I was taken aback when I read how often the Epstein Files loop back to the Philippines. The deeper I went, the more it felt less like a passing reference and more like a quiet network built on cheap labor, digital cleanup work, and the same export policies we’ve been normalizing for decades.

HOW OFTEN DOES “PHILIPPINES” APPEAR IN THE EPSTEIN STORY?

The U.S. Department of Justice says it has released just a sliver of the material linked to Epstein—around 12,000 documents out of more than 2 million still under review. Even in that small released portion, tracking projects and explainers claim “Philippines” appears more than a thousand times, with one compilation citing 1,078 mentions.

Local explainers and reaction videos have tried to answer why our country suddenly shows up so much whenever people talk about these files. They keep circling the same clusters: Filipino household workers in Epstein’s New York world, a Philippines‑based operation trying to bury his bad press online, and a modeling scout emailing Epstein from Manila while “visiting agencies and scouting.”

Some commentators spend time on what the files do not show yet. So far there are no documented flight logs to the Philippines in the public cache, no identified victims from here, and no confirmed Filipino political “big fish” named as co‑conspirators in the released set. What we do see is Filipinos and Philippine‑based services used as infrastructure: people in the rooms, people cleaning up after, teams polishing the online image of a man already known to be a sex offender.

JOJO AND LYNN FONTANILLA: HOUSEHOLD STAFF INSIDE THE STORY

One story that keeps coming up is about Jojo and Rosalyn “Lynn” Fontanilla, a Filipino couple who worked for Epstein at his New York townhouse at 9 East 71st Street. Esquire Philippines and feminist newsletters note that Jojo appears on a partially redacted “inner circle” list linked to Epstein’s estate. Lynn, sometimes written as “Jun-Lyn,” appears in court documents as someone accused of helping Epstein access victims inside that house.

In a lawsuit filed by victim Jennifer Araoz, Lynn Fontanilla is named among the women who allegedly “directly facilitated” Epstein’s sex‑buying and trafficking operation. Araoz’s complaint describes Lynn leading her to the so‑called massage room and preparing the space with towels and supplies before Epstein entered. The filings talk about a pattern of “three girls a day” and “dozens if not hundreds” of women and girls over time.

Lynn died of cancer in 2016, but her name remains in those records as a close household‑level enabler. Jojo appears to have stayed in Epstein’s orbit longer. Documents and testimony say he worked as Epstein’s driver and may have been involved in transporting at least one minor, based on a 2017 email where his name appears in a context that raised alarms for investigators and commentators.

Public records tie the Fontanillas to another New York address—301 E 66th St, Apartment 5P—the same location where Epstein’s chef said several “young females” from Spain and Russia lived while traveling with Epstein. Filipino community posts and Facebook threads picked up that detail and started trading old photos and guesses about the couple, but most of that remains speculation wrapped around a small core of documented facts.

“FACTORY OF WORKERS”: WHY FILIPINO STAFF KEPT SHOWING UP

Writers who went through the files argue the Fontanillas weren’t a one‑off. One detailed Substack analysis says Epstein repeatedly filled household management and housekeeping roles with Filipino workers, often hiring husband‑and‑wife teams. The people who saw who came in and out, who cleaned the rooms after abuse, who lived inside those walls—many of them were Filipino migrants.

That pattern sits on top of something bigger. For decades the Philippine state has treated labor export as policy, especially for domestic work. Studies describe how Filipinos are trained, certified, and shipped out as “world‑class domestic workers,” while remittances hover around 8–9% of GDP—the highest share in Southeast Asia.

Programs like the “Supermaid” initiative under Gloria Macapagal‑Arroyo show how the government itself helped structure this pipeline: training women specifically for overseas household work, then celebrating them as heroes once they leave. Feminist and migrant‑rights writers argue that this creates a workforce that is highly disciplined, deeply dependent on foreign employers, and structurally discouraged from speaking up about abuse under threat of deportation, blacklisting, or lost income for their families.

