t least six senior administrators and affiliates at the College of Dental Medicine helped convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein admit his girlfriend to the school in 2012 in what the University later acknowledged was an “irregular process.”
Eleven years later, they admitted her again.
Records obtained by The Spectator show that some of the same figures later helped Epstein’s girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak, Dental ’15, gain admission to a postgraduate program at the College of Dental Medicine in 2023. Her acceptance came four years after Epstein died in federal custody while awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges, and well after his crimes had become the subject of international scrutiny.
At the center of both irregular admissions processes is Dr. James Fine, senior associate dean for postdoctoral academic and student affairs at the College of Dental Medicine—and the close friend of Dr. Thomas Magnani, Dental ’80, who first brought Epstein into the school’s orbit and introduced him to senior administrators. Both saw Epstein and his affiliates for dental appointments on several occasions.
Between 2012 and 2023, Fine helped Shuliak cheat on her transfer exam after she was initially rejected from the college, arranged an internship for her at the Columbia-affiliated private dental practice where he and Magnani worked, and wrote her a letter of recommendation for the postgraduate program she applied to.
In his capacity as a senior associate dean since 2018, Fine has overseen all postdoctoral master’s training programs at the College of Dental Medicine, including the one Shuliak was admitted to. As of Friday, he remains a senior administrator at the school and was spared from the University’s public statement acknowledging Shuliak’s unusual admissions process and announcing the removal of other affiliates from their roles.
“The University’s investigation into this issue is ongoing,” a University spokesperson wrote in a Tuesday statement to Spectator.
Shuliak was the last person to visit Epstein in prison and inherited much of his fortune after he killed himself. Long before that, she was a 20-year-old dental student in Belarus. But after she met Epstein in 2009, she withdrew from school, moved to New York City, and set her sights on U.S. dental schools.
Among them, Colombia stood out.
Epstein first set out to help his girlfriend gain admission to the College of Dental Medicine in 2011, just three years after pleading guilty to a charge of soliciting prostitution from a minor. His dentist and close friend, Magnani, who was also a volunteer professor at the College of Dental Medicine and the president of its donor association, put one of Epstein’s assistants in touch with senior faculty to arrange a campus tour. Within months, Shuliak formally applied.
Shortly thereafter, she was rejected. When Shuliak applied, she had not completed her bachelor’s degree, which is a requirement to apply to the College of Dental Medicine.
What followed, according to Department of Justice records, was a sustained effort to reverse that decision.
Magnani coordinated with senior administrators to secure her admission and introduced Epstein and his associates to senior figures at the school, including then-dean Ira Lamster, as a potential major donor. Epstein coordinated with school affiliates on a potential $50 million naming gift for a new College of Dental Medicine building, a plan that University officials ultimately shut down after vetting his criminal record. But smaller donations kept flowing, including $100,000 to Lamster’s personal research fund and $50,000 to the college in Shuliak’s name. Magnani also continued to seek donations to the school from Epstein through 2018.
While Magnani was never an administrator himself, he had contacts within the administration, including Fine, who worked as a periodontist at Magnani’s private practice since at least 2013. When Shuliak was rejected, Magnani contacted Fine, who was then the head of the periodontics division. When asked about the nature of Magnani and Fine’s relationship, four affiliates of the College of Dental Medicine told Spectator that Magnani and Fine are known to be close friends, with one calling leadership at the school a “good old boys club.”
A March 21, 2012, text exchange between Epstein and Magnani shows Magnani telling Epstein, “Jeff I just spoke to Jim Fine he will know tomorrow what they will test her on,” adding that the test was required in order to “keep this on the up and up.” In an April 2012 exchange, a redacted intermediary reassured Epstein that College of Dental Medicine officials were already “moving things around to accommodate her” and that Magnani did not “want the initial fears everyone had to be roused again.” He cautioned against drawing further attention to the transfer test process by delaying Shuliak’s exam.
Less than three months after her initial rejection, the College of Dental Medicine accepted Shuliak as a transfer student. She graduated in 2015.
