Jeffrey Epstein — a financier whose estate was valued at $600 million — was a registered sex offender facing charges of trafficking minors at the time of his death in August 2019.
At the end of January, more than six years after his death, the United States Department of Justice finally released more than three million pages of FBI investigation files into Epstein, plus 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. An additional three million pages are being withheld, the DOJ said, due to sensitive material, victims’ rights, and legal privilege.
The released files, though incomplete, revealed some of the architecture of Epstein’s illegal operation. It was more than a sex-trafficking ring to lure the rich and the powerful, analysts and experts said, it was a sophisticated system of social engineering designed to procure money and impunity through proximity to power.
Epstein was born into an ordinary Jewish family — his mother was a homemaker and his father worked as a landscaper for the City of New York. He was good at math and played piano well. Both talents helped him later charm people.
In 1976, when he was teaching at the prestigious Dalton School in New York, Epstein got his first Wall Street job at investment bank Bear Stearns through parental connections of his students, according to a New York Times investigative report.
Soon after, his supervisor found that he lied about his two degrees from two California universities. When confronted, Epstein, a college dropout, admitted to having lied, but said if he hadn’t nobody would have given him a chance.
Somehow, he was let off the hook and made a limited partner in 1980 at the young age of 27.
In his first financial job, Epstein exhibited a manipulative behavior pattern that later became more audacious. He endeared himself to top executives, abused expense accounts and lavished himself in luxuries.
In his five years at Bear Stearns, Epstein accumulated enough connections, credentials, and experience in manipulation to launch a future that far exceeded anyone’s imagination.
He embarked on a long journey to scam investors of their money, betray friends, and cultivate a network of powerful people by leveraging important “friendships” — be they real or perceived — to procure other ones.
He secured some of these relations by offering young women and even minors through his sex-trafficking operation, a crime that eventually led to his downfall.
Sex-ring operation
Documents showed that Epstein started the sex operation as early as the mid-1990s. One survivor reported Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the FBI in 1996, but no investigation was conducted.
Maxwell, a former socialite, was Epstein’s one-time girlfriend and longtime accomplice. She facilitated Epstein’s crimes by luring and recruiting women and girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
In March 2005, Palm Beach Police launched a formal investigation into Epstein after a 14-year-old girl’s parents reported she had been molested at his home.
The FBI investigation identified 36 victims in Florida alone. Yet somehow a “secret” non-prosecution agreement was negotiated by US Attorney Alexander Acosta in 2008 that allowed Epstein to avoid federal sex-trafficking charges.
He pleaded guilty to two state solicitation charges and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Epstein, however, was famously allowed to leave jail for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work at his nearby office. He served only 13 months of the sentence.
Epstein was able to continue his crimes for another decade until the Miami Herald’s investigative series “Perversion of Justice” led to his federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
About a month after his arrest, Epstein died by hanging in a New York prison in August 2019. The death was ruled a suicide.
More than 1,200 Epstein victims have been identified, with some as young as 11 years old. Many were forced and threatened into sex services for Epstein’s circle of powerful men. The operation was conducted in New York, Florida and Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Rich pickings
The files revealed that Epstein was not a financial genius as he claimed. His wealth was largely a product of high-level commissions through a social arbitrage scam.
The documents showed that for years, his primary source of legitimate income was Les Wexner, the founder of many brands including Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, The Limited and more. Records showed that Wexner gave Epstein “full power of attorney” in 1991 to oversee his multi-billion-dollar fortune.
Epstein used this access to get himself hundreds of millions of dollars, which he used to purchase his private island, jets, and properties. Between 1999 and 2007 alone, Wexner paid him more than $200 million in direct funds. Epstein also obtained a large luxury town house and Boeing 727 from Wexner virtually for free.
He also used his position scouting for Victoria’s Secret models to lure aspiring young women and sexually assault them.
Wexner maintains he ended his relationship with Epstein in 2008 when Epstein pleaded guilty to sex crimes.
Over the years, Epstein presented himself as a patron of intellectuals, befriending many academics through donations to prestigious institutions like MIT and Harvard University. His first meeting with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was partially facilitated by Gates’ science adviser.
