By Joe O’Hara
Although Jeffrey Epstein’s name has been at the top of many search engines for the past few days, many people really don’t know that much about him. Aside, of course, from the fact that he was recently indicted on sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy charges – and that he’s facing 45-years in prison.
So, since we’re going to be following his case until the current charges against him are resolved via an acquittal, a conviction or a plea deal, we thought it would be helpful to gather some background information about him.
Kind of like we did with that other notorious sex trafficker, Keith Alan Raniere NKA Federal Prisoner 57005-177 (As you’ll see from this little primer, there are quite a few similarities between the two of them).
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The Early Years
Epstein was born on January 20, 1953 in Brooklyn – and grew up in the Coney Island neighborhood.
He graduated from Lafayette High School in 1969 at the age of 16, attended Cooper Union college for two years before dropping out, and then attended the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU (He did not receive any degrees beyond his high school diploma).
He taught calculus and physics at the Dalton School in Manhattan for two years – and then took a job as an options trader at Bear Stearns in 1976.
Epstein quickly climbed the corporate ladder at Bear Stearns – and in 1980, he became a limited partner in the company.
Two years later, Epstein launched his own financial management firm – J. Epstein & Co. – which only accepted clients with a net worth of at least $1 billion.
He later changed the name of the company to The Financial Trust Company – and moved its headquarters to the Virgin Islands for tax purpose.
Over the course of the next two decades, his company continued to prosper – and by the early 2000s, Epstein had become a multi-billionaire himself.
Along the way, he became friends with numerous prominent people – including, just to name a few, former President Bill Clinton, future President Donald Trump, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, and Les Wegner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret.
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The Initial Investigation
Epstein first came to the attention of law enforcement officials in March 2005 when a woman contacted the Palm Beach Police Department – and alleged that her 14-year old stepdaughter had been paid $300 to strip down to her underwear and give Epstein a massage.
The Palm Beach police immediately began an undercover investigation – and eventually brought the matter to the attention of the local FBI office.
The joint investigation by the Palm Beach police and the FBI eventually resulted in the issuance of a search warrant for Epstein’s home.
The search uncovered hundreds of photographs of what appeared to be underage girls.
It also uncovered numerous hidden cameras throughout the property that, according to a story in the International Business Times, had been installed to record Epstein’s guests engaging in sexual relations with underage girls.
Eventually, the FBI gathered affidavits from 36 girls who claimed to have been sexually molested by Epstein.
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Federal Indictment & Plea Deal
In 2008, Epstein was indicted on multiple sex-related charges by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
The U.S. Attorney in charge of that office was Alexander Acosta – who currently serves as President Trump’s Secretary of Labor (Ironically enough, the Department of Labor is the lead agency in the federal government’s ongoing battle against sex trafficking).
Instead of pursuing the charges that had been filed against Epstein, Acosta agreed to a plea deal that granted Epstein immunity from all the federal criminal charges.
That same plea deal also granted immunity to four of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators – and any “unnamed potential co-conspirators”.
It also sealed the original indictment – and all the related filings.
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State Charges & “Punishment”
As part of his federal plea deal, Epstein also had to agree to plead guilty to one state-level charge of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl, serve an 18-month term of imprisonment, register as a sex offender, and pay restitution to the 36 victims that had been identified by the FBI.
Rather than going to state prison after he pleaded guilty to the one state-level charge in 2008, Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade.
While there, he was allowed to hire his own “security detail” – and to work at his firm’s downtown office 12-hours-per-day six days per week.
He was released after serving 13 months of his 18-month sentence – and, thereafter, moved to New York City.
Upon his relocation to New York City, he has been registered as a “Level Three” sex offender (All “Level three” offenders are considered as being at “high risk of re-offending”).
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Numerous Civil Lawsuits & Other Legal Actions
Over the course of the past decade, Epstein has been sued by several women who claimed to have been sexually abused by him while they were still underage.
Most of those lawsuits resulted in out-of-court settlements and sealed records.
On February 21, 2019, U.S. Senior District Court Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that the federal prosecutors who handled Epstein’s plea deal arrangements back in 2008 had violated the law by not notifying any of his alleged victims about the deal.
In March 2019, the Second Circuit ordered the unsealing of all the documents in the original federal indictment against Epstein.
On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested as he disembarked from his private jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
Thereafter, on July 8, 2019, Epstein was charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex. He was remanded to the Manhattan Correctional Center (MCC) pending his bail hearing on July 15, 2019.
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To Be Continued
Over the course of the next few months, we’re going to have a lot more to say about Jeffrey Epstein – and his interactions with the U.S. criminal justice system.
