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Seth Lloyd, the Nam Pyo Suh Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says allegations that he hid the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s identity as a donor from the institution are “completely false.” MIT announced earlier this month that Lloyd is on paid leave for deliberately failing to report donations from Epstein, including $60,000 deposited into a personal bank account in in 2005 or 2006, two $50,000 donations in 2012 and $125,000 in 2017. That news came in an independent report on MIT’s dealings with Epstein. Lloyd did not provide immediate comment on the findings, but he said in a Medium post late last week that the “accusation that I accepted money from Epstein is true and I stand by my previous apology for this lapse of judgment, which will continue to weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life.” However, he said, “I never hid the identity of Epstein as the donor prior to the donation being accepted. I facilitated the submission of the donation approval request to the MIT officers exactly so that they could vet it.”
MIT, Lloyd wrote, “knew that the donor was Epstein and fully approved the donation with this knowledge. Prior to accepting any donation for MIT, I actively sought out the proper procedures from my departmental administrator, and I followed them.” In 2012, for example, he said, when Epstein -- who already had been convicted of a sex crime -- offered to fund his research, “I asked my departmental administrator to explain the procedure for accepting donations.” What followed was a series of communications based on outlined procedures, including putting Epstein’s agent in touch with the department and MIT officers, Lloyd said.
“This is all documented in emails that I have provided to Goodwin Procter,” Lloyd also wrote on Medium, referring to the third-party firm that produced the recent report accusing him of hiding Epstein’s identity. Lloyd quoted from some of the emails to unnamed “MIT officers,” one of which allegedly says, “Jeffrey Epstein intends to make a gift in the amount of $100,000 in two tranches of $50,000 for the discretionary research for the support of Seth Lloyd.” An unnamed officer allegedly replied to Epstein’s accountant, “Many thanks for your message on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein; we look forward to receiving the first installment of his gift.” Referring again to the Goodwin Procter investigation, Lloyd wrote that the report implies "that in my written apology, and in my expressions of regret I have ‘conceded’ to breaching ‘professional duties’ owed to MIT. I made no such concession.”
MIT released a statement from Goodwin Procter saying that while Lloyd “disagrees with the report, we are fully confident the findings in the report are consistent with the evidence and information that we collected, including from Professor Lloyd.” The report itself says that Lloyd knew that Epstein’s name would raise concerns and that he purposely approached midlevel administrators to process donations without talking to senior administrators first. At the same time, the report accuses three vice presidents -- all of whom have left or resigned -- of creating a “framework” to manage Epstein’s donations without attracting negative attention. As for the earliest donation deposited into Lloyd’s bank account, which happened before Epstein’s 2008 conviction, Lloyd said he didn't believe he was doing anything wrong and treated the money as an unrestricted research grant.
