Child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hired a Philippine-based team to clear his name online, according to documents released by the US Department of Justice.

These documents include emails exchanged between Epstein and Al Seckel, the husband of the sister of Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Seckel’s team worked on saturating web search results with links to positive, sometimes misleading, websites, thereby concealing negative information related to his alleged criminal offenses—essentially what is now known as search engine optimization (SEO).

“The greater the number of links, then the higher the ranking,” Seckel told Epstein.

“Google suggests has gotten rid of two negatives … jeffry epstein jail and one jeffrey epstein pedophile … another thing I’ve had the Philippine work on since day one,” Seckel said in an email dated December 7, 2010.

“Our group in the Philippines is building links and links to our sites, pseudo sites, and the other Jeffrey Epsteins of the world,” Seckel explained in an email sent in October 2010.

The team created many links to websites that show his supposed involvement in science, sports, and philanthropy. They also scrubbed Epstein’s Wikipedia page of “toxic” terms.”

“Wikipedia was an important victory, as it will always be at the top of the search engine results. Now the head lines do not mention convicted sex offender or pedophile. Instead, Philanthrophic work, Epstein Foundation, Promotion of Scientists,” Seckel said in an email on December 16, 2010.

“We have stopped the hacking on your wiki site, and that was a major effort. Your wiki entry now is pretty tame, and bad stuff has been muted, bowlerized, and pused to the bottom,” he also wrote.

Epstein was arrested in 2019 over charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. He reportedly hanged himself in his jail cell while awaiting trial.