In an internal meeting at the lab, on September 4, Ito admitted to having taken $525,000 from Epstein for the Media Lab and an additional $1.2 million for his private ventures. But the New Yorker article, published on September 6, alleged that the lab had taken at least $7.5 million from two other donors, private equity mogul Leon Black and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, that was channeled through Epstein. (A spokesperson for Gates says that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.”) It said that Ito had solicited funding directly from Epstein and that he and his staff had systematically worked to scrub Epstein’s name from donations so they wouldn’t be scrutinized or blocked by MIT at large.

Emails provided to the New Yorker and the New York Times by Signe Swenson, a former development associate at the Media Lab, showed Ito, along with Peter Cohen, a former development official at the lab, acknowledging that Epstein’s money needed to remain anonymous. Swenson told the New Yorker that she had repeatedly expressed her discomfort with the lab’s ties to Epstein, but was told that “we’re planning to do it anyway.”

In his apology, Ito had also stated that he “never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that [Epstein] was accused of.” But in 2015, Epstein visited the Media Lab, accompanied by two young women who looked like models, Swenson told the New Yorker. According to Swenson, Ito was also well aware of Epstein’s desire to be accompanied, telling Cohen that Epstein “never goes into any room without his two female ‘assistants.’” Ito told the New York Times that the New Yorker report was “full of factual errors,” but he didn't elaborate further.

While the new revelations are particularly damning for Ito and Cohen, they also highlight the systemic problem surrounding the Epstein funding. The hidden ties with Epstein were so widely known at the Media Lab that staff in Ito’s office began to call him “he who must not be named” or “Voldemort,” according to the New Yorker. Questions also remain about how the donations evaded detection by MIT. According to a statement by its president, Rafael Reif, in August, “decisions about gifts are always subject to longstanding Institute processes and principles.”

The details underscore what many researchers at the Media Lab and in the broader tech community have emphasized since the Epstein revelations: that while this episode is an extreme case, it is symptomatic of the lack of transparency around the close-knit relationships between academic institutions and an elite network of donors.

In an MIT-wide email today, Reif announced Ito’s resignation and said that he had asked the Institute’s general counsel to engage “a prominent law firm” to conduct an independent investigation. An internal investigation into MIT’s fund-raising processes and policies, announced last month, is still ongoing.

Ito, Cohen, and MIT did not immediately respond to direct requests for comment.

Disclosure: Among his other duties, Ito was on the board of MIT Technology Review. After resigning from MIT, he submitted his resignation from the board as well.