American billionaire killed himself in prison

Prisoner and sex trafficking suspect Jeffrey Epstein has died committing suicide, according to two sources of law authorities.

He was taken from the Metropolitan Corresponding Centre of New York on Saturday morning after a heart attack and died in the hospital, sources told CNN.

Jeffrey Epstein, 66-year-old, has been imprisoned since early July, when he refused to plead charges by federal prosecutors of the state of New York after a lawsuit he was accused of sexual trafficking with young girls, some of them even 14 years old.

News of Epstein's death comes a day after hundreds of pages of court documents were discovered in the New York Federal Court, revealing new details of sexual abuse claims against Epstein and several associates.

Weeks earlier, Epstein was placed in a care for the possibility of suicide after he was found on July 23rd in his cell in Manhattan with marks on his neck.

For prison officials at the time it was not clear whether injuries that were not serious were caused by itself or as a result of any attacks said sources. Epstein had told the authorities that he had been beaten up and was called a child robber, they said.

Epstein was officially accused of paying girls until age 14 to have sex with him at his home in Manhattan and his villa in Palm Beach, Florida, between 2002 and 2005. Federal prosecutors said he used employees and collaborators to lure girls into his residence and then paid some of his victims to recruit other girls for him to abuse.

A federal judge in mid-July ordered Epstein to stay in prison pending trial, rejecting the millionaires' request to return to his residence in Manhattan.

Epstein faced similar charges in Florida in 2007, but signed an agreement to plead guilty with Miami prosecutors that allowed him to avoid federal charges and admit guilty to reduce federal charges of prostitution.

The new charges regained attention for the plea deal in 2008, fuelling anger against it and leading to the resignation of Labour Secretary of Donald Trump's administration, Alex Acosta, who negotiated the plea agreement when he was a state lawyer in Miami, writes CNN.