Epstein ordered sulfuric acid on same day FBI opened probe. Files show mundane reason

In February 2026, after the Department of Justice released 3.5 million documents related to the case of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a rumor spread online that the disgraced financier had ordered 330 gallons of sulfuric acid on the day the FBI announced it would investigate him for suspected sex trafficking. 

For example, one X user posted (archived) screenshots supposedly showing files related to Epstein's case. The first looked like an email noting the date the investigation started, Dec. 6, 2018, and the second seemed to be a wire transfer request form for sulfuric acid from the same date. 

The X user appeared to suggest the alleged purchase could be evidence Epstein had been informed about the FBI investigation and was trying to destroy evidence using the acid. The post read:

On the same exact day that the FBI opened a child sex trafficking case against Epstein in 2018, he ordered half a dozen 55-gallon containers full of sulfuric acid to his private island. It could be a coincidence, but what are the odds? On the same day? Was he tipped off?

The claim also appeared on Facebook, and Snopes readers contacted us about the rumor. Some people wondered whether Epstein had ordered this chemical "to dissolve bodies" after he learned of the looming FBI investigation. 

An examination of the DOJ's repository of Epstein files revealed that the documents in the X post were among those the department released in late January 2026. Therefore, the claim was true, though other documents indicated Epstein's intended use for the acid was much more benign than making bodies disappear. 

The FBI began its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein on Dec. 6, 2018, according to Page 93 of an FBI document included in the published files. Another document in the DOJ's "Epstein Library" showed that the first screenshot in the above X post, which noted that date, was authentic.

(That investigation followed a series of Miami Herald articles about Alexander Acosta, who in 2018 was secretary of labor in President Donald Trump's first administration, declining to pursue federal charges against Epstein when Acosta was U.S. attorney in Florida, in what has often been described as a "sweetheart deal.") 

Meanwhile, the documents also included the wire transfer request form (in the second screenshot) sent on Dec. 6, 2018, from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands (Little St James, the name of Epstein's private island, is off the coast of St. Thomas) to Gemini Seawater Systems, a company in Gainesville, Florida, that offered seawater reverse osmosis installations and services. BluMetric, an environmental consulting and water technology company, acquired the company in 2024.

Seawater reverse osmosis is a process that separates seawater and the salt and other impurities it contains to desalinize water. An island like Epstein's would require such a system to be inhabitable.

The wire transfer form said a payment of $4,373.17 would be used to acquire the following goods (detail in brackets ours):

x 6 55 gal drums sulfuric acid w/fuel and insurance charge for transport; Materials for conductivity probes; Replacement pH and cable - RO [reverse osmosis] Plant 

Sulfuric acid is part of the reverse osmosis process. It helps to chemically pretreat the water. The acid lowers the pH of the water to prevent calcium carbonate deposits on the membranes that filter the water to remove impurities. 

A search of the DOJ's documents revealed emails between Epstein and someone named Roy Hodges on May 8, 2013, more than five years before the sulfuric acid order in question. The subject line read: "LSJ SWRO plant" (Little St. James seawater reverse osmosis plant). Hodges relayed to Epstein details about problems with the island's desalinization plant caused by the water's high pH. Using the British spelling for "sulfuric," Hodges told Epstein there needed "to be a sulphuric acid injection pump added in order to offset this."

Less than a year later, in February 2014, the Florida company TSG, which designs, builds and maintains water purification plants, wrote a service report on the seawater reverse osmosis plant on Little St. James, which also appears in the Epstein files the DOJ published. The report mentions a "Sulfuric Acid Chemical feed pump" and includes pictures of the plant:

We then set about the task of calibrating instrumentation, batching pre-treatment chemicals, replacing the tubing on the Sulfuric Acid Chemical feed pump, priming and adjusting all chemical feed pumps using the chemical calibration columns that were provided to L.S1 during the initial installation and commissioning of the SWRO Plant.

In other words, Epstein's order for sulfuric acid appeared to have been for routine maintenance of the desalinization plant on Little St. James. 

For further reading, Snopes examined a rumor Epstein was Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of Bitcoin as well as a claim that his island had a secret trapdoor that opened to the sea.