Jeffrey Epstein’s office in his East 71st Street townhouse, with many items sourced and designed by Alberto Pinto, in a photo released by the Justice Department. Photo: DOJ
Late last year, a New Jersey auction house brokered a three-day sale of nearly a thousand lots of art and antiques that included a “palatial Viennese desk” and a bronze sculpture of a life-size nude woman hanging on to a rope— items that the New York Post recognized from Jeffrey Epstein’s now-infamous East 71st Street townhouse. At least a dozen other items in the sale, including a tooled-leather bed frame from Epstein’s bedroom and a giltwood table seen in his office, bore the description “ex-Alberto Pinto” or “Alberto Pinto-sourced” or “supplied by Alberto Pinto.” These objects underscored the role that the lauded French-Moroccan interior designer played in decorating Epstein’s home — and the value attached to his name.
Many architects, firms, and prominent figures in the field appear frequently in the Epstein files — Gensler, Neri Oxman, and Tom Pritzker among them. But Alberto Pinto and his sister Linda Pinto, who ran the company after Alberto’s death in 2012, have a special place in the correspondence with Epstein. Alberto Pinto ran one of the most prestigious interior-design firms in the world, with clients who ranged from heads of state like former French president Jacques Chirac and King Hassan of Morocco to the royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Russian oligarchs, and billionaires like David Koch, for whom the designer customized homes, private jets, and yachts to their exacting tastes. In 2003, a Vanity Fair profile of Epstein named Pinto as the interior designer behind his New York townhouse, but no new information about the extent of their relationship has surfaced over the past 20 years.
It’s unclear how long the Pintos’ relationship to Epstein predates the Vanity Fair profile, but there are nearly 1,000 emails, faxes, invoices, mood boards, and photo CDs related to the Pintos in the most recent document dump by the Justice Department. They reveal how extensively Epstein and the Pintos engaged with one another, both professionally and personally.
Epstein used his association with Pinto as a bragging right with people like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew. In one November 2010 email to the former prince, Epstein pointed out that he gave Alberto his oft-photographed dog. He also asked Andrew to tell the emir of Qatar, who then lived on Epstein’s block in Manhattan, that “Pinto also did my house.” In a 2015 exchange with wellness influencer Peter Attia, Epstein tells him that before having dinner with “Musk Thiel Zuckerberg,” he plans to check out the interior of a Burbank business plane belonging to someone. “Pinto designed,” he adds. He even mentions Pinto to those he wasn’t trying to impress, such as one redacted sender who asks him for furniture inspiration, because, they explain, “one of my briefs for college is to design and decorate a home.” The young sender adds in a later email, “It is not urgent, I dont want you to have worries in your little head, because I am not there to rub it better ..:-(.” In his reply, Epstein advises the sender to “go to any decorator name Albeto [sic] Pinto.”
The feeling seemed to be mutual; Alberto Pinto’s contribution to the 50th-birthday book organized by Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 was slotted into the same “Friends” chapter as contributions from President Trump and the embattled former British ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson. Pinto illustrated Epstein as a Pinto-designed private jet, holding a globe over his head while flying over a second globe. On both globes, the designer made sure to highlight Epstein’s residences in Paris, New York, Santa Fe, Palm Beach, and “Little St. Jeff.” A three-page note followed, written in a multicolor font, and in one section, Pinto wrote, Epstein “can maybe be a bear, but mostly a teddy bear. He is the most adorable and coolest friend anyone can have.”
Alberto Pinto’s contribution to Epstein’s 50th-birthday book, organized by Maxwell, included this drawing of Epstein amid the many homes that Pinto had a hand in designing. Photo: DOJ
A couple years prior, in 2001, Alberto and Linda Pinto attended a dinner with Epstein, Maxwell, and late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts). This was a couple of days before Giuffre says that she was coerced by Epstein into having sex with the former Prince Andrew as a minor. Although Mountbatten-Windsor paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to Giuffre to end her sexual-assault lawsuit against him and was later stripped of all of his royal titles by King Charles, little was known about the days leading up to their fateful meeting.
In fact, as Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving 20 years in federal prison on sex-trafficking charges, explained in a July 2025 interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the trip where Giuffre claims she met the former Prince Andrew was instigated by the Pintos. Maxwell recalled the trip began in Morocco at the suggestion of Alberto Pinto, who wanted Epstein and her to view a property there.
Linda Pinto and Ghislaine Maxwell at the October 2016 celebration of a Pinto book at Christie’s New York. Photo: Kelly Taub/BFA/Shutterstock
Alberto passed in 2012, but Linda learned in 2015 that the 2001 dinner that she attended with Giuffre had taken place before Epstein took the teenager to England to have sex with the former prince. According to a newly public 53-page document chronicling Epstein’s financial dealings through his preferred bank, Deutsche Bank, presented to the United States Southern District of New York, Pinto “did not deny dining with Roberts but denied that she was aware of age.” Or, as she said to the Times of London in 2015, “You did not know if they were 19, 22 or younger girls. I cannot say what they planned to do but I never suspected anything, his actions never made me suspect him.” The bank notes that Linda Pinto continued working with Epstein, not only after his 2009 conviction on the charge of soliciting sex from a minor, but also after learning about an underage Giuffre being trafficked by him.
The document further showed the sums of money that passed between Epstein and Cabinet Alberto Pinto in the wake of that revelation. Between November 2015 and December 2018, Epstein paid the firm, via his Deutsche Bank accounts, $2,873,001.
