Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch who was charged with sex trafficking, has dementia and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, his legal team said in newly filed court documents.
A neuropsychologist diagnosed Jeffries following several evaluations, according to two filings filed in a New York court on Monday.
Brian H. Bieber, an attorney for Jeffries, began questioning the businessman’s attentiveness, competency and focus, the filing states.
“The Michael Jeffries who presented himself did not even come close to resembling a master’s degree-educated individual, who was just nine years earlier, the chief executive officer of a publicly traded company,” the document says.
Jeffries was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, in October on sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges. He was released on $10 million bond with a judge ordering that he be confined to home detention with GPS monitoring and prohibiting him from traveling without the proper approval. He also had to surrender his passport.
Jeffries has pleaded not guilty to one count of sex trafficking and 15 counts of interstate prostitution.
The court filing says that Bieber “questioned Mr. Jeffries’ competency to rationally assist—on a sustained and consistent basis—counsel in connection with the possible factual and legal defenses to the allegations he was facing.”
Bieber advised Jeffries, 80, to seek a neuropsychological evaluation.
A doctor concluded that testing “yielded diagnostic impressions that Mr. Jeffries currently suffers from dementia with behavioral disturbance … Alzheimer’s disease with late onset (probable) … and Lewy body dementia,” the filing states.
A competency hearing is scheduled for June.
A federal indictment alleged that Jeffries, his romantic partner Matthew Smith, and James Jacobson operated an “international sex trafficking and prostitution business” from 2008 to 2015. The indictment described Jacobson as a recruiter.
Jeffries, no stranger to controversy, was the popular clothing brand’s boss from 1992 to 2014.
According to the indictment, the trio organized “sex events” for Jeffries, Smith and “others” in Italy, England, New York City, St. Barts, Morocco, the Hamptons and France. They allegedly “employed coercive, fraudulent and deceptive tactics in connection with the recruitment, hiring, transportation, obtaining, maintaining, solicitation and payment of the men to engage in commercial sex,” the indictment states.
The men who attended the “events” believed it could help their careers or lead to modeling opportunities, and “that not complying with requests for certain acts during the sex events could harm their careers,” it says.
Prosecutors said in a detention memo that the youngest of the alleged victims was 19 and that many of them were “financially vulnerable.” Some of the men had previously worked at Abercrombie stores or modeled for the company, according to prosecutors. During the events, the men had to surrender their wallets and cellphones and sign nondisclosure agreements, prosecutors said.
Jeffries, Smith and Jacobson are also alleged to have recruited and paid some household staff to “facilitate and supervise the sex events.” The staff allegedly provided Jeffries, Smith and the men who attended with muscle relaxants, alcohol, condoms, Viagra and lubricant, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors said that staff was ordered to inject some of the men “a prescription-grade erection-inducing substance for the purpose of causing the men to engage in sex acts in which they were otherwise physically incapable or unwilling.”
The men who attended were either paid by Jacobson or the staff, the indictment says. Prosecutors alleged that some men were paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in cash.
Prosecutors accused the defendants of hiring a “full-service security company” to conduct background checks and intimidate any alleged victims who threatened to expose or sue them.
At an October news conference, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said Jeffries and Smith spent millions on the alleged sex trafficking enterprise. Jacobson allegedly had the victims engage in commercial sex acts with him during “tryouts” held before the sex events, Peace said.
Peace said his office became aware of the allegations through media reports. In 2023, BBC published an article about Abercrombie & Fitch launching an investigation into sexual misconduct claims against Jeffries.
