Kathie Lee Gifford, the French-born American television presenter, singer, songwriter, occasional actress and author is not related to Jeffrey Epstein, an American sex offender and financier.

It’s only coincidental that Jeffrey Epstein bares the surname of Kathie’s father Aaron Epstein (March 19, 1924 – November 19, 2002), a musician and former US Navy Chief Petty Officer.

On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff’s office, was after 3+1⁄2 months allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week.

This contravened the sheriff’s own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence of 10 months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours.

Epstein was born in 1953 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City to parents Pauline (née Stolofsky, 1918–2004) and Seymour G. Epstein (1916–1991).

Epstein’s parents were Jewish and married in 1952 shortly before his birth.

His mother Pauline worked as a school aide and was a homemaker ehile his dad Seymour Epstein worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener.

Jeffrey was the older of two siblings; he and his brother Mark grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Sea Gate, a private gated community in Coney Island, Brooklyn.