While it was known that Alberto Pinto designed Epstein’s East 71st Street townhouse in New York City, more than a decade of invoices show Cabinet Alberto Pinto provided interior-design work on many other Epstein properties. They included hundreds of thousands of dollars in “loose decorative work” on his Avenue Foch residence in Paris, and a proposed 2015 decoration budget for it totaled over €1.2 million. In the released emails, editors from shelter magazines reach out to Epstein to feature that apartment as an example of “vintage Pinto design.” Last week, a French outlet published new photos of the apartment provided by the French police in order to encourage more victims to come forward; it’s clear that taxidermied animals (in this case a vulture and an elephant calf), animal hides (a bearskin rug), and brocaded curtains are a running theme here as well. In one 2002 email, Tom Pritzker, who had recently visited Epstein’s Paris home, wrote, “Could do without the elephant, loved the American flag. Alberto was fun.”
A photo of Epstein’s Paris residence recently released by the French police and first published in French newspaper Le Parisien, shows a rotunda with a bearskin rug and framed images of naked women on the walls. The Pintos charged Epstein for hundreds of thousands of dollars in “loose decorative work” for this apartment. Photo: Ministry of Justice
Pinto was also involved in working on Epstein’s private islands after 2015. In July 2016, the same year that Epstein bought a second private island in the Caribbean, Great Saint James, Pinto assembled a 20-page mood board for a residence there that would include a living room, office, VIP suites, and twin bedrooms. Among their suggestions: a Rick Owens double-bubble couch, live-edge walnut bed frames, and rattan pendant lights. That December, Pinto invoiced Epstein over €3 million for work across Little Saint James and Great Saint James.
Alberto Pinto’s mood board for the VIP rooms for Epstein’s house at Great St. James, from July 2016. Photo: DOJ
The files also show that Pinto’s firm advised and purchased various design objects and furniture from auction houses on Epstein’s behalf. In 2017, Epstein inquired about what he should buy from a Christie’s Alberto Pinto estate sale, and the following spring Pinto purchased a pair of 19th-century Japanese brass-mounted lacquer-footed storage boxes from Sotheby’s “April 2018 Luxe: The Art of Design Sale” on behalf of Epstein.
Pinto’s associates, including the architect James Cooper and interior designer Lionel Vilette, last traveled to Epstein’s Little Saint James island in June 2019. Emails show Vilette and Cooper were then scheduled to meet Epstein and his girlfriend Karyna Shuliak at Linda Pinto’s office on July 2, 2019, four days before Epstein was arrested at JFK airport on sex-trafficking charges.
An unsigned, undated fax found in the Epstein files appears to be a letter from Epstein in response to Alberto “resigning” from work on Epstein’s island residence. In that letter, which would have predated Pinto’s passing in 2012, the unidentified author apologized for failing to adequately express his appreciation for Pinto’s talent, and wrote “it is not that simple to abandon a ‘family member’ no matter how frustrating or good looking he may be.” The author went on to vent his frustration that the “big house Island project” was more than a year behind schedule and that the house was incomplete and in a state of disrepair, encouraging Pinto to see the work through and assuring him the two remain friends.
There was no evident friction in the relationship between Linda Pinto and Epstein following Alberto’s passing.After Linda Pinto reportedly learned about the Virginia Giuffre allegations in January 2015, her correspondence with Epstein continued to focus on drumming up more commissions and getting introductions to his powerful friends. That April, Epstein assured Pinto, “I very much miss Alberto. I’m doing my best for you, promise,” before asking if her team could refresh his Paris apartment and island cabana. Epstein added that he recommended Pinto to a friend who was seeking an interior designer for their boat, warning her the friend was also considering former Pinto protégée Laura Sessa. Pinto directed Epstein to tell his friend that Sessa “is really an architect,” adding, “I really need to do a new boat if you really can help me.”
A few months later, Pinto advised Epstein on the state of the Marrakesh real-estate market. The Pintos had informally advised Epstein on real-estate purchases in the past, including in 2010, when Alberto Pinto suggested Epstein purchase historic Pusey House in Oxfordshire.
Years later, their affection toward one another showed no signs of cooling off. In a February 2017 email exchange, Epstein told Pinto that his New York home is open to her at any time, and after work on the home was completed he could “think of making some rich man party so people can see your work if you like,” to which she responded: “Thank you for the invitation, and it is a pleasure to take care of you.”
In 2020, one year after Epstein was arrested and committed suicide, Linda Pinto retired and sold Cabinet Alberto Pinto. The firm, which now identifies as PINTO, was acquired by Fahad Hariri, who “oversees its strategic and creative vision,” according to a spokesman. Hariri is the son of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri and a graduate of the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. He previously worked closely with Pinto to renovate four of his own residences.
In one of her last interviews, Linda Pinto spoke by phone to Vanity Fair Espana for a friendly profile of her career for its January 2021 issue. Asked about the Epstein scandal, the author wrote Pinto “maintains a prudent silence on the matter.” The article continued, “Today, Linda remains at the helm, maintaining the founder’s philosophy intact.” A spokesperson for PINTO insisted that her statement was false at the time of publication, since Pinto had left the company six months earlier. A PINTO spokesperson further confirmed the company has no connection with Linda Pinto, and does not work with her, nor with Lionel Vilette, James Cooper, or their respective firms. Vilette and Cooper did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
PINTO’s recent New York projects include the Wales condominiums in Carnegie Hill, which were completed in 2023 and names the firm’s involvement in the first line of its marketing copy. In a 2024 interview about the project with Corcoran’s Inhabit blog, PINTO artistic director Pietro Scaglione didn’t shy away from highlighting the firm’s past: “PINTO has created designs all over the US — Santa Fe, Palm Beach, the Hamptons — yet most of them were in the Upper East Side.” Epstein is not mentioned, of course.
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