Seven women sued celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai, his company Frederic Fekkai & Co, L.L.C. and salon employee Patrick Coombs in New York on 1 September 2026, alleging that Epstein sent them to his Manhattan salons to be styled to look as young as possible and that the salons served his rape trafficking operation for more than 15 years.
Fekkai has never been charged with a crime connected to Epstein in any jurisdiction. The complaint alleges no direct sexual abuse of the seven plaintiffs by him. No court has tested any of its claims, and Fekkai has denied through a representative every allegation put to him since his name first surfaced in congressional testimony in May 2026.
The 17-page complaint was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in New York County by Jordan K. Merson and Jennifer C. Plotkin of Merson Law PLLC, whose offices are at 950 Third Avenue. It carries a single count under one city statute and demands a jury. The relief sought is compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, legal fees and costs. Merson signed an attorney verification swearing under penalty of perjury that he had read the complaint and knew its contents to be true, save for matters pleaded on information and belief. No index number had been assigned when the document was published. Courthouse News first reported the filing.
Five plaintiffs are anonymous, listed as Jane Doe 1 through Jane Doe 5 and resident in New York, New York, Idaho, Montana and Rhode Island. Two are named: Kersti Ferguson, a former model who now lives in Connecticut, and Audra Christiansen, a former Playboy model who lives in Florida. Christiansen reported Epstein to the FBI in 2005.
What the seven allege
Paragraph 1 of the complaint begins with a House floor speech. Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie read Fekkai's name aloud on the evening of 31 August 2026 as one of 14 people he said should be investigated and prosecuted as Epstein co-conspirators. Merson filed the next day.
Fekkai was "an enabler of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of victims" whose salons ran as "a perks machine for Epstein for over 15 years", paragraph 2 alleges.
"Without Epstein, Fekkai Brands would not have grown into the billion-dollar beauty product mainstay," it said. "Without Epstein, Fekkai product would not have landed at stores like Victoria Secret."
Epstein controlled the styling, paragraph 4 alleges. The plaintiffs "were sent to Fekkai by Epstein during which services were always provided under Epstein's direction and control". Fekkai "groomed the victims to look as young as possible under Epstein's direction", it said, and "Epstein would direct Fekkai to bleach victims blond and groomed them like dolls into Epstein's and other's liking".
Coombs, an employee at the Manhattan salons, "facilitated, enabled and groomed the victims to Epstein's liking and at his request", paragraph 5 alleges. Fekkai and Coombs "collaborated with Epstein so that the plaintiffs looked young and how he wanted them so that they could be sexually abused and have gender motivated violence committed against them". Coombs has made no public statement, and no reporting on him beyond the complaint has been published.
Paragraph 7 is the only paragraph that describes anything happening inside a salon, alleging Epstein "frequently brought in groups of young women and would have them sit on his lap and stroke his hair".
Paragraph 46 sets out what the seven say the enabling consisted of: furnishing Epstein with a facility and equipment, providing a business location for running what the complaint calls his "sex trafficking ring", giving him and his associates a place to plan and manage it, participating in the grooming, aiding and abetting the abuse and providing services to young women at his direction "to further control, manipulate and abuse Plaintiffs". Paragraph 45 alleges the defendants "profited financially and socially as a result".
Ferguson was about 16 in 1996 when the conduct against her began and it continued for roughly 20 years. Jane Doe 4 was about 20 in 2001. Jane Doe 1 was about 18 and Jane Doe 5 about 19 in 2004, the year Christiansen, at about 24, was the oldest of the seven at the start of what she alleges. Jane Doe 2 was about 17 in 2006 and Jane Doe 3 about 19 in 2007. The complaint does not say which salon any plaintiff attended, or on what date.
The four addresses
Salons at 712 Fifth Avenue, 15 East 57th Street, 601 Madison Avenue and 25 East 77th Street are named at paragraph 48 as premises Fekkai owned and controlled. The flagship at 712 Fifth Avenue sat inside Henri Bendel, the department store Leslie Wexner owned through L Brands until it closed in 2019. Fekkai hair products were carried in Victoria's Secret, the other Wexner chain.
Wexner has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, said he was duped by a world-class con man when House Oversight deposed him on 18 February 2026 and is one of three people the Justice Department has confirmed the FBI once listed as an Epstein co-conspirator. His lawyer says a federal prosecutor told his counsel in 2019 that Wexner was neither a co-conspirator nor a target.
The Justice Department released 3,118 documents and emails relating to the salon, the complaint said at paragraph 6, calling it "the epicenter for victim grooming". Nobody has independently checked the document count or the description. Both come from the plaintiffs.
