Doin' Time: My Year at MCC Federal Prison With Jeffrey Epstein and Paul Manafort
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After playing what seemed like an endless cat and mouse proffer game with the United States Department of Justice for 5 + years, spending north of 100k on lawyers, and living in a sort of purgatory during which I knew I might serve 3 years in prison at the end of that endless process, I was finally at age 69 mercifully sentenced to serve a year and a day in prison for the first time in my life. And not just any old prison, mind you, but a facility that one reporter called "the Guantanamo Bay of New York City," the frequently maligned MCC federal prison in Downtown New York City.
The crime I committed to suffer what I have come to call "the federal grinder," was forwarding several million dollars to municipalities to improve their infrastructure rather than pay income tax on cash I'd earned as an adult advertising agency (read escort agency ads). I'd actually spent none of the money I fraudulently did not report on my 1040 and had sent it all to a Vanguard Money market fund (though that's no excuse for not paying my taxes. I own that).
Regardless, so stressful were those 5 + years that when I finally heard the judge say the magic words, "a year and a day" in between all the legal jargon that surrounded them, a wave of relief came over me. Finally, I'd be out from under the yoke of the Department of Justice and on my way to the Bureau of Prisons. All the uncertainty was behind me. After a year, it would all be over. The light at the end of the tunnel finally shone brightly on my felonious butt.
What awaited me in prison was in some ways exactly what I expected (ennui, bad food, bad company, cacophony, and little privacy). But what I didn't see coming was having Donald Trump's disgraced campaign manager, Paul Manafort, as my celly - nor Jeffrey Epstein as one of my closest friends during the last month of his life.
Initially, I was going to title this work "Lifsetyles of the Rich and Infamous" in reference to Paulie and Jeffrey and my interaction with them. But upon proofreading the manuscript before publishing, I came to realize that the book is less about them than it is about the manner in which the government prosecuted me, and the incredible incompetence displayed by the bureacrats who ran MCC federal prison.
There's a reason the BOP shut that dump down. And it's not just because Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while they weren't looking. The facility was a tragicomedy of errors emblematic of a penal system that fosters recidivism like few others in the world.
The 6.5 years I suffered at the hands of the federal government (and my own stupidity for forwarding my money to a place I thought it would best utilized) were not fun. And the 5+ years leading up to my incarceration I found punitive, petty, and most unnecessary. But I certainly learned a lot along the way. It is my hope that those who read this book will feel the same as I do after finishing the manuscript.
William Mersey
I was born in the New York City area to educated parents both of whom graduated from Columbia University. Predictably, I was run through the academic mill and by the age of 21, had graduated college with honors, was awarded a government fellowship to enter a PhD program in Economics, and had dropped out to play the guitar for a living. Music defined me for the next 15 years during which I played at least one gig in all but two states east of the Mississippi. Working as a backup musician for the likes of Stephanie Mills, the Main Ingredient, the Marvelettes, Crystals, Shirelles, Joey Dee, the Belmonts, and on and on had its moments — both good and bad. By age 35, I grew weary of the music business and settled into driving a taxi, a hustle that led me to writing slice-of-life stories about the bizarre and surreal, subjects about which few people know more than a cabby who drives from 6 PM to 6 AM in New York City. I was not only published in men's magazines — but became an op-ed freelancer for the NY Times, NY Daily News, and NY Newsday. Having gained some notoriety writing in both of those venues, I was hired full-time by one of the publications for which I was freelancing. And that organization published sex magazines filled with "girls you can have." Before I knew it, I wasn't just writing erotic stories by the truckload, I was selling advertising to the boss's customers (the prostitutes who advertised in his magazines) as well! After a few years of servicing the advertising needs of most of the escorts in New York City, I opened my own ad agency and managed to make millions of dollars — most of which I didn't pay income tax on! Instead, I placed the money in triple tax-free money market funds, a huge mistake in retrospect. The IRS was not sympathetic when a competitor ratted me out to keep himself from going to prison on a human trafficking charge. As a result, I was effectively relieved of 2/3rds of my money and locked up in a federal prison for a year with PAUL MANAFORT as my celly, and in the exclusive company of JEFFREY EPSTEIN as part of my job watching suicidal inmates at the facility. Out for 4 years now, I am currently living a quiet life in Greenwich Villge, New York.
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