Commentaries on the Epstein Files point out something that feels especially unfair. Filipino workers’ full names, resumés, and sometimes contact details are visible in the documents, while many powerful international figures connected to Epstein remain hidden behind redactions or unreleased pages. The people with the least power are the most exposed. The ones with the most power are still the hardest to see.

Mahirap. Nakakapagod. But this is the system we’ve been living with for years.

THE PH‑BASED OPERATION THAT TRIED TO CLEAN EPSTEIN’S NAME

If Filipino staff were inside Epstein’s physical world, another cluster shows how operations here helped clean up his digital world. Reports from Philstar, GMA News, diskurso, and others cite DOJ documents revealing that Epstein hired a team based in the Philippines around 2010 to manage his online reputation.

Those pieces focus on Al Seckel, who was married to Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister. Emails quoted in the coverage show Seckel pitching a strategy: flood the internet with positive or neutral content about Epstein so that search results about “jail,” “sex offender,” and “pedophile” get pushed down the page.

One line from those emails keeps getting cited: “Our group in the Philippines is building links and links to our sites, pseudo sites, and the other Jeffrey Epsteins of the world.” The plan was to build a web of sites—some about Epstein’s supposed philanthropy and science funding, some about other people with the same name—so that Google would show a softer front page.

Wikipedia was a key battleground. Emails from a “team leader” managing a Philippines‑based operation describe “backend work” and ongoing plans to edit Epstein’s article once they received fresh text and images. They complained about more than twenty editors with alerts on Epstein who kept reverting any attempts to soften the record.

At one point, Seckel emailed Epstein to say Wikipedia now looked “tame,” with the opening lines emphasizing philanthropy and foundations instead of the sex‑offender conviction. Another email claimed progress on Google’s autosuggest, saying negative suggestions like “jeffry epstein jail” and “jeffrey epstein pedophile” had dropped off.

Media summaries and DOJ material put the cost of this project at around $10,000 to $20,000 a month. Epstein complained that he hadn’t been told about a recurring monthly fee and thought it was a one‑time twenty thousand project that kept growing. Seckel pushed back, saying they were trying to fix a situation they didn’t create and insisting they kept costs “significantly down.”

For anyone who has watched troll farms and disinformation work grow into an industry here, this structure is familiar. Overseas client, local team, English‑speaking staff paid to manage perception at scale. Epstein’s cleanup operation looks like an early version of the same playbook used later for political campaigns and corporate crises.

DANIEL SIAD AND THE MANILA SCOUTING ROUTE

Another name buried in these documents is Daniel Siad, sometimes written with a middle name “Amar,” described as a global scout or recruiter for women and girls. Sources identify him as a Swedish citizen of Berber‑Algerian origin who worked as a modeling scout and was mentioned in declassified U.S. documents as someone recruiting for Epstein, according to statements tied to French agent Jean‑Luc Brunel.

Emails from 2010 and 2014 place him in Southeast Asia. In one, he tells Epstein he has “just arrived to Manila visiting some agencies and scouting,” and Epstein replies with a short “Nothing new?” In another, he notes he is “in Bangkok back from Manila.” It’s not a full travel log, but it’s enough to show that he was moving through Manila and Bangkok while in touch with Epstein.

Investigative write‑ups describe a much wider route: rural areas of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, plus France, Sweden, South Africa, Barcelona, Ibiza, Morocco, and Cuba. Some accounts say he looked for women who could “look 18” even when older, and that Epstein often asked about age first when sent photos.

There are references to Siad arranging travel, providing financial help to some women, and receiving payments via a Dubai bank account. Online sleuthing threads point out that his LinkedIn and some other public profiles disappeared after his name surfaced, which fits the pattern of people trying to erase their own trail once they are linked to Epstein.

