Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American sex offender and financier. Epstein, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, began his professional life by teaching at the Dalton School in Manhattan, despite lacking a college degree. After his dismissal from the school, he entered the banking and finance sector, working at Bear Stearns in various roles; he eventually started his own firm. Epstein developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children; he and associates then sexually abused them.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He served almost 13months in custody, but with extensive work release. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal; federal officials had identified 36girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused.

Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging. Epstein's lawyers have disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death, resulting in numerous conspiracy theories. Since Epstein's death precluded the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against him, a judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019. Epstein had a decades-long association with the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to her 2021 conviction on U.S. federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution.

Early life

Epstein was born in 1953 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. His parents Pauline (''née'' Stolofsky, 1918–2004) and Seymour G. Epstein (1916–1991) were Jewish and had married in 1952 shortly before his birth. Pauline worked as a school aide and was a homemaker. Seymour Epstein worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener. Jeffrey was the older of two siblings; he and his brother Mark grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Sea Gate, a private gated community in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

Epstein attended local public schools, first attending Public School 188, and then Mark Twain Junior High School nearby. In 1967, Epstein attended the National Music Camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He began playing the piano when he was five. He graduated in 1969 from Lafayette High School at age 16, having skipped two grades. Later that year, he attended classes at Cooper Union until he changed colleges in 1971. From September 1971, he attended the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, but left without receiving a degree in June 1974.

Career

Teaching

Epstein started working in September 1974 as a physics and mathematics teacher for teens at the Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Donald Barr, who served as the headmaster until June 1974, was known to have made several unconventional recruitments at the time, although it is unclear whether he had a direct role in hiring Epstein. Three months after Barr's departure, Epstein began to teach at the school, despite his lack of credentials. Epstein allegedly showed inappropriate behavior toward underage students at the time. He became acquainted with Alan Greenberg, the chief executive officer of Bear Stearns, whose son and daughter were attending the school. Greenberg's daughter, Lynne Koeppel, pointed to a parent-teacher conference where Epstein influenced another Dalton parent into advocating for him to Greenberg. In June 1976, after Epstein was dismissed from Dalton for "poor performance", Greenberg offered him a job at Bear Stearns.

Banking

Epstein joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a low-level junior assistant to a floor trader. He swiftly moved up to become an options trader, working in the special products division, and then advised the bank's wealthiest clients, such as Seagram president Edgar Bronfman, on tax mitigation strategies. Jimmy Cayne, the bank's later chief executive officer, praised Epstein's skill with wealthy clients and complex products. In 1980, four years after joining Bear Stearns, Epstein became a limited partner.

In 1981, Epstein was asked to leave Bear Stearns for, according to his sworn testimony, being guilty of a " Reg D violation". Even though Epstein departed abruptly, he remained close to Cayne and Greenberg and was a client of Bear Stearns until its collapse in 2008.

Financial consulting

In August 1981, Epstein founded his own consulting firm, Intercontinental Assets Group Inc. (IAG), which assisted clients in recovering stolen money from fraudulent brokers and lawyers. Epstein described his work at this time as being a high-level bounty hunter. He told friends that he worked sometimes as a consultant for governments and the very wealthy to recover embezzled funds, while at other times he worked for clients who had embezzled funds. Spanish actress and heiress Ana Obregón was one such wealthy client, whom Epstein helped in 1982 to recover her father's millions in lost investments, which had disappeared when Drysdale Government Securities collapsed because of fraud.

Epstein also stated to some people at the time that he was an intelligence agent. During the 1980s, Epstein possessed an Austrian passport that had his photo, but with a false name. The passport showed his place of residence in Saudi Arabia. In 2017 "a former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to Trump transition interviewers, that "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".

During this period, one of Epstein's clients was the Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi, who was the middleman in transferring American weapons from Israel to Iran, as part of the Iran–Contra affair in the 1980s. Khashoggi was one of several defense contractors that he knew. In the mid-1980s, Epstein traveled multiple times between the United States, Europe, and Southwest Asia. While in London, Epstein met Steven Hoffenberg. They had been introduced through Douglas Leese, a defense contractor, and John Mitchell, the former U.S. Attorney General.

Towers Financial Corporation

Steven Hoffenberg hired Epstein in 1987, as a consultant for Towers Financial Corporation (unaffiliated with the company of the same name founded in 1998, and acquired by Old National Bancorp in 2014), a collection agency that bought debts people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies. Hoffenberg set Epstein up in offices in the " Villard Houses" in Manhattan and paid him per month for his consulting work ().

Hoffenberg and Epstein then refashioned themselves as corporate raiders using Towers Financial as their raiding vessel. One of Epstein's first assignments for Hoffenberg was to implement what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987. A similar unsuccessful bid in 1988 was made to take over Emery Air Freight Corp. During this period, Hoffenberg and Epstein worked closely together and traveled everywhere on Hoffenberg's private jet.

