Some US colleges cancel class footage after on-line claims surrounding Epstein

Some college districts within the U.S. dropped plans for sophistication footage after widespread social media posts linked a billionaire with ties to Jeffrey Epstein to the images big Lifetouch, which on Friday referred to as the claims “completely false.”

The disruption to high school image plans in Texas and elsewhere started after on-line posts linked Lifetouch, which pictures thousands and thousands of scholars every year, to the funding fund supervisor Apollo Global Management. Apollo’s former CEO is billionaire investor Leon Black, who met recurrently with Epstein and was suggested by Epstein on monetary issues.

Black led the corporate in 2019, when funds managed by Apollo purchased Lifetouch’s dad or mum firm, Shutterfly. The $2.7 billion deal closed in September 2019 — a month after Epstein’s dying by suicide behind bars as he awaited trial over allegations from federal prosecutors that he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of women.

Both Lifetouch and Apollo famous that timeline in statements Friday, two days after Lifetouch CEO Ken Murphy mentioned in an Instagram put up that neither Black nor any of Apollo’s administrators or traders ever had any entry to Lifetouch pictures.

“No Lifetouch executives have ever had any relationship or contact with Epstein and we have never shared student images with any third party, including Apollo,” Lifetouch mentioned in its assertion Friday. “Apollo and its funds also have no role in Lifetouch’s daily operations and have no access to student images.”

The canceled college footage are one other ripple impact over the discharge of thousands and thousands of information from the Epstein investigation, together with paperwork displaying Epstein’s common contacts with CEOs, journalists, scientists and distinguished politicians lengthy after a 2008 conviction on intercourse crimes costs.

In the small Texas city of Malakoff, the native college district canceled a scholar image day after a number of mother and father instructed the district they weren’t snug with Lifetouch photographing their kids, spokesperson Katherine Smith mentioned in a press release e-mailed Friday. Several different colleges and districts in Texas additionally canceled or modified plans, in addition to a constitution college in Arizona, in keeping with Facebook bulletins posted by the colleges.

“We decided our students and families would be best served by keeping all of our pictures in-house for the rest of this year, and we are looking at all of our options for the 2026-2027 school year,” Smith mentioned.

Parents involved about Lifetouch included MaKallie Gann, whose kids attend colleges in Howe, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of Dallas. She mentioned she was anxious about how a lot data Lifetouch collects on college students.

“Whenever you order the pictures, it has their name. It has the age, of course. It has their grade, their teacher, the school that they’re in,” she mentioned.

No proof of Epstein or anybody in his orbit seeing Lifetouch pictures has emerged from information organizations’ assessment of thousands of documents released this month by the U.S. Department of Justice, although there are no less than 1.7 million information.

The assessment exhibits Black’s identify appeared 8,200 occasions, although that determine doubtless contains some duplicate information. Black stepped down as Apollo’s CEO in March 2021, saying he wished to give attention to his household, well being, and “many other interests.”

That was two months after a committee of the corporate’s board issued a report concluding that Epstein had suggested Black personally on property planning, tax points, charitable giving and working his “family office,” however offered no companies to Apollo or invested in no Apollo funds.

The report additionally mentioned the assessment — which Black requested — discovered “no evidence” that he was concerned with Epstein’s alleged prison actions “in any way” or “at any time.”

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Also contributing was Associated Press author Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota.