A federal judge will rule whether Abercrombie & Fitch’s disgraced ex-CEO Mike Jeffries, who’s charged in a sprawling sex abuse and trafficking conspiracy, is too far gone with Alzheimer’s to stand trial — after a federal jail warden determined the fallen fashion icon had been restored to competency.
Jeffries, 81, is accused alongside his partner, Matthew Smith, and a third man of running secret parties across the globe where he forced young men into performing sex acts, taking performance-enhancing injections and getting unwanted high-pressure enemas.
But the prosecution was put on ice in April, after Jeffries’ lawyers said he was diagnosed with dementia and quoted a medical finding that he met the “criteria for major neurocognitive disorder due to multiple etiologies, specifically Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease and the residual effects of a traumatic brain injury.”
That led Long Island Federal Judge Nusrat Choudhury to rule Jeffries mentally unfit in May, and order him held in the federal prison system for up to four months to see if his mental condition could be treated well enough for him to be able to understand the proceedings against him. Jeffries was previously free on $10 million bond.
On Wednesday, prosecutors submitted a letter from Blake Lott, the acting warden of the federal medical center in Butner, N.C., where Jeffries was treated, announcing that he is “now competent to stand trial,” and that a forensic report would back up that finding.
Jeffries’ lawyers maintain that he’s not competent. The judge said she’ll hold a hearing, likely in March, so the prosecution and defense teams can present dueling medical experts.
She also set a trial date for all three defendants for Oct. 26.
In an April filing, Jeffries’ lawyer Brian Bieber cited a report from two medical experts — both of whom he plans to call to the stand — that states, “Mr. Jeffries is not competent to proceed in the current case and cannot be restored to competency in the future.”
Jeffries’ arrest in October 2024 came after a cascade of public allegations accusing him of sexually abusing and trafficking young men during lavish events he and his partner, Smith, hosted in the U.S. and abroad.
Jeffries, Smith and the third defendant, James Jacobson, were charged in connection with a yearslong scheme involving 15 victims. They’re accused of recruiting dozens of men, many with dreams of working as fashion models, to drug-fueled “sex events” in New York City, on Long Island and across the globe between 2008 and 2015.
The men were forced to sign NDAs and give up their clothes, wallets and phones, and weren’t warned about the full extent of what would happen next — including high-pressure anal enemas with a hose and having their genitals shaved without advance notice, the feds allege.
