A newly surfaced legal document contains what appear to be the first allegations that men were gang raped at Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch, the sprawling desert compound south of Santa Fe that has long drawn scrutiny for its role in the convicted sex offender's trafficking operation.
The Sun reported that the claims surface in a court filing connected to civil litigation against the Epstein estate. The document describes allegations from male victims who say they were subjected to gang rape at the remote New Mexico property. Until now, public accounts of abuse at Zorro Ranch have centered on female victims. These new claims expand the scope of alleged criminal conduct at the site and raise fresh questions about how many people were harmed there and who else may have been involved.
The filing identifies male complainants who allege they were sexually assaulted by multiple perpetrators at the ranch. The specific identities of the alleged attackers beyond Epstein have not been made public in the document as reported. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with these particular allegations.
The claims remain unproven in court. They are civil allegations contained in legal filings, not findings of fact by any judge or jury. But their emergence marks a significant expansion of the known universe of accusations tied to Epstein's New Mexico operation.
Zorro Ranch sits on thousands of acres of high desert terrain outside Stanley, New Mexico. Epstein purchased the property in the 1990s. Survivors and investigators have long suspected the ranch served as one node in a broader trafficking network, but concrete details about what happened there have been slower to surface than accounts tied to Epstein's properties in New York, Palm Beach, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The timing of these revelations coincides with a major official push in New Mexico to get answers. The state's House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation creating a bipartisan, four-lawmaker commission with subpoena power to investigate alleged trafficking and sexual abuse at Zorro Ranch, Newsmax reported.
The commission carries a $2.5 million budget. It will begin work immediately, seek testimony from survivors and local residents, and issue interim findings in July with a final report due by year's end. Lawmakers said the investigation will attempt to identify ranch guests and state officials who may have known about or participated in alleged abuse. Testimony gathered by the commission could support future prosecutions.
State Representative Andrea Romero has been one of the driving forces behind the effort. She told legislators that the commission's mandate goes beyond documenting abuse:
"This commission will specifically seek the truth about what officials knew, how crimes were unreported or reported, and how the state can ensure that this essentially never happens again."
Romero also made clear her view that Epstein operated with impunity in the state for years. She told Newsmax:
"He was basically doing anything he wanted in this state without any accountability whatsoever."
The broader congressional investigation into Epstein's network has already produced testimony from members of his inner circle, but the New Mexico commission represents the first state-level effort with dedicated funding and compulsory process to dig into one specific property.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Zorro Ranch story is how little is formally documented about what took place there. Romero told the Associated Press that several survivors have indicated trafficking activity extended to the ranch, but that "there's no complete record of what occurred."
New Mexico's attorney general confirmed in 2019 that possible victims connected to the ranch had been interviewed. But lawmakers have raised concerns that gaps in state law may have allowed Epstein to avoid registering locally as a sex offender, a failure that could have kept him off the radar of local law enforcement even after his 2008 conviction in Florida.
That 2008 plea deal, widely criticized as a sweetheart arrangement, resulted in Epstein serving just 13 months in a county jail with generous work-release privileges. He was required to register as a sex offender, but the patchwork of state registration laws meant enforcement varied. New Mexico, it appears, may have been one of the cracks he slipped through.
Attorney Sigrid McCawley, who has represented Epstein survivors, pointed to the breadth of the problem. She told Newsmax that many survivors had experiences in New Mexico and that "there were local politicians and other people that were aware of what was happening in New Mexico."
Investigators have not publicly confirmed the identities of those politicians or what they allegedly knew. The commission's subpoena power could force some of those answers into the open.
The male victim allegations add a dimension that prior public accounts did not include. If substantiated, they would suggest the abuse at Zorro Ranch was even more varied and systematic than previously understood. They also raise questions about whether prior investigations, both state and federal, failed to identify an entire category of victims.
The federal investigation that led to Epstein's 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges focused primarily on his New York and Florida operations. Epstein died in a Manhattan federal jail cell in August 2019 in a death ruled a suicide, a conclusion that remains a source of deep public skepticism. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell was later convicted on sex trafficking charges and is currently serving a 20-year sentence. Maxwell has since sought clemency while refusing to cooperate with certain deposition requests.
Civil litigation against the Epstein estate has continued to produce new allegations and new names. Claims of secret settlements involving alleged accomplices have drawn scrutiny from both legal observers and lawmakers seeking a full accounting of who enabled Epstein's operation.
The congressional probe has also widened. High-profile figures have been ordered to testify before the House Oversight Committee about their ties to Epstein, and the pace of depositions and document releases shows no sign of slowing.
The New Mexico commission faces a steep task. Investigators will need to determine how many victims, both male and female, were brought to Zorro Ranch and over what time period. They will need to establish who visited the property and whether any state or local officials received reports of suspicious activity and failed to act.
The commission will also need to examine whether New Mexico's legal framework created blind spots that Epstein exploited. If state law genuinely allowed a convicted sex offender to own and operate a remote compound without local registration or monitoring, that is a systemic failure that extends well beyond one predator.
Romero and her colleagues have framed the investigation as bipartisan and survivor-centered. The unanimous House vote suggests broad political will to pursue answers. Whether that will holds when subpoenas start landing on the desks of current and former officials remains to be seen.
Zorro Ranch has always been the least examined of Epstein's properties. His Manhattan townhouse, his Palm Beach estate, and his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands all received intense media and prosecutorial attention. The New Mexico compound, by contrast, sat in relative obscurity for years, shielded by its remoteness and by what lawmakers now describe as a failure of state oversight.
The newly surfaced allegations of male victims being gang raped at the property shatter whatever remained of the notion that the ranch was a secondary concern. If the commission does its job, the next several months could produce the most detailed public record yet of what Epstein built in the New Mexico desert and who helped him build it.
For years, the question around Epstein has been the same: who knew, who helped, and why did the system keep failing? New Mexico is finally asking those questions with subpoena power behind them. The answers will test whether accountability is still possible when the principal offender is dead and the institutions that should have stopped him are the ones under investigation.