In 1993, Towers Financial Corporation imploded when it was revealed as being one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, losing its investors over (). In court documents, Hoffenberg claimed that Epstein was intimately involved in the scheme. Epstein left the company by 1989 and was never charged for being involved with the massive investor fraud committed. It is unknown if Epstein acquired any stolen funds from the Towers Ponzi scheme.

Financial management firm

In 1988, while Epstein was still consulting for Hoffenberg, he founded his financial management firm, J. Epstein & Company. The company was said by Epstein to have been formed to manage the assets of clients with more than in net worth, although others have expressed skepticism that he was restrictive of the clients that he took.

The only publicly known billionaire client of Epstein was Leslie Wexner, chairman and CEO of L Brands (formerly The Limited, Inc.) and Victoria's Secret. In 1986, Epstein met Wexner through their mutual acquaintances, insurance executive Robert Meister and his wife, in Palm Beach, Florida. A year later, Epstein became Wexner's financial adviser and served as his right-hand man. Within the year, Epstein had sorted out Wexner's entangled finances. In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney over his affairs. The power of attorney allowed Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties, borrow money, and do anything else of a legally binding nature on Wexner's behalf.

By 1995, Epstein was a director of the Wexner Foundation and Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was also the president of Wexner's Property, which developed part of the town of New Albany outside Columbus, Ohio, where Wexner lived. Epstein made millions in fees by managing Wexner's financial affairs. Although never employed by L Brands, he frequently corresponded with the company executives. Epstein often attended Victoria's Secret fashion shows, and hosted the models at his New York City home, as well as helping aspiring models get work with the company.

In 1996, Epstein changed the name of his firm to the Financial Trust Company and, for tax advantages, based it on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. By relocating to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Epstein was able to reduce federal income taxes by 90 percent. The U.S. Virgin Islands acted as an offshore tax haven, while at the same time offering the advantages of being part of the United States banking system.

Media activities

In 2003, Epstein bid to acquire ''New York'' magazine. Other bidders included advertising executive Donny Deutsch, investor Nelson Peltz, media mogul and ''New York Daily News'' publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, and film producer Harvey Weinstein. The ultimate buyer was Bruce Wasserstein, a longtime Wall Street investment banker, who paid .

In 2004, Epstein and Zuckerman committed up to to finance ''Radar'', a celebrity and pop culture magazine founded by Maer Roshan. Epstein and Zuckerman were equal partners in the venture. Roshan, as its editor-in-chief, retained a small ownership stake. It folded after three issues as a print publication and became exclusively an online one.

Liquid Funding Ltd.

Epstein was the president of the company Liquid Funding Ltd. between 2000 and 2007. The company was an early pioneer in expanding the kind of debt that could be accepted on repurchase, or the repo market, which involves a lender giving money to a borrower in exchange for securities that the borrower then agrees to buy back at an agreed-upon later time and price. The innovation of Liquid Funding, and other early companies, was that instead of having stocks and bonds as the underlying securities, it had commercial mortgages and investment-grade residential mortgages bundled into complex securities as the underlying security.

Liquid Funding was initially 40percent owned by Bear Stearns. Through the help of the credit rating agencies – Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings and Moody's Investors Service – the new bundled securities were able to be created for companies so that they got a gold-plated AAA rating. The implosion of such complex securities, because of their inaccurate ratings, led to the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008 and set in motion the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the subsequent Great Recession. If Liquid Funding were left holding large amounts of such securities as collateral, it could have lost large amounts of money.

Investments

Hedge funds

Between 2002 and 2005, Epstein invested $80million in the D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, a hedge fund that invested in illiquid debt securities. In November 2006, Epstein attempted to redeem his investment after he was informed of accounting irregularities in the fund. By this time, his investment had grown to $140million. The D.B. Zwirn fund refused to redeem the investment. Hedge funds that invest in illiquid securities typically have years-long "lockups" on their capital for all investors and require redemption requests to be made in writing 60 to 90 days in advance. The fund was closed in 2008, and its remaining assets of approximately $2billion, including Epstein's investment, were transferred to Fortress Investment Group when that firm bought the assets in 2009. Epstein later went to arbitration with Fortress over his redemption attempt. The outcome of that arbitration is not publicly known.

In August 2006, Epstein, a month after the federal investigation of him began, invested $57million in the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage hedge fund. This fund was highly leveraged in mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

On April 18, 2007, an investor in the fund, who had $57million invested, discussed redeeming his investment. At this time, the fund had a leverage ratio of 17:1, which meant for every dollar invested there were seventeen dollars of borrowed funds; therefore, the redemption of this investment would have been equivalent to removing $1billion from the thinly traded CDO market. The selling of CDO assets to meet the redemptions that month began a repricing process and general freeze in the CDO market. The repricing of the CDO assets caused the collapse of the fund three months later in July, and the eventual collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008. It is likely Epstein lost most of this investment, but it is not known how much was his.