But at least now we have a picture of who he is – and how he came to be residing at MCC.
BTW, is it just me or are there some striking similarities between Epstein and Vanguard?
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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He’s indeed starting to look more like Raniere – I pointed out previously that hedge fund managers are often really just con men. And in Epstein’s case it looks as if he may not even have run a full-blown scam, as much as having just used his wiles to ingratiate himself with a couple of very wealthy people, and milk them for all they’re worth – with a bit of financial manipulation and fraud thrown in for good measure:
Epstein’s Fortune May Be More Illusion Than Fact
“When federal prosecutors announced sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, they described him as “a man of nearly infinite means.”
But there’s little evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire. His wealth may have depended more on his connections to two men than on his math acumen.”
“Much of that appears to be an illusion, and there is little evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire.
Mr. Epstein’s wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men — Steven J. Hoffenberg, a onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running a $460 million Ponzi scheme, and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the chief executive of the company that owns Victoria’s Secret.
Mr. Hoffenberg was Mr. Epstein’s partner in two ill-fated takeover bids in the 1980s, including one of Pan American World Airways, and would later claim that Mr. Epstein had been part of the scheme that landed him in jail — although Mr. Epstein was never charged. With Mr. Wexner, Mr. Epstein formed a financial and personal bond that baffled longtime associates of the wealthy retail magnate, who was his only publicly disclosed investor.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/business/jeffrey-epstein-net-worth.html
[…] Let’s get to Know Jeffrey Epstein […]
He’s a Mossad agent.
If he really were, his handlers would have trained him better than to have incriminating evidence inside a safe that the FBI could easily access. And if he had been involved with some devious and ruthless operators, they’d probably have arranged for his quiet demise after the first case, precisely because another blow-up like this is predicatable from someone like him.
It’s possible that they might have exploited him on occasion, such as if the knew he could be used to help gather incriminating information on someone they wanted to black mail. And it’s still questionable that Israel and its professional agents would have wanted to have associated themselves with something as tawdry as pedophilia, even at arm’s length – just look at Acosta for the sort of blowback
2015 post by Vicky Ward about what happened when she covered Epstein for her 2003 Vanity Fair article: https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-tried-to-warn-you-about-sleazy-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-in-2003
Vicky Ward was the first journalist to write about the weird world of Jeffrey Epstein.
Like his foyer of glass artificial eyeballs which greeted every visitor to his seven story Manhattan townhouse.
SocietyMarch 2003
THE TALENTED MR. EPSTEIN
Lately, Jeffrey Epstein’s high-flying style has been drawing oohs and aahs: the bachelor financier lives in New York’s largest private residence, claims to take only billionaires as clients, and flies celebrities including Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey on his Boeing 727. But pierce his air of mystery and the picture changes. Vicky Ward explores Epstein’s investment career, his ties to retail magnate Leslie Wexner, and his complicated past.
BY VICKY WARD
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
https://alethonews.com/2019/07/10/epstein-stories-you-wont-find-in-the-news/
Both Raniere and Epstein were never married, both thought they were the smartest person in the room, both had a small gaggle of evil women around them to recruit new girls/women, and both used an MLM-style method of obtaining new girls/women to f*ck.
I hope Jeffrey Epstein sings like a bird.
The wealthy and well-connected financier and registered sex offender was arrested this week in New York on accusations of child sex trafficking. He just may bring a lot of bad men – and a few bad women – down with him.
Epstein allegedly groomed and recruited dozens of underage girls, many of them vulnerable runaways, for sex with him and his friends. Despite being caught by authorities, Epstein has largely evaded serious punishment. Thanks to heroic reporting by Julie K Brown at the Miami Herald, Americans learned that back in 2008, Epstein was given an exceptionally favorable plea deal by then-prosecutor Alex Acosta – now Trump’s secretary of labor. The deal was shamefully hidden from Epstein’s victims, and while it forced Epstein to register as a sex offender, it allowed him near-total freedom for the 13 months he was technically in jail – he was allowed to leave the facility to work in his luxurious private office instead of serving life in prison.
It’s unclear why Epstein was given such favorable treatment. But given who his friends are, speculation has run rampant that his powerful connections (and the potential wrongdoings of other powerful men) may have had a hand in keeping him in relative freedom.
Epstein’s friends and contacts include President Donald Trump, President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and high-powered attorney Alan Dershowitz, among many others. In 2002, Trump characterized Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of girls “on the younger side.”
In the immediate aftermath of Epstein’s arrest, Twitter exploded with political gotchas. On the right, it’s near-gospel that President Bill Clinton and Epstein are jet-setting pals, and that Clinton is at best complicit and at worst a participant in Epstein’s sex crimes. (We know Clinton used Epstein’s private jet for work related to the Clinton Foundation; according to Clinton, they were always accompanied by Secret Service agents or Clinton Foundation staff.)
