The Abercrombie Guys: 12. Mike Jeffries to stand trial

0:00This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The first series of World of Secrets, the Abercrombie Guys, and don't forget there are 11 other World of Secrets investigations to listen to, and we have a brand new series coming in just a few weeks' time. Before we start, this special update episode contains some strong language, and if this is your first time listening to the Abercrombie Guys, please do go back to episode 1 to hear how it all began five years ago with a chance phone call with a former model.

1:01I just thought modeling was going to be to take it into a world that was going to be glamorous, but that world has enough and spit out a lot of young and attractive guys, gay, straight, and everything in between. That moment sparked an investigation into the man who made Abercrombie and Fitch a global phenomenon, taking me deep into the dark side of a fashion empire, and led to a huge development in October 2024. The former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch and two others have been arrested as part of a criminal sex trafficking investigation by the FBI. Jeffries is one of three madfacing charges in the case details of the abuse even stunning career law enforcement tonight. US Attorney for the Eastern District Breon Peace announced the charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution against former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, his romantic partner Matthew Smith, and alleged middleman James Jacobson.

2:05Arrests were made, the three men at the center of the allegations pleaded not guilty, and a trial was expected to soon follow. But it hasn't been that straight forward. Finally two years, lawyers for Mike Jeffries have argued that he has dementia and outside his disease, and so is unfit to take the stand. And in May 2025, a judge agreed. Federal judge has ruled that former Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries is not fit to stand trial. The ruling comes after Jeffries attorneys filed for a competency hearing. It was devastating news for the men who had bravely spoken out. I feel deeply troubled. I'm skeptical and frustrated. I understand that the court has to rely on medical evaluations and I respect that responsibility. But this finding does not erase what happened to me. But those weeks, months and years of drawn out legal negotiations have finally reached a conclusion.

3:10Opening a new chapter in this story. From the BBC, this is world of secrets, the Abercrombie guys. I'm Rihanna Croxford. Episode 12. Mike Jeffries to stand trial. The judgement has finally landed. We have been waiting months and months and months for this. He's been found competent. The judgement is about 157 pages. The judge says that she drew on lots of different evidence. So she says she heard it all and that's her decision. So why hasn't it taken so long?

4:13There's been a lot of legal back and forth since Mike Jeffries, his partner Matthew Smith and their alleged fixer Jim Jacobson were arrested by the FBI back in 2024. A whole year after we first brought the story of the Abercrombie guys to the world's attention. Since then, there's been a whole series of legal delays and euterns. So let me fill you in on the most significant developments. In May last year, a judge ruled that Mike Jeffries was mentally incompetent to stand trial after he was evaluated by several medical experts. According to court documents, a neuropsychologist concluded Jeffries likely has dementia, diminished attention and increased confusion, meaning he would not be capable of assisting his attorneys. The judge also ordered Jeffries be hospitalized to see if his mental condition improves. So in July 2025, Mike Jeffries was admitted to FMC butner in North Carolina, a federal medical

5:19center for men with health needs, basically a prison hospital, for treatment to see if he might improve. None of my sources really thought this would change anything. Who regubbers from dementia? So when prison doctors said in December that Mike Jeffries was fit to stand trial, it was a huge shock. His legal team challenged this. Given the conflicting views, six experts, including psychologists from the prison, were caught to give evidence to new or court whether they were cross-examined by prosecutors and the defence. I was heavily pregnant at the time. I couldn't travel out for the hearings myself. And testing one, two, three, seems to be recording. My name is Laura Italiano. I have been covering the courts in the Manhattan area for maybe more than 30 years. But Laura Italiano was there covering the case for business insider. I've been talking to her

6:23about what happened and what was revealed in court, including details of the 109 recorded phone calls made by Mike Jeffries while he was in the facility to his partner Matthew Smith. We heard a lot of opposing evidence and testimony on one side was the government prosecutors who were insisting that he is competent. And the defence attorneys were saying he is not competent. And by competent, they mean is he able to understand the charges against him and is he able to assist in his own defence? How do you determine competency? What are either side looking to show? The evidence that goes into these hearings includes testimony by psychologists and psychiatrists from both sides, brain scans, and then other more narrative detail about

7:24how he has been behaving in the last year or so. And can he summarize what both prosecutors and also the defence were arguing? Well, prosecutors want Michael Jeffries to go to trial. They're arguing that he is competent. Point to everything from his ability to handle a commissary account and his prison phone time to his improved IQ in the last few years, to things that he's said to their own and his own psychologists and on recorded prison tapes in arguing that, yes, he does understand the charges. He's even able to strategize about his potential defenses. The evidence on the defence side is basically the same, but with their spin on it, they during this hearing were, you know, the times when he said he didn't understand the charges.

