Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender. He began his career as a math teacher, before entering the banking and finance sector. He made much of his fortune providing tax and estate services to billionaires. Over the course of several decades, he cultivated an elite social circle of prominent individuals from across Western high society. In 2008, he was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution, and was indicted in 2019 for sex trafficking minors in the 2000s. He died in custody awaiting his trial, his death ruled a suicide.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Investigators identified 36 girls between the ages of 14 and 17, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused. 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 was convicted as part of a plea deal agreed by Alexander Acosta of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, serving 13 months.

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. Barbara Sampson, the then-New York City medical examiner, ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging. The forensic pathologist Michael Baden disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the cause of his death, resulting in 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 socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited young girls for him, 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.

At the time of his death, Epstein's estate was valued at $600 million, from which hundreds of millions have been paid to victims in legal settlements. Victims also received settlements of $290m from JP Morgan and $75m from Deutsche Bank, after lawsuits alleged they had enabled Epstein's abuse by keeping him as a client.

Epstein was acquaintances or friends with public figures including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Noam Chomsky, Steve Bannon, Ehud Barak, Richard Branson, Leon Black; former Prince Andrew, Duke of York; Bill Gates; Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway; and many others. The Epstein files, a collection of documents which has been partially released as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, provide a public glimpse into the vast network he had cultivated over the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Early life

Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born on January 20, 1953, in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. His parents, Pauline "Paula" Stolofsky (1918–2004) and Seymour George 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 worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener.

Epstein was the older of two siblings; he and his brother Mark grew up in the neighborhood of Sea Gate, a private gated community in Coney Island. A childhood friend described Paula as "a wonderful mother and homemaker", and neighbors remembered the parents as being quiet and humble. Epstein attended local public schools, first attending Public School 188, and then Mark Twain Junior High School nearby and usually earned money by tutoring classmates. Acquaintances considered Epstein "sweet and generous" although "quiet and nerdy", and nicknamed him "Eppy". Of Epstein, a female friend later said, "He was just an average boy, very smart in math, slightly overweight, freckles, always smiling."

In 1967, Epstein attended the National Music Camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He began playing the piano when he was five, and was regarded as a talented musician by friends. He graduated in 1969 from Lafayette High School at age 16, having skipped two grades. Later that year, he attended advanced math 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, where he studied mathematical physiology, but left without receiving a degree in June 1974.

Career

Dalton School (1974–1976)

In September 1974, at age 21, Epstein started working as a calculus and mathematics teacher at the Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The school's newspaper announced the hiring of Epstein. 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.

At Dalton, Epstein allegedly showed inappropriate behavior toward underage female students, paying them constant attention, and even showing up at a student party, according to a former student. Other former students also often saw him flirting with female students. While at a Dalton parent-teacher conference, Epstein impressed a Wall Street executive with his knowledge of mathematics and was then recommended as a hire to Alan Greenberg, who was a senior partner of Bear Stearns. In June 1976, Epstein was dismissed from Dalton for "poor performance" and he then became an assistant to a floor trader at Bear Stearns.

Bear Stearns (1976–1981)

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 on tax mitigation strategies. James Cayne, the bank's later CEO, praised Epstein's skill with wealthy clients and complex products. In 1980, Epstein became a limited partner. In 1981, Epstein was asked to leave for a "Reg D violation", according to his sworn testimony. Epstein remained close to Cayne and Greenberg and was a client of Bear Stearns until its collapse in 2008.

Financial troubleshooter (1981–1987)

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.

In the mid-1980s, Epstein traveled multiple times between the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. 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. An anonymous source met with Epstein and Leese as early as 1981. Hoffenberg said in 2020 that he had introduced Epstein to Robert Maxwell.

During the 1980s, Epstein possessed an Austrian passport that had his photo, but with a false name. The passport showed his place of residence as 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 at the end of the George W. Bush administration, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team, "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 had been introduced to him by Leese. Khashoggi was one of several defense contractors that he knew.