What was already on the record
Flight logs filed as exhibits in Giuffre v. Maxwell record Fekkai aboard Epstein's aircraft three times. A leg on 25 June 2000 ran from St Thomas to Teterboro. On 27 June 2002 he flew from Kennedy to Le Bourget alongside Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Sarah Kellen, and two days later from Le Bourget onward. His son Alexander appears on all three.
Palm Beach police collected handwritten message pads from Epstein's Florida house in the mid-2000s that list Fekkai among callers. Investigators have never suggested the pads show wrongdoing by anyone who telephoned.
Johanna Sjoberg, who worked for Epstein, testified in a deposition unsealed in January 2024 that she heard him say: "Fekkai is in Hawaii. Can we find some girls for him?" Sjoberg was reporting what Epstein said. The words are his, and they show nothing about what Fekkai knew or did.
Sarah Kellen met Fekkai in Honolulu in 2000 or 2001 while he was promoting his hair care line, she told House Oversight in a transcribed interview on 21 May 2026. Kellen worked as Epstein's assistant for about 15 years and was one of four people shielded from federal charges by the 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida. He asked her to take part in a hair show that, she said, did not exist. She had no money for lodging or a flight home and stayed in his hotel room.
"He took advantage of me that night," she said.
Fekkai introduced her to Epstein as a Victoria's Secret model scout, Kellen told the committee. "Clearly, he was not a Victoria's Secret scout," she said.
Kellen also told the committee that Philip Levine, later the mayor of Miami Beach, assaulted her in Saint-Tropez in 2002 or 2003 while she was travelling with Epstein and Maxwell. "He brought me into his bedroom and said, you know, you must be so lonely, and was basically forced himself on me," she said. A spokesperson for Levine has said the encounter was consensual.
Committee chairman James Comer and Representatives Clay Higgins, William Timmons, Andy Biggs and Lauren Boebert wrote to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on 4 June 2026 asking the department to use "all available tools, including immunity for certain witnesses" to investigate the allegations against Levine and Fekkai. Their letter described Fekkai as a close friend of Epstein who "played a pivotal role in his grooming schemes by routinely providing salon services to women at Mr. Epstein's instruction", the sentence the complaint later borrowed almost verbatim at paragraph 8.
The Justice Department has said nothing publicly since about whether it opened an inquiry into either man, and a congressional referral carries no obligation to act.
Fekkai's representative Mark Herr answered Kellen's account within two days.
"Mr. Fekkai was astonished to read of Ms. Kellen's testimony," Herr said. "Mr. Fekkai never abused anyone. He never participated in any illegal behavior."
Fekkai's representatives also denied that he introduced Kellen to Epstein. Requests for comment on the new lawsuit had gone unanswered when the complaint was published, and no lawyer had appeared for any of the three defendants.
The business
Fekkai was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1958 to an Egyptian father and a Vietnamese mother, apprenticed to Jacques Dessange in Paris at 21 and moved to New York to open a Dessange salon. His own first salon opened in the Bergdorf Goodman building in 1989. He cut hair for Kim Basinger, Claudia Schiffer, Renée Zellweger and Hillary Clinton. A haircut with him at the Mark Hotel ran to 1,000 dollars last year.
Chanel backed his first product line as a joint venture in 1995, a year before Frédéric Fekkai Brands was formed. Catterton Partners, which took the name L Catterton after a 2016 merger, bought the brand in 2007 and sold it to Procter & Gamble the following year for more than 400 million dollars. Procter & Gamble sold it on in 2015 for about 50 million dollars to a joint venture controlled by Designer Parfums and Luxe Brands.
Fekkai bought the brand back in 2018 with Cornell Capital LLC and built Blue Mistral LLC as the holding company, with himself as chief executive. "I am thrilled to rejoin Fekkai Brands and eager to reconnect with the salons, teams and consumers," he said at the time. Blue Mistral now owns Fekkai Brands, which runs six salons in North America and sells through retailers including Ulta Beauty, and Bastide, the Provençal beauty line he and his wife acquired in 2015 and relaunched.
Chanel, Dessange, Catterton, Procter & Gamble, Designer Parfums, Luxe Brands, Cornell Capital and Ulta Beauty were commercial counterparties and retailers. None is a defendant and none is accused of knowing anything about Epstein.
The Ruemmler payments
Bloomberg reported on 11 March 2026, working from the Justice Department releases, that Epstein paid for salon appointments at Fekkai for himself, for the young women around him and for the lawyer Kathy Ruemmler. Around Valentine's Day 2016 he covered a 500 dollar massage at the Mandarin Oriental, a 340 dollar facial in Soho and a 95 dollar blowout at Fekkai for her. He paid for a 660 dollar cut and colour two weeks later. Epstein's assistant Lesley Groff arranged the payments by email.