8:24He didn't didn't understand what the accusations against him are complaining about this being a money grab and that he pointed his, what they call his disinhibition, his lack of understanding of the gravity of the charges. You know, he was planning a trip to Australia, even as recently as the end of last year or January. And they say that putting him in a courtroom, putting him on trial could be disastrous, that he could cause his own mistrial by blurting things out during the proceedings. So they're saying that he can't stand trial for all of those reasons. They were saying that these were examples of disinhibited behaviour. What else were they using his examples to show this? He would use words like, bitch, even when he was speaking with his doctors, he would use profanity. They basically said he is, quote, without a filter, treating what should be serious examinations as if he were at a cocktail party or at lunch at

9:31a country club. And so that basically, arguing that he could blur things out during a trial, things that would work against him. Exactly. And what were the prosecutors saying to counter this? Prosecutors are saying that, you know, this is who he is. This is his personality, you know, he's an outspoken character and that I look at his conduct during the hearing itself. There was no outbursts of cursing. There was no blurting out. You know, he sat there pretty much dossal as a lamb. The prosecutors also argue that if he doesn't understand something, that his lawyers could just explain things to him again, as they do with any defendant, any client in a case that can get complicated. And what more can you tell me about his demeanor in court? Well, I attended all four days of the competency hearing and I was sitting right behind Jeffries for the entirety of that time and even watching him in the hallways. You know, during proceedings, he was pretty

10:35attentive. He would turn his head toward whomever was speaking. There was not one outburst in those four days. I think that the judge, you know, was sitting there presiding over the whole four days is well aware that he was a well-behaved defendant in her courtroom. What more did we learn about his diagnosis? It seems like there was evidence going all the way back to 2013 of his cognitive decline. Yes, the judge her testimony from the defense that there was evidence of some brain atrophy as early as 2013. So one of the Jeffries doctors, a clinical neuropsychologist, her name was Dr. Jacqueline C. Valdez. On the first day of the competency hearing, she described an incident that had been related to her by Matthew Smith. He was found by Smith in a neighbor's yard. He was sitting in his underwear and he was unable to move and this alarmed them at the time

11:38and one of the early indications that something neurologically was going on with him. He, according to this doctor, was acting out his dreams. He was hallucinating. There was delusional thinking. And then there was a fall in South Africa in 2018. This is four years after his retirement from Abacromia Fitch. And he was on vacation at South Africa, had been drinking and took a terrible fall. He suffered what the testifying doctor called significant bleeding, multiple facial fractures and the doctors there found not only bleeding in this brain from this current incident, but pre-existing atrophy in his frontal lobes signs of what could be Alzheimer's and this neurodegenerative condition called Louis body dementia. And how do you prosecute us see his condition? What were they arguing? Well, they can't fight the medical records. These are MRI scans. Yes, the government

12:44argues he has some mental impairment, but with medication and with therapy, especially the help he received while in the medical facility of a prison in North Carolina, he has improved. His motor function and memory improved and his IQ, they argue that his IQ is fine. And maybe he'll need a little extra help from his defense lawyers while sitting at the defense table, but he'll be able to stand trial. That's one of the really striking things, isn't it, that his testing scores improved from when he was first assessed to 2026 earlier this year where he was reassessed by some new experts. And they put that down to abstinence from alcohol and also better medication. What did we learn about his time at FMC butner? There's a lot of evidence from that critical four or five months

