Tova Noel, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s correctional officers at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Googled the sexual predator minutes before he was found dead and set up a $5,000 cash deposit 10 days before Epstein committed suicide in his cell on Aug. 10, 2019, new Justice Department documents reveal.Noel is one of two Metropolitan Correctional Center staffers accused of falsifying records, saying they checked on Epstein throughout the night before he killed himself. The guards were fired, but criminal charges against the pair were later dropped, the New York Post reported.According to an FBI account of Noel’s internet search history that night, Noel Googled “update on Epstein in jail” at 5.42am and then again at 5:52am, less than 40 minutes before her colleague, corrections officer Michael Thomas, found the disgraced financier hanging in his cell at 6.30am.Prosecutors said Noel, 37, bought furniture online earlier in the shift and then dozed off at work instead of conducting mandatory checks on Epstein every 30 minutes while Thomas perused the motorcycle.The FBI highlighted the Internet searches in a 66-page forensic examination of the Bureau of Prisons’ desktop computers belonging to Noel and Thomas. This is the only highlighted search.“I don’t remember doing that,” she claimed, according to the transcript. She said the FBI records were “inaccurate. I don’t remember looking up him.”Noel also claimed to investigators that everyone at the Manhattan Federal Detention Center was not doing rounds and had falsified records.“I have never worked in a special housing unit where I was actually doing rounds every 30 minutes,” she told investigators.Separate DOJ documents show that Chase flagged cash deposits in Noel’s bank account in a “suspicious activity report” filed with the FBI in November 2019.The bank said it made a total of 12 deposits starting in April 2018, with the largest deposit of $5,000 made on July 30, 2019, records show.The documents only contain Noel’s bank records starting in December 2018. Documents show seven cash deposits totaling $11,880. Noel began working in the Special Housing Unit where Epstein was imprisoned on July 7, 2019, weeks before his death.Records show Noel was driving a 2019 Range Rover worth $62,000 and was not asked about the cash during his interview with the Justice Department.An internal FBI briefing also released in the DOJ document said the agency believed Noel was likely the mysterious orange object seen on grainy surveillance video near Epstein’s cell around 10:40 that night.“At approximately 10:40 p.m., a correctional officer believed to be Tova Noel moved linens or inmate clothing to Level L, the only entrance to the SHU level that correctional officers last had access to,” the agency wrote. Epstein apparently hanged himself with an orange strip of cloth.In a sworn statement, Noel, who worked two shifts that day, told investigators that the last time she saw Epstein alive was “around ten o’clock” and that she “never handed out linens” or clothing to prisoners as she had done so on previous shifts.The identity of the pixelated orange blob in the video has been a source of controversy and conspiracy since the FBI released the video last summer. The original 2023 inspector general report described it as an “unidentified correctional officer,” making recently released FBI documents the first time the mysterious shape has been publicly mentioned by name.She testified that she didn’t know why there were extra sheets in Epstein’s cell. She said another guard on duty slept between 10 p.m. and midnight.Staff said it would be a violation of policy for prison staff to enter Epstein’s cell area alone.Noel has since been indicted in Westchester County Supreme Court on charges that she was assaulted at her new job as a medical office assistant at the Einstein Senior Care Center in Montefiore.Noel’s attorney declined to comment. Asked in a sworn statement whether she had any role in Epstein’s death, Noel responded “no.”