What we don’t have yet in publicly discussed documents are detailed records of specific women recruited from Manila, or clear victim testimonies tied directly to the Philippines. The route passes through here. The human specifics, for now, remain mostly hidden behind unreleased files and redactions.

PRINCE ANDREW, BOBBY ONGPIN, AND DEALS IN THE BACKGROUND

Inside all of this there is one almost surreal detail: a reported photo of Jojo and Lynn Fontanilla posing with Prince Andrew in what looks like a business setting in the Philippines. A Substack piece on Filipinos in Epstein’s inner circle says the files describe Andrew as “making a deal in the Philippines” with oligarch Robert “Bobby” Ongpin.

Ongpin, who died in 2023, served as Trade and Industry Minister under Marcos Sr. and later became known for Alphaland and the exclusive Balesin Island Club, among other projects. Profiles describe him as a dealmaker who thrived where politics and business overlapped and where risk was high.

The Epstein‑related material does not spell out what kind of business was discussed, what stage it reached, or how exactly Epstein benefited. But the image of Andrew, Ongpin, and Epstein’s Filipino staff in the same Philippine moment shows how far the network’s social circles extended.

Prince Andrew’s broader Epstein story is already documented: visits to Epstein’s homes, a long friendship, and the allegations from Virginia Giuffre that she was trafficked to him as a teenager—claims he denies but which cost him roles and patronages. The Philippine detail doesn’t overturn that narrative; it just adds another location where royal, oligarch, and Epstein worlds brushed against each other.

THE SENATE SAYS IT WANTS ANSWERS

Once Philippine media began running more detailed pieces on the PH angles—the staff, the PR operation, the scouting—the story crossed into the Senate. On February 10, 2026, Senator Loren Legarda said she would file a resolution to investigate Epstein’s footprint in the Philippines.

Reports from Inquirer, ABS‑CBN, and others quote her describing Epstein as a “pedophile” once considered a financial genius and stressing the need to examine organizations, syndicates, and PR firms that may have helped sanitize his image. She mentioned the 2010 Philippines‑based operation and hinted at possible links to high‑level foreign figures. She also said she plans to ask the DOJ, NBI, and a relevant Senate committee to look closely at these networks.

All of this is happening while U.S. authorities admit they have released less than 1% of the files and continue to review more than 2 million documents. Any Philippine investigation will start with an incomplete set, and will rely heavily on how much the U.S. government is willing to share and how far our own institutions are willing to go.

We have seen this movie before. Resolutions get filed, hearings open, cameras roll, and then the urgency fades. The question now is whether this becomes another performance, or whether someone actually follows the trail into the harder places—money flows, contracts, and the local firms that turned reputation‑laundering into a service.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT OUR SYSTEMS

Underneath all the names and documents is a bigger question: why do men like Jeffrey Epstein find our country so useful? Labor‑export research describes the Philippines as a state that “produces” workers for export, especially in domestic work, and measures success by remittances. That model creates millions of people who live inside foreign homes but remain structurally invisible when abuse happens.

On the digital side, investigations into troll farms, Cambridge Analytica‑style work, and paid networks show how local expertise in social‑media manipulation has been repackaged and sold. The same skills that fuel election disinformation can also be used to sanitize a billionaire’s Google results. Epstein hiring a PH‑based SEO team in 2010 fits into that longer story.

Opinion pieces about the Epstein Files also call out the ethics of the release itself: Filipino workers’ full names and histories are out in public, while many powerful international figures remain hidden. One columnist called it “scapegoating through omission,” because the system once again protects the influential and exposes those with the least power.

Conspiracy theories rushed in to fill the gaps—claims about nursing education, secret flight logs, and deep local political ties that still lack documentary proof in the released material. Some content creators have tried to walk viewers through what is solid, what is speculation, and what remains unknown.

