Nearly a year after developer Todd Michael Glaser committed to buying the Palm Beach estate belonging to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the lot sold to a new buyer for $25.845 million.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Matrix Partners partner David Skok bought the lot for more than $7 million more than Glaser paid for it he when he bought it for $18.5 million back in March.
Glaser first announced his commitment to buying the property in November 2020 and finished razing it in May 2021. He immediately listed it for $29.95 million and did not have to wait long for a buyer to materialize.
Lawrence Moens of Lawrence A. Moens Associates represented the seller, while Paul Birmingham of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the buyer.
The 14,000-square-foot mansion that used to stand at 358 El Brillo Way was purchased by Epstein in 1990 for $2.5 million. Epstein had committed suicide while waiting for trial on charges of running an extensive worldwide sex trafficking scheme involving underage girls. A judge and his estate negotiated a victims’ compensation fund in which the sale of the properties would go to the victims and any outstanding tax and creditor obligations.
Along with Epstein’s primary residence in New York, the Palm Beach estate is where many of Epstein’s accusers said the assaults occurred. After police raided it in 2005, they found phone message books with underage girls’ names and a high school transcript of one girl in the desk of its master bedroom.
After demolishing the home, Glaser initially tried to build another mansion of the same size in its place but the Palm Beach architectural review board rejected the design. Glaser eventually scrapped plans to get a design approved and simply sold the property. Known for his vulture-like development tactics, he recently relisted a private island off of Palm Beach for $120 million just two months after buying it for $85 million amid skyrocketing South Florida real estate prices.
“I’d rather just buy land, sit on it for six to eight months, knock down what’s there, get it ready for somebody else and boom, I’m out,” Glaser told the WSJ.