Famed magician David Copperfield is accused of grooming teenagers and assaulting young women he met at his shows over a decades-long period, The Guardian revealed.
On Wednesday, the outlet reported that 16 women shared allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by Copperfield, spanning from the 1980s to 2014, and that more than half of the women were under the age of 18 at the time. (The illusionist denies these claims.)
The disturbing accusations detailed in the report are eerily similar to those against one of Copperfield’s old friends: the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
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Indeed, Copperfield’s name has surfaced repeatedly over the years in connection to the dead sex offender—most recently in a January cache of unsealed court records. The 67-year-old entertainer was so friendly with Epstein that he visited his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion and left messages for him as “Magic David.”
While Copperfield’s lawyers told The Guardian that he “did not know about Epstein’s horrific crimes” and only “learned about it from the press,” a lawyer for Epstein victims once served Copperfield with a subpoena outside one of his Las Vegas shows, believing he could have helpful information on the financier’s crimes.
In his book Relentless Pursuit, attorney Brad Edwards noted, “Regrettably we never were able to depose Copperfield due to a number of legal and logistical roadblocks.”
Edwards’ memoir refers to Johanna Sjoberg, a victim of Epstein who accused Prince Andrew of groping her and who was able to corroborate the identities of some of Epstein’s famous friends. “David Copperfield was one,” Edwards wrote. “On numerous occasions, Johanna met Copperfield, who was clearly a close friend of Jeffrey’s during that period.”
“Other witnesses that I had interviewed had also told me of the friendship between Epstein and Copperfield and how their private islands were located close enough for them to visit each other on occasion,” Edwards added.
A recently unsealed 2016 deposition revealed Johanna testified that Copperfield performed magic tricks at Epstein’s home. Copperfield, she added, asked her if she knew that “girls were getting paid to find other girls” but never specified whether the females in question were underage.
According to The Guardian, Copperfield gave a 15-year-old girl his phone number and would send her notes and gifts when she was 16, including a teddy bear and Valentine’s Day balloon. “In 2 years I will be back,” read one note from the magician, who was 19 years her senior.
The woman says Copperfield approached her and her mom in the parking lot after a Georgia show in 1991 and gave her a business card reading “Magic Dave.” He then told her he’d take her to dinner once she turned 18, The Guardian reported. Copperfield, the accuser says, kept in touch and called her family’s home often.
After one magic show, when the accuser was 17, Copperfield allegedly encouraged her to perform oral sex on him in his limousine. She says Copperfield may have assumed she was 18 at the time. When she was 18, she lost her virginity to the magician. (Copperfield’s lawyers have denied that he “groomed” the teenager and said they had “a wholly lawful four year consensual relationship.”)
Copperfield also allegedly directed his employees to scour the audience for attractive young women and invite them to the stage or for a post-show meeting in his limousine, hotel, or penthouse multiple times a week. Epstein, as has been widely reported, ordered his own assistants to recruit young women and girls into his trafficking scheme.
And in another parallel to the Epstein scandal, in 2007, the FBI was investigating a woman named Lacey Carroll’s claims that Copperfield sexually assaulted her at his Bahamas private island. The FBI even raided Copperfield’s warehouse and theater in Las Vegas, seizing $2 million in cash, a computer hard drive, and a digital camera memory chip, but dropped the probe two years later without explanation.
A second accuser, Brittany Lewis, spoke to the FBI around that time too. She claimed she was 17 in 1988 when Copperfield drugged and assaulted her after she competed in a modeling contest where he served as a judge, The Wrap reported.
Copperfield denied any wrongdoing in a Twitter post following The Wrap’s report.
“I’ve lived with years of news reports about me being accused of fabricated, heinous acts, with few telling the story of the accuser getting arrested, and my innocence.” (The illusionist was referring to Carroll’s 2010 arrest for allegedly providing a false statement to police in connection to an unrelated rape accusation case.)
The FBI was also looking at Epstein in 2007 and reportedly wanted to arrest him while he judged a beauty pageant in the Virgin Islands—months before he inked a lenient non-prosecution agreement with Miami federal prosecutors.
At least one Epstein accuser, Maria Farmer, says she reported Epstein to the FBI in the 1990s. The agency is now facing a lawsuit from Epstein victims who say it failed to properly investigate the wealthy sex-trafficker and allowed his abuse to continue for years.
Epstein would finally face sex-trafficking charges in July 2019, only to die in a Manhattan jail a month later in what authorities said was a suicide.
Public records, in the form of victims’ lawsuits and the 2021 trial of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, have long detailed how Epstein preyed on vulnerable teen girls and young women. He offered them money or educational opportunities in exchange for sexualized massages and raped them during some encounters.
When Epstein’s assistant Sarah Kellen was deposed for a victim’s lawsuit in 2010—throughout which she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights—victims’ attorneys peppered her with questions about Copperfield.
“You are aware, are you not, that David Copperfield and Jeffrey Epstein used to share for sexual—for sex, girls under the age of 16?” victim’s lawyer Spencer Kuvin asked her. (No Epstein victims, it should be noted, have publicly accused Copperfield of any abuse, nor has he been charged or arrested in connection with Epstein.)
Kellen pleaded the Fifth.
Another lawyer, Katherine Ezell, questioned Kellen about the men's relationship and whether they recruited girls for each other. “To your knowledge,” Ezell asked, “are they involved in any sexual trafficking of young women?”
Ezell’s other queries went unanswered:
“Do you know that when David Copperfield is in town, he gives Jeffrey Epstein tickets and Jeffrey gives some to young women to attend those shows?”
“And do you know that those girls are invited backstage after the show?”
After Palm Beach cops began investigating Epstein in 2005 for molesting scores of girls, they discovered a stash of phone message pads in his garbage. Copperfield or his assistants left more than a few for the creepy financier.
“It’s jackpot,” one cryptic January 2005 message said.
Another from December 2004 read, “Just called to say hello.”