"Trust me, it makes him happy to make you happy :)" Groff wrote. "It does make me happy, as it is so thoughtful and unnecessary," Ruemmler replied.
Ruemmler served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama and later as chief legal officer at Goldman Sachs. She sat for a closed-door interview with House Oversight on 15 July 2026. She is not a defendant in this lawsuit, and the complaint makes no allegation against her. "Epstein was a masterful liar, and he clearly lied to me," she said. Her spokeswoman said she did nothing wrong and had no knowledge of any criminal activity by Epstein.
Paragraph 3 of the complaint cites that Bloomberg story for two claims the story does not appear to make: that Epstein connected Fekkai to businessmen in Hong Kong and that he helped form the hair care products company. The feature is paywalled and no accessible version of it carries either line. Fekkai launched his product range with Chanel in 1995 and formed Frédéric Fekkai Brands in 1996. The earliest contact between the two men in the released files is a flight in June 2000.
The law the case runs on
New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act, codified at Administrative Code section 10-1101, exists because the Supreme Court struck down the civil remedy in the federal Violence Against Women Act in United States v. Morrison in 2000. The Council wrote a local replacement that year. It lets someone who has suffered a crime of violence motivated by gender sue for damages in a New York court. No prosecutor has to bring charges first, and the standard of proof is the civil one.
The 2000 law let a survivor sue the abuser and nobody else. An abettor provision added in 2022 extended liability to the people and institutions around the abuser, and opened a two-year window for claims that were otherwise too old. Survivors filed in the hundreds against schools, hospitals, employers and the city itself.
A First Department panel of Justices Webber, Gesmer, Rodriguez, Higgitt and O'Neill Levy held on 3 June 2025, in S. S. v Rockefeller University Hospital, that the abettor provision "created an entirely new cause of action imposing civil liability on parties who enabled gender-motivated violence, which did not exist at the time plaintiffs allege the abuse took place, so the presumption against retroactivity applies". Enabler claims for conduct before 9 January 2022 could not proceed, and the revival window could not restore them. Hundreds of suits were dismissed, including claims over the Rockefeller University Hospital paediatrician Reginald Archibald and claims over abuse in city juvenile detention.
Selvena Brooks-Powers, the Council majority whip, wrote the bill that reversed it.
"A single court decision should not be allowed to erase hundreds of cases or shield powerful institutions from accountability," she said.
Introduction 1297-A, sponsored by 42 members and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, cleared the Committee on Women and Gender Equity and passed 48 votes to nil on 25 November 2025. Its new section 10-1104.1 lets a survivor sue any party who "commits, directs, enables, participates in, or conspires in the commission of" the violence, for conduct going back to before the 2000 law existed.
Eric Adams vetoed it on Christmas Eve, three weeks before he left office. The bill exposed the city to about 1 billion dollars in liability, his administration said, and would force "cuts to essential services or tax increases". He accused the Council of legislating for one plaintiffs' firm, Levy Konigsberg, calling the bill "effectively a debit card for a single law firm to make a 300 million dollar withdrawal". His veto message said the measure "would allow a single law firm that lobbied Speaker Adams and the City Council to pocket up to 300 million dollars of taxpayer funds while reviving claims that have already been dismissed", and that his administration had tried and failed to get the Council to discuss capping legal fees.
Julie Menin, the Council speaker, said Adams had raised no such number while the bill was being heard.
"The mayor's veto message suddenly mentions a price tag to the city that was simply never raised," she said. Brooks-Powers called the Christmas Eve timing a cruel gift.
A Council spokesperson, Julia Agos, said the veto had sought to "deny survivors of sexual and gender-motivated violence the opportunity to hold their abusers accountable".
Adams was himself a defendant in a revived sexual assault case while he was mayor. Lorna Beach-Mathura filed a claim in November 2023, days before the state's Adult Survivors Act window closed, alleging that Adams sexually assaulted her in 1993 when both worked for the New York Police Department and that he demanded a sexual favour in exchange for helping her career. Adams denies it and has said he does not recall meeting her. His spokesperson said he "remains confident that the facts will ultimately prevail". Nothing in his veto message referred to that case, and the reasons he gave were fiscal. Zohran Mamdani's corporation counsel moved on 17 March 2026 to stop the city paying for his defence, arguing he was "not acting within the scope of his City employment" in 1993.
Council members overrode the veto on 29 January 2026 and the bill became Local Law 2026/050 that day. Suits may be filed under the reopened window for 18 months from that date, which puts the last day at 29 July 2027, for claims arising before 9 January 2022. Anyone whose case was filed between 1 March 2023 and 1 March 2025, the period the dismissals covered, may amend or refile to add the new cause of action.