What we know for now looks like this: Filipino household staff, like the Fontanillas, were embedded in Epstein’s daily life and appear in legal accusations as enablers on the ground. A Philippines‑based team worked to soften and bury online references to his crimes. A scout tied to Epstein moved through Manila and Southeast Asia as part of a larger recruiting route. High‑level foreign figures intersected with Philippine elites and Filipino staff in ways we still do not fully understand. Our Senate now says it wants to look into this, while most of the underlying documents remain sealed abroad.

The risk is obvious: the people most exposed end up being the workers and local staff whose names are already out there. The ones at the top of the network still sit behind redactions, legal teams, and distance.

Sources:

1. The Filipinos in Epstein’s Inner Circle
   https://decolonizefeminism.substack.com/p/the-filipinos-on-epsteins-inner-circle

2. How a Philippines-based ops tried to bury Jeffrey Epstein’s bad press
   https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2026/02/09/2506707/how-philippines-based-ops-tried-bury-jeffrey-epsteins-bad-press

3. Epstein hired Philippines-based SEO operation to scrub his name
   https://www.diskurso.ph/news/2026/02/09/epstein-hired-philippines-based-seo-operation-to-scrub-his-name-pr-industry-for-predators

4. Jeffrey Epstein hired PH-based team to work on hiding his criminal past
   https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/975961/epstein-hired-ph-based-team-to-work-on-hiding-his-criminal-past/story/

5. Resolution set to be filed in Senate to check Epstein footprint in PH
   https://globalnation.inquirer.net/308572/resolution-set-to-be-filed-in-senate-to-check-epstein-footprint-in-ph

6. Legarda to file resolution seeking investigation on Epstein’s alleged network in PH
   https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2026/2/10/legarda-to-file-resolution-seeking-investigation-on-epstein-s-alleged-network-in-ph-1821

7. OPINION | The invisible Filipinos in the Epstein files
   https://usa.inquirer.net/188800/opinion-the-invisible-filipinos-in-the-epstein-files

8. The Filipino Connection in Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex Crimes
   https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/jeffrey-epstein-criminal-case-filipino-a00297-20200708

9. The Tradition of Remittances Continues to Bolster the Philippines, But It Also Comes at a Cost
   https://thefilipinochronicle.com/2025/12/14/the-tradition-of-remittances-continues-to-bolster-the-philippines-but-it-also-comes-at-a-cost/

10. Filipino Maids for Export
    https://archive.globalpolicy.org/globalization/globalization-of-the-economy-2-1/general-analysis-on-globalization-of-the-economy/50849-filipino-maids-for-export.html

11. What’s so Super About Being a Maid? The Philippines’ Supermaid Program and Women’s False Empowerment
    https://valeriefm.com/2012/01/31/whats-so-super-about-being-a-maid-the-philippines-supermaid-program-and-womens-false-empowerment/

12. Bagong Bayani and COVID-19 Heroes: Philippine Labor Export as Femicide
    https://planamag.com/bagong-bayani-and-covid-19-heroes-philippine-labor-export-as-femicide/

13. The Economic Journey: The Role of Filipino Maids in the International Labor Market
    https://academicjournalair.com/the-economic-journey-the-role-of-filipino-maids-in-the-international-labor-market/

14. DOJ says it has released less than 1% of its Epstein files and is still reviewing more than 2 million documents
    https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/06/politics/epstein-files-justice-department-review

15. US justice department has released less than 1% of Epstein files, filing reveals
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/06/epstein-files-release-justice-department

16. January 30, 2026 — DOJ releases millions of pages of documents in Epstein investigation (live updates)
    https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/epstein-files-release-doj-01-30-26

17. Epstein Library | United States Department of Justice
    https://www.justice.gov/epstein

18. Search Full Epstein Library | United States Department of Justice
    https://www.justice.gov/epstein/search

19. Filipinos in the Epstein Files (Reddit thread)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/ChikaPH/comments/1qumptd/filipinos_in_the_epstein_files/

