The latest documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act include communications between Jeffrey Epstein and a Duke professor.
Professor Dan Ariely appears in those documents hundreds of times, communicating with Epstein from 2009 to 2019.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Many of the mentions of Ariely are duplicates across threads of emails as Epstein’s assistant scheduled multiple meetings each day. In total, Ariely’s name comes up more than 600 times.
"I encountered Jeffrey Epstein on only four occasions over the span of nearly a decade," Ariely wrote in an email to WRAL News. "My correspondence with him was infrequent, largely logistical pertaining to conferences and academia, and was often mediated by assistants.
"Importantly, there was zero financial, professional, or ongoing relationship."
Ariely is a professor of business administration at Duke. According to his university profile, he is a founding member of the Center of Advanced Hindsight, and his research focuses on behavioral economics and the ways people behave.
The first mention of Ariely appears in April 2009, when Epstein reached out to an unknown person about having Ariely speak at an event in West Palm Beach.
Emails between Ariely and Epstein show the two met up in New York in multiple times between 2010 and 2015.
Over the course of several years, Ariely invited Epstein to multiple talks he gave. Ariely also asked Epstein to connect him to people he could interview, including Bernie Madoff, famous for running the largest known Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding investors of billions of dollars. Ariely told Epstein in 2011 that he wanted to talk to Madoff about "dishonesty."
In one email dated from September 2012, Ariely writes, "Would you send me the name and email of the redhead that was here with you? She seemed very very smart and I would love to be able to meet her again at some point."
In December 2014, Epstein sent an email asking the recipient (whose name was redacted in the documents) to “track dwon [down] dan ariely, see if he is in town.”
In November 2015, Ariely reached out to Epstein saying he was in town, and asked to introduce Epstein to Noel Biderman, the former CEO of Ashley Madison.
"I was hoping that when Noel Biderman is next in NY that the two of you could meet and maybe you could help him think about life after a scandal,” Ariely wrote in the email.
In 2017, Ariely reached out to Epstein, asking for his advice on "a few different adventures," saying he wanted to “learn a few new things.”
After a brief back and forth, Epstein responded he had “organized the private tour of ferrari factory at your date of choice :).” Subsequent emails show that tour took place in March of 2018.
The most recent emails are from March of 2019, months before Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein sent Ariely a New York Times opinion piece penned by his attorneys, to which Ariely responded, “Sorry about this. How are you in general?”
On Monday, Duke University provided WRAL News with a statement.
"Duke takes the information released on Friday seriously and is carefully evaluating it," Duke's statement reads. "We cannot comment on specific personnel actions that may be taken in response."