Student visa, fake marriage: How Epstein helped long-term girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, secure US citizenship
This undated photo released by the US Justice Department on January 30, 2026, as part of the Jeffrey Epstein files shows Jeffrey Epstein (R) with Karyna Shuliak in an unidentified location. Photograph: (AFP)
New Epstein files show his network used student visas, English programs, work permits and a marriage to help women secure US citizenship.
The newly released files related to the investigation into late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has releaved how his network managed the immigration status of several foreign women through student visas, sham marriages, English-language programs, and work permits. The emails among the documents showed how Karyna Shuliak, Epstein’s long-term girlfriend, secured her US citizenship through a fake marriage to another woman in New York.
According to a Bloomberg report, the Belarus-born woman had moved to the United States as a transfer student. Epstein had arranged her admission to Columbia University’s dental school through a complicated process that started in 2011. In July 2012, the late pedophile reached out to his network to ensure Shuliak’s immigration status, seeking to quietly restore her student visa.
However, by 2013, her legal status in the US had become uncertain. The emails in Epstein files revealed that the sex offender sought legal assistance to resolve the complications in her student visa and a pending asylum case.
“She’s overstayed,” one lawyer said, warning that her reinstatement would be challenging.
“We will need to decide if pushing the asylum and redoing it is a more likely path to success than the prosecutorial descretion re the reinstatement,” Epstein wrote in an email.
In October 2013, Shuliak married a woman named Jennifer, who reportedly had been in a relationship with Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk. Following the marriage, Shuliak and her lawyer applied for a family-based green card. By early 2015, she received her green card and became a naturalised US citizen in 2018. She later filed for a divorce.
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“Now that she’s an american you should throw her a big ole party with a mechanical bull, red white and blue balloons, and deep fried snickers bars on flag toothpicks,” reads one email sent to Epstein by his immigration lawyers.
The files also revealed that Epstein sponsored enrollment in English-language schools for several other foreign women to help them secure a US student visa. Apart from this, Epstein also filed a work visa application for a woman, citing her work with his company and modelling career.