20. A unified archive of House Oversight, FBI, DOJ releases (Reddit datasets post)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/datasets/comments/1ps2orn/project_full_epstein_index_a_unified_archive_of/

21. Epstein Files Archive
    https://epsteinfilesarchive.com

22. Epstein Files Library Archive | Public Document Search
    https://epsteinfta.com

23. Epstein Files - Jeffrey Epstein Court Documents & Flight Logs
    https://searchthefiles.com

24. Why the Philippines Is Suddenly Being Mentioned in Online Discussions About the Epstein Files (YouTube)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1uelwaYO3c

25. How the Epstein files exposed Filipino migrant workers while protecting the powerful (YouTube)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofEOxleoF-4

26. PH-based team ginamit para linisin ang imahe ni Epstein noong 2010 | Agenda (YouTube)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_IEJy1CViQ

27. Legarda, maghahain ng resolusyon na mag-iimbestiga sa Epstein footprint sa bansa (YouTube)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhsxDFAdw4

28. The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hired a Philippine-based team to wipe out alleged criminal activity from the web (GMA News X post)
    https://x.com/gmanews/status/2020946049431695600

29. The late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hired a Philippine-based team to wipe out alleged criminal activity from the web (Instagram card)
    https://www.instagram.com/p/DUjviJOjErh/

30. HOW FAR DID EPSTEIN’S PHILIPPINES TEAM GO TO MASK HIS CRIMES? (Philstar Facebook card)
    https://www.facebook.com/philstarnews/posts/how-far-did-epsteins-philippines-team-go-to-mask-his-crimesemails-from-the-epste/1355844746586275/

31. The Epstein Files just dropped 3 million pages. The Philippines is mentioned 1,078… (Instagram card)
    https://www.instagram.com/p/DUiCP0gAW1Y/

32. Epstein files show image ops, emails funding employees’ flights to PH
    https://www.mexc.co/en-IN/news/675501

33. Filipinos working for Jeffrey Epstein (Reddit)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/1qys83l/filipinos_working_for_jeffrey_epstein/

34. 2 Filipinos (probably working for Epstein) requesting a “serious” time… (Reddit)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Philippines/comments/1qtv8ah/2_filipinos_probably_working_for_epstein/

35. How far did Epstein’s Philippines team go to mask his crimes? (Reddit newsPH thread)
    https://www.reddit.com/r/newsPH/comments/1qztcyb/how_far_did_epsteins_philippines_team_go_to_mask/

36. Jeffrey Epstein, umano’y nag-hire ng PH team para burahin ang negatibong impormasyon online (Bomboradyo)
    https://www.bomboradyo.com/jeffrey-epstein-umanoy-nag-hire-ng-ph-team-para-burahin-ang-negatibong-impormasyon-online

37. Jeffrey Epstein, convicted sex offender and disgraced financier, had several Filip… (AbogadoPH Facebook post)
    https://www.facebook.com/AbogadoPH/posts/jeffrey-epstein-convicted-sex-offender-and-disgraced-financier-had-several-filip/926508

38. OPINION – Trafficking in the shadows (Malaya column)
    https://malaya.com.ph/opinion/column-of-the-day/trafficking-in-the-shadows/

39. The Filipino Connection in the Epstein Case – Who are Jojo and Jun-Lyn Fontanilla? (Filipinos in Germany Facebook)
    https://www.facebook.com/filipinosingermanyfb/posts/the-filipino-connection-in-the-epstein-case-who-are-jojo-and-jun-lyn-fontani/1345481140950942/

40. Instagram: The Epstein Files just dropped 3 million pages. The Philippines is mentioned 1,078… (Republic Asia or similar card)
    https://www.instagram.com/p/DUiCP0gAW1Y/

41. OPINION: The invisible Filipinos in the Epstein files (USA Inquirer)
    https://usa.inquirer.net/188800/opinion-the-invisible-filipinos-in-the-epstein-files