltop Temple — and shows surveillance continued long after visits, which raises both evidentiary possibilities and privacy concerns [1] [3].
2. What the data actually shows about “most frequent visitors” — and what it does not
The leaks and WIRED’s analysis show repeat device presences: multiple devices pinged the island more than once, and clusters of origin points recur in the same city or neighborhood. Investigations identify cities and specific address clusters as frequent sources, implying recurring visitors from those locales. However, the reporting consistently stops short of naming individuals as “most frequent visitors.” The work explicitly warns that device ownership, user identity, and motive are not proven by location data alone — devices can be shared, sold, or carried by staff or victims, and GPS errors or advertising-exchange sampling can produce misleading linkages [2] [3].
3. Alternative explanations and the limits investigators highlight
Investigators and data analysts cited in the reports flag several alternate interpretations: some frequent pings could belong to employees, contractors, or people trafficked to the island, not just wealthy guests; devices could represent incidental logistics (pilots, delivery crews) or false positives from geofencing noise; and Near Intelligence’s collection methods — through ad exchanges — introduce sampling bias and potential inaccuracies. The reporting also notes corporate opacity: Near Intelligence later rebranded and faced sanctions from ad exchanges, complicating chain-of-custody and raising questions about dataset completeness and reliability [1] [2] [3].
4. Patterns that point toward likely frequent origins, without naming names
Across the reporting, repeated device clusters point to Florida, Massachusetts (including Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket), New York, Texas, and Michigan as recurring origin regions, and several coordinates match luxury enclaves and prominent New York addresses. These geographic patterns are consistent with a population of wealthy associates, but the sources stress that geography is not guilt: proximity to Epstein-connected sites or high-end neighborhoods is descriptive, not prosecutorial. The investigations therefore frame these patterns as leads for further inquiry rather than conclusive identification of the island’s most frequent individual visitors [1] [2].
5. Broader context: what this means for privacy, investigations, and accountability
The leaks expose systemic weaknesses in U.S. privacy regulation and ad-exchange oversight by showing how a broker could compile fine-grained movement data and monetize it, creating both investigative opportunities and grave privacy harms. Journalists treat the dataset as a new evidentiary ray that can focus police, civil litigants, or reporters on locations and travel patterns, but they uniformly caution that legal or criminal conclusions require corroborating evidence — witness testimony, records, or court-disclosed material. The reportage concludes that while the location data narrows investigative windows, it cannot by itself resolve who the island’s most frequent visitors were [1] [2].
Bottom line: the leaked datasets reveal repeat-location patterns and affluent origin clusters consistent with frequent visitors from certain U.S. regions, but they do not, in published analyses, provide a verified, named roster of the island’s most frequent individual visitors; the findings are strongest as a map of leads rather than as definitive proof of identity or wrongdoing [2] [1].