Ex-Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries is competent to stand trial on federal sex trafficking charges, prison officials said — just months after he was declared mentally unfit due to his dementia and late on-set Alzheimer’s disease.
The 81-year-old millionaire — who is accused of organizing sex parties where male models were paid for sex and plied with drugs — was initially deemed unfit because of the ailments when he was hospitalized in May.
But in a letter filed in Brooklyn federal court, prison officials indicated his health had since improved.
Jeffries “is able to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him and to assist properly in his own defense,” Blake Lott, the acting warden at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, noted in the filing.
He didn’t elaborate further in the letter but said the prison had handed over a report to the judge handling the case.
Jeffries was discharged from the federal lock-up’s medical center on Nov. 21, court documents show.
His attorney, Brian Bieber, appeared to dismiss the U-turn — noting that other doctors had previously found his client incompetent to proceed.
“A doctor from the Bureau of Prisons is of a different opinion,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to the judge hearing the medical evidence, and deciding on the appropriate course of action moving forward.”
The development came as prosecutors and Jeffries’ defense team held a status hearing Thursday via phone with US District Court Judge Nusrat Choudhury.
The former CEO’s lawyers had previously argued Jeffries required around-the-clock care and wasn’t capable of understanding the nature of the case against him.
They said at least four medical professionals had deemed that Jeffries’ cognitive issues were “progressive and incurable” and that he would not “regain his competency and cannot be restored to competency in the future.”
Jeffries, who ran Abercrombie from 1992 until 2014, pleaded not guilty last year to federal charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.
Prosecutors allege Jeffries, his romantic partner Matthew Smith and associate James Jacobson are accused of using the promise of modeling jobs to lure men to drug-fueled sex parties in the Big Apple, the Hamptons and overseas.
The charges echo disturbing allegations outlined in a separate civil lawsuit in which two aspiring male models claimed they were promised high-paying jobs with Abercrombie — only to be drugged, raped and trafficked by Jeffries and his circle.