13:46ending in January 2026 where he was committed on order of the courts to this medical facility, part of a federal prison again in North Carolina. Big improvements say the government. He was able to handle his commissary account and manages phone time and carried on conversations with great clarity with his doctors and the people around him. But I think the most telling thing are these tapes when he's on the prison phone is chatting with Matthew Smith. You were in court, you heard the tapes. What was some of the main takeaways? I think the tapes show somebody who's thinking clearly, you know, now the defense argues that his conversational skills are his strongest skills and that his other problems are with memory and retention, comprehension. He regularly communicated with Matthew

14:47Smith. There's more than 100 phone calls where he's doing things like mulling his defense strategy. He tells Smith that he doesn't understand the charges because his accusers were all adults and there was quote no force involved. And he's very aware of the fact that he is in the prison to be evaluated for competency. At one point he tells Smith, quote, you better find me incompetent. And he's speaking of his examiners. At other times he says that if he's not found competent, quote, we're screwed and quote, we're in big trouble. Aren't there more tapes where he's complaining about the conditions at the prison and telling Smith things like that's why we've got to quote pull this off. Yes. And saying pull this off that doesn't that doesn't speak well to his being confused and not assisting in his own defense, right? There's a lot of clarity in what he says to Smith.

15:51At one point I think he tells him, here's the quote, there's no one in the world who can stand up and say it was involved in raping and assaulting people around the world to the detriment of my business. How does he stand on those calls? I imagine the very intimate conversation that they're having. They are and there are moments of tenderness too where Jeffries is worried about what Smith's fate is going to be as as this case progresses. And you know, I mean they're both facing a minimum of 15 years prison if they're convicted of sex trafficking. And then Smith worries and turn about how Jeffries is doing. And Jeffries attitude is like, I'm going to be fine, but it's you. As if Jeffries already thinks he's clenched in competency and that it's Smith who's at greater risk at trial now. I suppose there were also some quite, I guess just quite ordinary conversations weren't there. Right. He was he was talking. He really seemed to like the series

16:54heated rivalry, although he misnamed it as fierce rivalry, but he remembered the details of it. And there was something that you wrote in one of your articles that I thought was really striking. And it was the moment where Mike Jeffries seems to reminisce about his 22-year career at Aboprombee and some of the store openings. You know, this is a guy who had been a Titan, you know, the Aboprombee in Fitch was a retail powerhouse in the 2000s. And now, you know, we haven't talking to a defense psychiatrist about riding down Fifth Avenue for the first time in years. And how he expected to see his prized flagship Fifth Avenue store. And it was gone. He told his psychiatrist, quote, they moved the fucking store. And he said that when he drove by and saw that he started to cry. And he told her, I'm still crying about it. He called it a beautiful

17:58store. And he called it, quote, my life. Build a story around that. So that kind of shows a meta understanding of what's going on. He knows that he's talking to someone who is going to build a story about him, a defense psychiatrist. You know, he almost undercuts any sympathy that you might have for him at that moment. This is maybe the prosecution would argue another moment of him being very calculated strategist about his own defense. That competency hearing was held in March. And it took several months for the judge to decide. In August, Judge Nasrat Childry made her decision. Mike Jeffries is fit to stand trial. So for now, he and his partner, Matthew Smith, and they're alleged fixer Jim Jacobson,

19:03remain under house arrest. Their joint trial is expected to begin in January, 2027 and could take months. Documents filed to court say that prosecutors have 76 witnesses, 15 of whom are alleged victims. The defense has 10 witnesses. They're all going to be cross examined. We'll also hear evidence about financial and business records. What will that reveal? We'll be there to find out. Thanks for listening to this special update episode of The Avacrombe Guys. Please spread the word about world of secrets and leave a review. It really helps. And remember to follow or subscribe so you get all the latest episodes automatically. And just a final reminder, there's only a few more weeks to wait for our next investigation. It's a story from Southeast Asia about love, friendship, who you can trust, and takes on a powerful

20:09institution. The Avacrombe Guys is presented by me, Rihanna Croxford. The series producer is Ruth Evans. If you have any information to share, please email me at rihanna.frogsford at bbc.co.uk. Thanks for listening. See you next year. Get more with BBC podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favorite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, ad-free, with an Amazon Music subscription.