Just days after a newspaper exposé last November drew new attention to Jeffrey Epstein’s predatory behavior toward young women, he wired $350,000 to two people close to him, federal prosecutors revealed on Friday.

Mr. Epstein, a financier who now faces sex-trafficking charges in New York, was using the money to try to buy the silence of possible witnesses against him, the prosecutors said.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan made the new allegations in a court filing asking that Mr. Epstein be denied bail while he awaits trial, saying the payments were evidence that he might try to influence witnesses if he were not detained.

Mr. Epstein wired the payments from an account he controlled to the potential witnesses in late November and early December, 2018, shortly after the Miami Herald began publishing an investigative report about a secret deal Mr. Epstein had reached with the authorities in Florida to avoid federal prosecution in 2008, the government said.