Tech firm inadvertently encourges children to visit Epstein Island

The developers of Pokémon GO, a wildly popular mobile game played by millions daily, have removed a real-world gaming location that was placed on Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous island. 

Pokémon GO players discovered a so-called ‘PokéStop,’ where people can go to ‘catch’ creatures on their phones, on Little Saint James, a private island in the US Virgin Islands.

Called the Sun Dial, the PokéStop corresponded with a real-life place on the island purchased by the convicted sex offender in 1998, sparking outrage online and prompting Pokémon GO developer Niantic to remove it this week.

Pokémon GO is a free, augmented reality game launched in 2016, where players use their phone’s GPS and camera to collect virtual Pokémon creatures in the real world by walking around outside, similar to the original version on Nintendo’s Game Boy.

In a statement, Niantic, valued at $9billion, said it removed the location on Epstein Island, adding that its inclusion violated the rules requiring ‘safe pedestrian access’ to a PokéStop, since no one can legally walk there and would need a boat or plane to reach it.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Niantic for comment on how the stop made it into the game and was allegedly left there for several years.

Pokémon GO has a reported player base of more than 27million people who log in monthly, including children, teens, and a large portion of young adults.

Before the federal government concluded that Epstein committed suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019, he had been arrested on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors.

Images shared on social media by one Pokémon GO player on February 7 have been viewed over 1.9million times, with some claiming the stop had been added to the game in April 2021.

Although the stop on Little Saint James was allegedly added two years after Epstein’s death, the recently released Epstein files show he repeatedly spoke about the game in the years before his arrest.

Emails released by the Department of Justice show Epstein urged some of his contacts to try the game, and also pitched ideas of creating an augmented reality app that worked just like Pokémon GO.

Conspiracy theorists online have already started to claim that Epstein used the popular game to entice minors to visit the island, and also that the app’s tracking data would provide even more evidence of who really traveled to Little Saint James.

‘This also means that Pokémon Go has records of who was on the island,’ one person on X claimed.

‘Why didn’t the [developers] take care of this earlier, and why did they need to be pressured by gamers to take it down, even though the news was out there about Epstein?’ another social media user asked.

As for how the stop was added, Pokémon GO lets everyday players nominate real-world landmarks, like statues, murals, or unique structures, to become PokéStops using Niantic’s free Wayfarer tool.

To add one, all a player has to do is take clear photos of the location, give it a name like ‘Sun Dial,’ write a short description, and prove it’s safe and publicly accessible. Private property is not supposed to be allowed in the system.

The nomination then goes to several anonymous player reviewers, who check the photos, location, and rules. If enough give it a thumbs up, it gets approved and added as a site for players to catch Pokémon.

Once the PokéStop on Epstein Island was active, it allowed players to access free items within the game by visiting the site.

However, multiple gaming websites have reported that many players ‘spoofed’ their location in order to visit the infamous island without ever traveling to the Caribbean.

‘Spoofing’ means someone uses an app to fake their phone’s GPS location, which tricks Pokémon GO into thinking they’re somewhere else without actually going there.

Spoofing has let players ‘teleport’ to far-off or hard-to-reach spots for rare Pokémon or PokéStops, but Niantic has attempted to police this behavior in the past, including handing out bans to those caught spoofing.

Spoofers were allegedly able to keep the secret of the Epstein Island Sun Dial quiet for years, but that ended when the February 7 post on X went viral, pushing Niantic to delete the location completely from its platform.