The Epstein Inversion: OneTaste Case Is the Opposite of What You Think

Two investigative articles. Five months apart. Both were published in 2018, both about sex. Both triggered outrage.

One of them was about Jeffrey Epstein, a man who trafficked more than 60 minor girls, some as young as 14, for over a decade, while the FBI looked away and federal prosecutors handed him a secret immunity deal.

The other was about Nicole Daedone and OneTaste, a sexual wellness company that had operated legally for 14 years, had been favorably covered in the New York Times, had received a TED Talk platform, and had made the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies list.

When the FBI Looked Away — and When It Didn’t

In the Epstein case, federal prosecutors had identified 36 child victims by 2006. They offered Epstein a non-prosecution agreement in 2008 — a secret deal that granted him and unnamed co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution — in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

Epstein spent the next decade attending elite social events, flying heads of state on his private jet, with national media coverage essentially zero.

In the OneTaste case, a single article in Bloomberg Businessweek alleged “sexual servitude.” The FBI opened a criminal investigation. Within months, the BBC, VICE Media, and Netflix had each produced content amplifying the allegations, each citing the previous outlet. The language used across all three: sex trafficking, prostitution, sexual exploitation, forced sex with investors, “dark secrets and allegations of abuse.”

After five years of investigation — 69 witnesses formally interviewed, some more than ten times — federal prosecutors charged Nicole Daedone and Rachel Cherwitz with forced labor conspiracy. Not sex trafficking, prostitution, rape, racketeering, or even forced labor.

No Substantive Crime

Just a standalone conspiracy charge that the US government had never applied before.

The nine government adult “victims” at trial testified that they received benefits from OneTaste’s programs and were free to leave at any time. No witness testified to any non-consensual sexual conduct.

Jeffrey Epstein invited teenagers to his properties, hired them for massages, then leveraged those into sexual acts — for himself and for his associates.

OneTaste advertised itself as a place where adults could learn about sexuality, intimacy, and connection. People came. They left freely — the overwhelming majority of them satisfied.

Epstein operated on a private island, accessible by private jet, shielded from public view. OneTaste operated on commercial streets in Venice Beach, Los Angeles; SoHo, New York; SoMa, San Francisco; and Chelsea, London.

One was cloaked in seclusion; the other invited journalists into its courses and research scientists to study its programs. For the entire period characterized as a criminal conspiracy — 2004 to 2018 — every journalist who reported on OneTaste did so in a positive light. The negative framing followed the Bloomberg article, then the leak of an FBI investigation. Suddenly, everything that had happened during fourteen years of transparency became a sex cult and a prostitution ring.

Zero Police Reports. Zero Victims. One Prosecution.

Across 35,000 participants, at all those programs, there was not a single police report of wrongdoing. Every participant was an adult. There are no allegations of any kind involving minors.

Nine adult white college-educated women claimed they were victims because they said they were brainwashed.

The FBI investigated OneTaste for sex trafficking under 18 U.S.C. § 1591. The BBC told its listeners the FBI was probing the company for “sex trafficking, prostitution and violations of labor law.” Netflix framed the story in those terms for subscribers worldwide. VICE described dark secrets and abuse. Five years later, the government filed zero sex charges.

The government filed its single count of forced labor conspiracy — a charge so novel that the National Law Review called the conviction a “dangerous precedent,” asking: “How can voluntary participation in educational programs constitute forced labor?” The prosecution’s primary witness submitted journal entries that federal prosecutors acknowledged were “falsified.”

The defense accused the lead FBI agent Elliot McGinnis of evidence tampering and perjury. A sitting member of Congress on the House Judiciary Committee has written to FBI Director Kash Patel demanding answers about the agent’s conduct.

One Taste art mcginnis - Frank Report — McGinnis

The Last Open Case

Internal FBI documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act explain why this prosecution happened the way it did. An ADIC briefing for the FBI New York Field Office groups three cases as the unit’s highest-profile human trafficking investigations: Jeffrey Epstein, NXIVM, and OneTaste.

The unit had been rated “High Performing” for six consecutive years. Its institutional performance record — its FOSP rating, the metric that justified its budget and its prestige — was tied to those three cases. By the time the OneTaste trial began, Epstein was dead.

A jury convicted NXIVM leader Keith Raniere and five of his top associates. OneTaste was the last open case. The same briefing states that the unit’s primary focus is sex trafficking under § 1591 — the statute used to charge both Epstein and Raniere. The FBI investigated OneTaste under § 1591 for five years. Daedone and Cherwitz were never charged under it.

The government charged under a theory it had never used before. This is not a prosecution in pursuit of justice. It is a prosecution in pursuit of a performance rating.

Epstein was worth roughly $560 million. He used access to sex to enrich himself and reward his business associates. OneTaste was a for-profit business that never recorded profits. Nicole Daedone earned $48,000 a year.

Epstein represents the failure of American institutions to act when a defendant abuses children. OneTaste represents what happens when those same institutions decide to manufacture a prosecution to rehabilitate their record.

The FBI unit that failed Epstein’s victims for 13 years — that watched him fly minors to private islands while signing his immunity paperwork, that knew about 36 child victims in 2006 and did nothing — is the same unit that spent five years investigating a wellness company with 35,000 participants and zero police reports, and then convicted its founders on a legal theory it invented.

Two women are in federal custody. On March 30, they will be sentenced — under a legal theory the government invented when the real charges wouldn’t hold. If there is a lesson in the comparison between Epstein and OneTaste, it is that the danger is not always in what the government fails to prosecute.