Epstein Was a Target in a Years-Long DEA Drug Case. Where Did It Go?

By Rachel Hurley March 6th, 2026 Updated October 5th, 2026

The federal government ran a years-long drug trafficking and money laundering investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, named it “Chain Reaction,” and then - according to Sen. Ron Wyden - nobody got charged for any of it. Not Epstein. Not any of the 14 other people it targeted - Wyden calls them co-conspirators - whose names are almost all blacked out in a heavily redacted 69-page memo that just turned up in the Epstein files. The investigation is now being covered as a revelation, but here’s the part that deserves a lot more attention: the task force that ran it doesn’t exist anymore because Trump disbanded it last year.

Let me back up. The DEA opened Operation Chain Reaction in December 2010 out of New York. It was run by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, or OCDETF, a Reagan-era program specifically built to go after transnational organized crime - the same unit that helped take down El Chapo. The 2015 memo that surfaced in the Epstein files documents that the DEA believed Epstein and 14 other targets were moving dirty money through wire transfers tied to drug trafficking and prostitution out of the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.

Bloomberg’s reporting this week adds more texture: the probe originated after an informant told authorities Epstein was involved in funding and distributing club drugs, specifically ecstasy, ketamine, and methamphetamines, and procuring Eastern European women for wealthy clients.

The case was still active in 2015 when the memo was written. It had been open for about four and a half years. A DEA drug trafficking investigation doesn’t get referred to the OCDETF Fusion Center for routine stuff, a law enforcement source told CBS News. That’s where they build cases on major organized crime networks. Something serious was there. And then, as Wyden tells it, nothing happened.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has been digging into this for three years through the Senate Finance Committee. He’s tracked 4,725 wire transfers adding up to more than $1 billion through Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts alone - and he says there could be more than $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions in all. When this memo surfaced, he immediately wrote the DEA a letter demanding the full unredacted version by March 13th and asking why no drug trafficking or money laundering charges were ever brought against anyone in the Chain Reaction investigation.

Wyden specifically raised the question of whether the first Trump administration killed the investigation to protect people connected to Epstein. That’s not fringe speculation - that’s a sitting U.S. senator writing it in an official letter to the DEA Administrator.

Now here’s where it gets even more annoying. OCDETF - the task force program behind this investigation - was shut down by Trump last year. The whole program, which had a $550 million budget and returned more than $2 billion in seized criminal proceeds in just two fiscal years, was zeroed out. Leaders were told in July 2025 to transfer all 5,000-plus open cases to new Homeland Security Task Forces that weren’t fully up and running until September. The fusion center’s database was the single largest repository of federal and foreign investigative reporting in the United States. Its future is in doubt - there’s a funding shortage and open questions about who oversees its sensitive files, including whatever intelligence it holds on Epstein.

Trump’s administration moved to kill OCDETF while pushing “Operation Take Back America,” a plan to wipe out cartels and drug trafficking. His own Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, had written a memo in March 2025 saying OCDETF resources were essential to the administration’s law enforcement priorities. Two months later, a DOJ budget email said it would be “zeroed out” - and the public budget didn’t even mention it.

Alex Acosta, who signed Epstein’s infamous 2007 sweetheart plea deal in Florida, also told a House committee that he didn’t recall any discussion of potential financial crimes in that case - even though his own office was running a money laundering probe alongside the sex trafficking investigation, and two people told Bloomberg that JPMorgan got a subpoena in it in 2007 - JPMorgan says it can’t find one. He didn’t recall. Sure.

The names of the 14 other people targeted in Operation Chain Reaction are still redacted - except one the DOJ appears to have missed, a woman whose lawyer says she was one of Epstein’s survivors. Wyden’s deadline for the unredacted memo was March 13th. It passed without the memo. On March 18th, Wyden wrote to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that, according to a confidential tip to his staff, DEA Administrator Terry Cole was ready to hand over an unredacted copy and Blanche stepped in to stop him. When Wyden’s staff asked the DEA where things stood, the DEA sent them to Blanche’s office.

If you want to do something about this, contact your senators and ask them to publicly support Wyden’s demand for the full, unredacted Chain Reaction memo. You can find your senators at senate.gov and use their contact forms. Wyden is the ranking member of the Finance Committee - if enough people make noise, it makes it harder to bury this in a news cycle.

The goal is the full document, the names, and an explanation for why a years-long federal drug trafficking investigation into one of the most notorious criminals in American history ended, as Wyden says, with zero charges. The case against a dead man had 14 other targets. We don’t know who they are. And the task force program the case ran under has been shut down.

Sources

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first called the 14 other targets Epstein’s co-conspirators and associates as if that were settled - those are Sen. Wyden’s words for them, and one of them is a woman whose lawyer says she was one of Epstein’s survivors. It also said the OCDETF Fusion Center ran the investigation and is now gone - it was a DEA case under the OCDETF task force program, and the Fusion Center’s future is in doubt, not over. It also said Trump announced the shutdown - it surfaced in a DOJ budget email. It also said JPMorgan got a DEA subpoena in 2007 - two people told Bloomberg it got a subpoena in the money laundering probe run by Acosta’s own office, and JPMorgan says it can’t find one. And it said Wyden tracked 4,700 wire transfers totaling $1.5 billion - it was 4,725 transfers of more than $1 billion through Epstein’s JPMorgan accounts, and he says suspicious transactions overall could top $1.5 billion.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - Sen. Wyden on the lack of charges and a law enforcement source on how serious the case was - and add that the case had been open about four and a half years when the memo was written, that the new task forces weren’t fully up and running until September, and that one law enforcement source told CBS News someone tied to the case was likely arrested, which CBS couldn’t confirm.

Update, October 5th, 2026: This essay went up a week before Wyden’s March 13th deadline and still described it as coming up. It now says the deadline passed without the memo, and what Wyden told Todd Blanche on March 18th.

Correction, October 5th, 2026: The last line said the unit that spent years building the case no longer exists. It was a DEA case, and the DEA is still here. What was shut down is the OCDETF task force program it ran under.