After graduating, Shuliak went “directly into private practice in the US Virgin Islands,” she wrote in her personal statement for the graduate program, obtained by Spectator. The territory was also home to Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, which federal prosecutors say was central to his sex trafficking operation. According to pictures released by the DOJ, one of the rooms located on Epstein’s island contained a dental chair. Shuliak helped coordinate the placement of the chair in Little Saint James, according to the DOJ files.
The years between Shuliak’s 2015 graduation and Epstein’s death were, for Epstein, a period of mounting exposure. After a 2018 Miami Herald investigation exposed the scale of Epstein’s sexual abuse, federal prosecutors arrested and charged him in 2019 with sex trafficking, alleging that he had run a vast network for the sexual exploitation of minors. Later that year, Epstein killed himself in prison while awaiting trial.
When Shuliak returned to New York City after Epstein’s death, she got an internship at Magnani’s Columbia-affiliated private practice, where Fine worked. Both Fine and Magnani had longstanding professional and personal ties to Epstein and provided dental care to him and his associates, according to DOJ records.
A College of Dental Medicine affiliate with knowledge of the college’s practices told Spectator that Fine had been granted special permission to work at Magnani’s private practice. Until recently, full-time faculty members at the College of Dental Medicine were generally prohibited from outside employment or owning private practices due to potential conflicts of interest, the affiliate said. That policy was revised in part to improve faculty retention, as academic salaries are often lower than those of dentists in private practice, they explained. A Spectator review of archived versions of Magnani’s website shows that Fine was listed as affiliated with the practice as early as 2013, when the site was first created.
After national and campus outlets reported on Shuliak’s unusual admission to the College of Dental Medicine, the University announced Feb. 11 that it would remove Magnani from the admissions review committee and his volunteer leadership roles, cancel the affiliation agreement with his private practice, and that Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn—who Magnani described as the person who did the “most” to help Shuliak “get in and finish up dental school”—would step down from her administrative roles.
Fine’s name was removed from Magnani’s practice website the day after Columbia’s statement, according to archived versions reviewed by Spectator.
The statement, however, did not mention Fine, nor did it address Shuliak’s admission to the postdoctoral program.
The University also claimed in its statement that “the current Dean and current Associate Dean for Student and Alumni Affairs were not involved in admitting the student or any solicitations from Epstein.” The College of Dental Medicine, however, does not list a position with the exact title of associate dean. Fine is one of five senior associate deans.
A University official told Spectator that the title refers to Dana Wolf, senior associate dean for predoctoral academic and student affairs, and that the roles are equivalent.
Shuliak applied to the yearlong program in 2023, which is designed to help dentists strengthen their didactic and clinical skills and transition into independent general dentistry practice, according to the Advanced Education in General Dentistry program website.
The program requires three “professional evaluation letters from dental faculty” as letters of recommendation, according to the website.
In August and September 2023, Fine, Magnani, and Laureen Zubiaurre, former senior associate dean of admissions and career planning at the College of Dental Medicine, each wrote Shuliak a letter of recommendation, giving her their “highest recommendation.”
“I can state as an educator and prior program director I myself would have taken her into my program with no reservations or hesitation,” Fine wrote in his letter. “I truly believe if you admit Dr. Shuliak into your program it will be a wonderful benefit to both her and your institution.”
Fine, Magnani, and Zubiaurre did not respond to Spectator’s multiple requests for comment.
Neither Fine nor Magnani’s letters of recommendation explicitly state that they taught Shuliak in a classroom setting. Zubiaurre’s letter, on the other hand, states that she advised Shuliak during her time at the College of Dental Medicine.
“As the Chief Dental Director of the Faculty Practices for Columbia University, College of Dental Medicine,” Fine began his letter, “I have set up an internship for Karyna in the Columbia affiliate office.”
Though Fine testified to her ability to work with other doctors and patients, he omitted the fact that Shuliak interned where he practiced periodontics. Shuliak’s resume and personal statement indicate that she held a “faculty internship” under both Fine and Magnani.
A University spokesperson did not respond to a detailed request for comment from Spectator on the irregularities of Shuliak’s 2023 admissions process to the advanced degree program.
She graduated from the program in 2025.