On the left, Trump opponents wonder if the president was ever a participant in Epstein’s sexual crimes. Trump was at one point accused by a young woman of raping her at Epstein’s New York home when she was 13; the lawsuit in which those accusations were made was withdrawn by the accuser. We also know that Trump and Epstein socialized, that Trump’s various phone numbers were written in Epstein’s notorious little black book, and that Epstein was once asked whether he had ever been around Trump and underage girls – and he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
This is not a story in which anyone should find satisfaction. Dozens of vulnerable girls were allegedly sexually exploited and abused by Jeffrey Epstein. A great many adults, who should have done the right thing and stood up for these children, chose to look the other way. A few may have even participated in exploitation and rape.
The only way forward is to demand accountability from Epstein, his co-conspirators, and his enablers, without exception and without excuse. Who knew what was going on? Who participated? How, exactly, did Epstein get such a sweet plea deal in Florida?
Wherever these questions lead prosecutors and reporters must follow. And the public must demand real accountability, no matter the answers.
What happens next will be revealing. Any person who participated in or knew about Epstein’s alleged trafficking ring should face (in addition to jail time) total public rejection. If they hold public office, they must resign or be forced out. If they are a lion of politics or public life, they must retreat, live with this profound shame, and know it will taint their legacy forever.
Unfortunately, this isn’t how we’ve treated abusive and predatory men for most of human history. While that’s changing – the #MeToo movement has made an incredible impact – it still seems that a man’s punishment remains contingent on who he is, how powerful he is, and who his allies are. It’s also looking increasingly partisan. While Democrats are far from innocent when it comes to letting badly-behaved men off the hook, the American left has largely stepped up in recent years and demanded accountability from its own. Well-loved men like Al Franken have stepped down in the wake of sexual misconduct. Men whose bad behavior has been long known, like Bill Clinton, are seeing their legacies stained as modern feminists are increasingly willing to criticize their bad acts. When it comes to Epstein, the left is ready and willing to take down anyone who let him get away with his crimes – whoever they are, and however they vote.
But is the political right ready and willing to do the same? Aside from the hopeful conservative claims that Clinton is going down, the actual commitment of conservatives to punishing men for sexual wrongdoing is an outstanding question. Many, many times over, we have seen prominent conservative figures accused of sexual harassment or assault, only to have the most prominent figures on the right just deny it. Women who accuse liberal men of wrongdoing, the thinking seems to be, are to be believed. Women who accuse right-wing men are liars.
Just look at Brett Kavanaugh, who sits on the Supreme Court despite a credible claim of sexual assault and attempted rape. Or Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual misdeeds by more than two dozen women – and most recently of rape. Or Alex Acosta, Trump’s labor secretary, who is the reason Jeffrey Epstein isn’t sitting in federal prison. Too many of the same people salivating over the possibility that some liberal men will be indicated in the Epstein case are too happy to shrug off serious allegation of sexual crimes when those allegations are leveled against men whose politics they share.
Holding people accountable for abusing girls should be a nonpartisan affair. Sadly, in the Trump era of lowered expectations and even more dismal behavior, we can’t even count on that.
How does he go from attending a basically art college (Cooper Union) to attending the math college at NYU, (wthout getting a degree from either place) to TEACHING calculus and physics at Dalton, one of the most prestigious schools of learnng? And these three seemingly unrelated academic paths lead to yet another unrelated path — an options trader at Bear Stearns? One does not easily “become” an options trader. It takes skill AND connections. I would guess that the number of art school dropouts who then went on to become options traders is pretty small.
1) Cooper Union is not an ‘art college’. It is primarily an engineering and science-oriented school with extremely high admissions standards especially since there is no tuition.
2) Standards are waived for exceptional students and teachers. A colleague was a tenured, full professor at MIT’s Draper Labs with no college degree and less formal education than Epstein.
3) Options trading relies heavily on the use of mathematical algorithms as well as acute social skills to get information.
Cooper Union for years did not extract tuition from its students. A devaluation of Cooper Union’s extensive real estate portfolio, which includes the iconic Chrysler Building, led to Cooper Union having to charge tuition, though it plans to revert to a tuition free institution in the near future.
https://www.thevillager.com/2018/03/driven-by-chrysler-building-rent-cooper-on-road-back-to-free/
A lot of smart people get bored with school.
True. And it was back in the 70s/80s. I imagine it was a very different world.
