from www.miamiherald.com – Johnny Saintil, a Fort Lauderdale native of Haitian descent, sits in jail awaiting a federal trial Monday on charges of recruiting two girls for an Internet-based prostitution ring in Broward County. The 28-year-old faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Jeffrey Epstein, a Palm Beach billionaire, ended his one-year probation last month after serving 13 months in jail on two state convictions for soliciting a prostitute who was a minor. He also had to register as a sex offender.

Epstein, 57, came within a whisker of being indicted by the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami on essentially the same charges as Saintil — but involving a much higher number of victims.

Now Saintil’s defense attorney, Joel DeFabio [pictured], is urging a Fort Lauderdale federal judge to throw out the indictment against his client, arguing “selective prosecution” by prosecutors while citing the race and class differences between Saintil, a poor black man, and Epstein, a rich white man.

DeFabio argues that Saintil’s due-process rights have been violated and that he should receive the same treatment that Epstein got in his plea deal with the state attorney in Palm Beach County.

A “non-prosecution agreement” between the U.S. attorney’s office and Epstein — which paved the way for his being charged instead by the state attorney — promised no federal criminal charges for Epstein, as well as for four women who procured underage female sexual partners for him.

DeFabio points out that Epstein didn’t just pay for sex with high school girls — he also schemed with aides to recruit them for his personal pleasure.

“Epstein was both a pimp and a `john’ (an individual who pays the prostitutes for sex),” DeFabio said in court papers. “He recruited and paid individuals to go out into the public and find minor girls to have sex with him for money.”

Two other defendants charged with Saintil — Michael DeFrand and Stanley Wilson — have joined his selective prosecution petition filed with U.S. District Judge William Zloch.

The U.S. attorney’s office countered in court papers that DeFabio’s claims are “unfounded.” A spokesman declined to comment.

Prosecutors alleged that Saintil and four other defendants belonged to a criminal organization called Please Talk Paper, which recruited adult and minor females for prostitution at Broward hotels. The five co-defendants advertised their “escort” business on an Internet site, backpage.com., and shared resources, including computers, prostitutes and condoms, according to prosecutors.

The prosecutors described Saintil as a “pimp” and alleged that he recruited two runaway girls, 15 and 17, from Tampa for the prostitution network, starting last September.

That’s different than Epstein, who did not personally recruit or pimp out girls, but hired other people to do it for him — and did not sell their services for profit.

“Accordingly, Epstein and Saintil are not similarly situated individuals, and Saintil cannot show that his prosecution has had a discriminatory effect,” prosecutors said in court papers.

But DeFabio, a veteran defense attorney, said that “many would consider the actions of Epstein and his four pimps substantially more egregious.”

The Epstein case was a classic South Florida scandal. Epstein, one of America’s richest people, owned a Palm Beach mansion along with properties in Manhattan, New Mexico, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Palm Beach police began investigating allegations that Epstein was having paid sex with high school girls in 2005-06.

A politically connected investor, Epstein hired a team of powerful lawyers for his defense, including Kenneth Starr and Alan Dershowitz.

By fall 2007, Epstein signed the non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office, a record that was originally sealed from the public. It required that he agree to a plea deal with the Palm Beach state attorney on two counts of solicitation, that he be registered as sex offender in Florida, and that he settle civil suits with his underage victims and pay their legal costs.

In exchange, federal prosecutors dropped charges relating to allegations from about 35 underage victims.

Miami attorney Robert Josefsberg, who represented more than a dozen victims, had a major dispute with Epstein over getting paid more than $2 million.

In a lawsuit, Josefsberg said Epstein “began sexually abusing and exploiting one of his female victims when she was only 15 years old.”

from www.nbcmiami.com -If you’re going to solicit underage prostitutes, it’s best to be rich and white.

So says a South Florida attorney who feels his client should get off with a slap on the wrist just like billionaire Palm Beach perv Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, 57, received just over a year in jail and a year’s probation in 2008 after pleading guilty to charges of soliciting a prostitute who was a minor. It was a relatively weak prosecution and light sentence for a man accused of having sex with a multitude of underage girls who were recruited by people he’d hired.

Contrast Epstein’s story with that of Fort Lauderdale’s Johnny Saintil, charged with recruiting two underage girls last year for an Internet-based prostitution ring.

Saintil, 28, faces life in prison if convicted when his trial begins next week.

Joel DeFabio, Saintil’s lawyer, thinks he should get the same treatment Epstein got, and wants his client’s case thrown out, according to the Miami Herald.

Calling it “selective prosecution,” DeFabio claims the scales of justice aren’t coming out even for Saintil, a poor black man of Haitian descent, and Epstein, who is rich and white.

“Epstein was both a pimp and a `john’ (an individual who pays the prostitutes for sex),” DeFabio said in court papers, obtained by the Herald. “He recruited and paid individuals to go out into the public and find minor girls to have sex with him for money.”

The U.S. attorney’s office says the claims are “unfounded.” They claim Saintil and four other men recruited the girls, ages 15 and 17, to pimp them out. Epstein, on the other hand, didn’t pimp out the girls or make any money off them, only using them for his own pleasure.

“Accordingly, Epstein and Saintil are not similarly situated individuals, and Saintil cannot show that his prosecution has had a discriminatory effect,” prosecutors said in court papers.

Epstein, who once hob-nobbed with the likes of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, is done with probation and free as a bird, though he’s now a convicted sex offender in the state of Florida. And then there’s those dozen or so civil suits he’s in the process of fighting related to his various escapades with the high school girls.

Saintil’s federal trail begins Monday in Broward.