By the time that the Bear Stearns fund began to fail in May 2007, Epstein had begun to negotiate a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office concerning imminent charges for sex with minors. In August 2007, a month after the fund collapsed, the U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, entered into direct discussions about the plea agreement. Acosta brokered a lenient deal, according to him, because he had been ordered by higher government officials, who told him that Epstein was an individual of importance to the government. As part of the negotiations, according to the ''Miami Herald, one of Epstein's Florida attorneys on the case, told Fox Business Network "We would have been touting that if he had ooperated The idea that Epstein helped in any prosecution is news to me."

Israeli startup

In 2015, the Israeli newspaper ''Haaretz'' reported that Epstein invested in the startup Reporty Homeland Security (rebranded as Carbyne in 2018). The startup was connected with Israel's defense industry. It was headed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was also at one time the defense minister, and chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The CEO of the company is Amir Elihai who was a special forces officer, and Pinchas Bukhris, who is a director of the company, was at one time the defense ministry director general and commander of the IDF cyber unit 8200. Epstein and Barak, the head of Carbyne, were close, and Epstein often offered him lodging at one of his apartment units at 301 East 66th Street in Manhattan. Epstein had past experience with Israel's research and military sector. In April 2008, he went to Israel and met with a number of research scientists and visited different Israeli military bases. During this trip, he thought about staying in Israel in order to avoid trial, and possible jail, for charges he was facing for sex crimes; however, he opted to return to the United States.

Video recordings

Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places on his properties to allegedly record sexual activity with underage girls by prominent people for criminal purposes such as blackmail. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's long-term girlfriend and companion, told a friend that Epstein's private island in the Virgin Islands was completely wired for video and the friend believed that Maxwell and Epstein were videotaping everyone on the island as an insurance policy. When police raided his Palm Beach residence in 2006, two hidden pinhole cameras were discovered in his home. It was also reported that Epstein's mansion in New York was wired extensively with a video surveillance system.

Maria Farmer, an artist who worked for Epstein in 1996, noted that Epstein showed her a media room in the New York mansion where there were individuals monitoring the pinhole cameras throughout the house. The media room was accessed through a hidden door. She stated that in the media room "there were men sitting here. And I looked on the cameras, and I saw toilet, toilet, bed, bed, toilet, bed." She added that "It was very obvious that they were, like, monitoring private moments."

Epstein allegedly "lent" girls to powerful people to ingratiate himself with them and also to gain possible blackmail information. According to the Department of Justice, he kept compact discs locked in his safe in his New York mansion with handwritten labels that included the description: "young ame+ ame. Epstein implied that he had blackmail material when he told a ''New York Times'' reporter in 2018, off the record, that he had dirt on powerful people, including information about their sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.

Legal proceedings

First criminal case

Initial developments (2005–2006)

In March 2005, a woman contacted Florida's Palm Beach Police Department and alleged that her 14-year-old stepdaughter had been taken to Epstein's mansion by an older girl. While there, she was allegedly paid $300 () to strip and massage Epstein. She had allegedly undressed, but left the encounter wearing her underwear.

Palm Beach Police began a 13-month undercover investigation of Epstein, including a search of his home. During the investigation, Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter publicly accused the Palm Beach County state prosecutor, Barry Krischer, of being too lenient and called for help from the FBI.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) then became involved. Subsequently, the police alleged that Epstein had paid several girls to perform sexual acts with him. Interviews with five alleged victims and 17 witnesses under oath, a high-school transcript and other items found in Epstein's trash and home allegedly showed that some of the girls involved were under 18, the youngest being 14, with many under 16. The police search of Epstein's home found two hidden cameras and large numbers of photos of girls throughout the house, some of whom the police had interviewed in the course of their investigation. Adriana Ross, a former model from Poland who became an Epstein assistant, reportedly removed computer drives and other electronic equipment from the financier's Florida mansion before Palm Beach Police searched the home as part of their investigation. The court documents record that a search of Epstein's residence by Palm Beach Police detective Joseph Recarey in 2005 uncovered an incriminating Amazon receipt containing books on S&M. The books he ordered are titled: ''SM 101: A Realistic Introduction'', ''SlaveCraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude – Principles, Skills and Tools'' and ''Training with Miss Abernathy: A Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners''.

A former employee told the police that Epstein would receive massages three times a day. Eventually the FBI compiled reports on "34 confirmed minors" eligible for restitution (increased to 40 in the non-prosecution agreement) whose allegations of sexual abuse by Epstein included corroborating details. Julie Brown's 2018 exposés in the ''Miami Herald

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