“How does he go from attending a basically art college (Cooper Union) to attending the math college at NYU, (wthout getting a degree from either place) to TEACHING calculus and physics at Dalton, one of the most prestigious schools of learning?
Good Question!
Some people have compared Epstein to “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” an ignorant fraud and charlatan who somehow assumes the identity of a Princeton University graduate.
Other people compare Epstein to Jay Gatsby of the “Great Gatsby” an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about a mysterious millionaire of dubious background who somehow is rolling in money.
Very similar these two, only this guy worked throughout his life and made his own money, while Raniere was only sleeping, gambling with other people’s money, having sex with dozens of women and texting stupid bs to others.
i dont call what jeff ep did WORK and i dont think he made his OWN money PIMPMACK DADDY for royalty or Mossad they are baaL SCUM!
ps show me his hands i’ll tell you if this guy worked ONE DAY of his life {you know REAL LABOR}
There are reports Epstein’s right palm is well-callused, does that count?
JJ OHara
Epstein pleaded to two counts — not one — soliciting and procuring prostitution with a 16 year old girl. The 16 year old was substituted for original charges with a 14 year old.
There are several other issues that are also inaccurate/misleading/incomplete in this story.
One similarity: desire to fuck a lot of women with a preference with teens. Otherwise, no connections and very few similarities.
“only this guy worked throughout his life and made his own money,”
It’s extremely unclear how Epstein exactly made his money.
Some investigators and journalists believe that Epstein had the perfect set up to provide illicit sexual services to wealthy powerful men and then blackmail them.
Epstein’s mansions and homes were supposedly equipped with cameras and microphones to record salacious activities.
Another interesting question, is who his clients are – and how well he has actually done for them, plus how he made his money.
Many if not most hedge funds are essentially scams, in which the operators skim off huge fees, implying they have some sort of inside advantage (if they do, that’s illegal, as in several recent cases prosecuted) or a special strategy (often producing some short-term gains but eventually tanking badly), actually performing worse than the market averages in the long run. Their “managers” are basically confidence men good at working people, and making them think they are something special – definitely shades of Raniere, plus it’s almost certainly similar to the sort of investment “advising” that Barbara Bouchey once made money at.
Here’s what a Forbes piece has to say about hedge funds in general:
“At the end of the 1980s, Henry Kravis, George Roberts and their ilk epitomized the evils of Wall Street. Today that dubious honor goes to hedge funds, which offer a potent cocktail of dismal returns, short-term trading and bad behavior.
…..
The HFRI Equity Hedge Index [ a global, equal-weighted index of the 500 largest hedge fund, approximating average performance of major hedge funds] has returned 3.5% annually over the past five years, versus 11.5% for a standard low-fee S&P 500 index fund.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2019/05/06/how-hedge-funds-became-the-villains-on-wall-street
There ARE remarkable similarities between Epstein and Raniere. They have VERY similar methods of operating. Hmmm….
Here’s a coincidence:
In 1981 Jeffrey Epstein was forced out of Bear Stearns brokerage house for suspected insider trading.
It turns out that Edgar Bronfman Senior was planning to buy St. Joe Minerals for triple the stock price and supposedly Epstein tried to get in on the profits by illegal insider trading.
This story can be found on Page 97 of James Patterson’s book about Epstein titled “Filthy Rich”, hardcover edition.
Moreover, rumors are circulating that Epstein was running the pedophile ring to entrap prominent American politicians for blackmail on behalf of a foreign intelligence service.
Report: Alex Acosta Said He Was Told Jeffrey Epstein ‘Belonged to Intelligence’ And ‘To Leave It Alone’
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=60461
Mr. Shadow
Who cares if Raniere and Epstein are similar? World politics don’t center around Raniere.
Your story is more interesting than Mr. O’Hara’s!
“World politics don’t center around Raniere.”
This blog centers around Raniere and Epstein’s activities have certain parallels to the Raniere story.
Shadow, Patterson is mainly a fiction writer and his claims about Epstein sound fictional. If his hypothesis is true, then why was Patterson aware of this but the US intelligence agencies had no clue it was going on?
If Epstein was gathering info on Trump and Clinton, then why was this info not used against them?
I also see few similarities between Epstein and Raniere, except that both are extremely misogynistic and both appear to be narcissists.
Flowers:
Truth be told Patterson was mainly used on the book “Filthy Rich” as a marquee name to sell the book.
The real reporters in the Patterson book are local Florida journalists named John Connolly and Tim Malloy.
They did most of the foot work needed to research this important book.
And the Miami Herald’s reporter Julie Brown revived the story with a series of stories in the Herald starting in November 2018.
Brown’s journalism over the two years she spent researching the story relit the fire that resulted in the recent New York indictment.