The seven plaintiffs are running the enabling, directing, participating and conspiring limbs against Fekkai, his company and Coombs, none of whom is alleged to have committed the violence itself. Jordan Merson, who filed their complaint, campaigned for the amendment before filing under it. Survivors had been told after the Rockefeller ruling that "you came forward for nothing", he said.
The preemption question
Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York held in January 2025 that New York's Child Victims Act and Adult Survivors Act occupy the field and preempt the city's revival window, and dismissed a claim in Parker v. Alexander on that basis. Judge Jessica Clarke of the same court reached the opposite conclusion and refused to dismiss assault claims against Leon Black in Doe v. Black.
A Second Circuit panel of Judges Dennis Jacobs, José Cabranes and Raymond Lohier declined to resolve the split on 23 March 2026 and sent it to the New York Court of Appeals, certifying the question of "whether the two-year revival window established by New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 10-1105(a), to permit victims of sexual and gender-based violence to pursue civil claims, is preempted by the earlier revival periods set forth in New York State's Child Victims Act, N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 214-g, and Adult Survivors Act, N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 214-j". The panel pointed to the number of lower court cases waiting on the answer.
Paragraphs 17 and 18 of the Fekkai complaint argue the city law is not preempted because it created a new civil rights cause of action carrying punitive damages, fees and injunctive relief that the two state revival statutes do not, and quote Justice Adam Silvera of the New York Supreme Court in De Deus v. Estate of Jeffrey E. Epstein, Index No. 151301/2026, holding "that it is evident upon both a plain reading and examination of the purpose of the subject statues and local law that the GMVPA, which created a new civil rights cause of action where none existed at the time, is not and was not intended to be preempted by two revival statutes that were directed towards sexual assault causes of action". The typographical error is in the original.
Wexner
Eleven Epstein survivors discontinued their own gender-motivated violence suit against Wexner, the Wexner Foundation and Nine East 71st Street Corporation on 1 September 2026, the same day the Fekkai complaint was filed, with a corrected filing the following day. That case had been removed from state court to the Southern District of New York, where it landed before Judge John G. Koeltl, and the plaintiffs spent months trying to get it sent back. The fight turned on whether one plaintiff, Andrea Sterling, lived in Tulum or Miami, because her residence determined whether the parties were completely diverse and the federal court could keep the case. The discontinuance was without prejudice, and the window runs to July 2027.
Paragraph 20 of the Fekkai complaint states that Fekkai and Ferguson are domiciled in Connecticut while Coombs is domiciled in New York City, "creating lack of complete diversity". A defendant domiciled in New York defeats removal to a federal court on diversity grounds.
The floor list
Massie named 13 men and one woman on 31 August: Jes Staley, Leon Black, Wexner, David Copperfield, Lapo Elkann, Tom Pritzker, Glenn Dubin, Fekkai, Eduardo Teodorani-Fabbri, Jean-Luc Brunel, Daniel Siad, Ramsey Elkholy, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Groff. He said appearing in the files does not by itself prove guilt.
The speech or debate clause of the Constitution shields members of Congress from defamation suits over words spoken on the floor. Massie read the list there rather than issuing it in a press release. Massie said on NBC's Meet the Press on 24 May 2026 that he would name more names, seven months after losing his primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger and with his term running to January 2027.
Staley, Black, Wexner, Copperfield, Elkann, Pritzker, Dubin, Fekkai, Teodorani-Fabbri, Elkholy, Mountbatten-Windsor and Groff have all denied wrongdoing or any knowledge of Epstein's abuse. Brunel and Siad are dead. Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on 19 February 2026 and released under investigation. None of the living people on the list has been charged in connection with Epstein.
Massie filed a discharge petition the night of the speech on H.R. 9694, the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which he introduced on 15 July 2026 with California Democrat Ro Khanna and New Mexico Democrat Teresa Leger Fernández. The bill gives state attorneys general, district attorneys, Epstein's victims and members of Congress standing to sue the Justice Department over records withheld under the first transparency law, and strips deliberative process privilege as a ground for withholding. A discharge petition needs 218 signatures to force a floor vote over the objection of House leadership. Massie used the same route in 2025 to pass the first Epstein Files Transparency Act, which cleared the House 427 to 1 on 18 November and was signed the following day.
What has to be proved
The Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act requires a crime of violence committed because of gender, or on the basis of gender and due at least in part to an animus based on the victim's gender. Paragraph 13 pleads the animus in a single line:
"Every one of Epstein's victims was female, conclusively demonstrating that his acts of sexual violence were motivated by gender."
Enabler liability under the January amendment has never been tested at appellate level. The seven must show that a salon appointment booked and paid for by Epstein's office amounted to directing, enabling, participating in or conspiring in violence committed elsewhere by someone else, and that the stylists knew what the appointments were for.
Fekkai's answer to the complaint is not yet on the docket.