He would then present himself as a science patron to billionaires, effectively using one group’s prestige to buy the other’s investment.
Epstein gained the trust of another billionaire Leon Black, becoming his financial adviser in 2012 after he lost Wexner as his primary source of income.
Documents showed that Black paid Epstein approximately $158 million for financial advice from 2012 to 2017. A Senate Finance Committee investigation suggested that Epstein’s strategies may have helped Black avoid more than $1 billion in future gift and estate taxes.
Black’s lawyer, Susan Estrich, said this week he had paid Epstein for estate planning and tax advice. She said in a statement that Black didn’t engage in misconduct and had no awareness of Epstein’s criminal activities.
People in high places
By 2019, when he was arrested again, Epstein had collected a vast network of prominent figures in politics, business and academia across the world.
The Epstein files revealed an A-list of people who had exchanges, associations and dealings of various degrees with him. US President Donald Trump and former president Bill Clinton in the political circle; Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk in business; Woody Allen and Noam Chomsky in culture and academia are just a handful of many.
The documents show that the name of the 14th Dalai Lama appears 169 times in emails, according to reports in multiple international media outlets, including India’s Financial Express, Belarus-based media outlet Nexta TV and Russia Today.
After reviewing the files, both the FBI and DOJ concluded in early 2026 that there was no evidence Trump participated in, witnessed, or facilitated Epstein’s sex-trafficking crimes. They also found no evidence linking Clinton to any of Epstein’s crimes.
However, some prominent public figures — mostly in Europe — have lost their positions after the files were released.
In the UK, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was stripped of his royal title of “prince” by his brother King Charles in October and vacated from the taxpayer-funded Royal Lodge due to his sexual misconduct with a minor through an arrangement by Epstein. Earlier, under public scrutiny and pressure, he gave up the title “Duke of York”.
Peter Mandelson was fired from his position as the UK ambassador to the US due to his long-standing association with Epstein. He recently resigned from the Labor Party after documents revealed that he received $75,000 from Epstein-linked accounts.
Morgan McSweeney resigned as chief of staff for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday due to his recommendation of Mandelson for the position.
Miroslav Lajcak resigned as national security adviser to the Slovakian Prime Minister in early February after the files revealed communications with Epstein regarding “gorgeous” girls.
Mona Juul was suspended as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan after the files showed that Epstein left $10 million to her children in a 2019 will. Norway’s former prime minister Thorbjorn Jagland, former foreign minister Borge Brende are also under scrutiny for their ties to Epstein, while Crown Princess Mette Marit has publicly apologized for her association with the disgraced figure.
Joanna Rubinstein, chair of Sweden for UNHCR, resigned from her post at the agency following evidence of a 2012 visit to Epstein’s private island.
Jack Lang, former culture minister of France, has announced his resignation as head of the Arab World Institute, a prestigious cultural institution in Paris. French authorities said they were investigating financial ties between his family and Epstein.
In US, little blowback
In the US, the Epstein investigation and files have resulted in few ramifications for the people involved with him.
Newly released documents forced US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to admit that he visited Epstein’s private island in December 2012 with his wife, children and nannies.
Lutnick made the admission during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, contradicting his previous claim that he had cut ties before Epstein was convicted in 2008.
In response to calls for Lutnick to resign, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday: “Secretary Lutnick remains a very important member of President Trump’s team and the president fully supports the secretary.”
It was also revealed Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard’s ex-president, had a close relationship with Epstein. At one point he was designated as a backup executor of Epstein’s will. Summers went on leave from academic positions at Harvard late last year, however, he didn’t resign and the university has so far resisted the call to terminate him.
In 2023, billionaire Black, who had visited Epstein’s private island, paid $62.5 million to the US Virgin Islands to get immunity from potential legal action related to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation on the island. He was identified in a 2019 FBI document as a potential “co-conspirator” of Epstein’s.
Black resigned as CEO and chairman of Apollo Global Management and gave up re-election as chairman of the Museum of Modern Art in 2021.
Investment bank JPMorgan Chase had a 15-year relationship with Epstein. Documents revealed that Epstein was flagged at least four times for suspicious activity between 2006 and 2011. Yet top executives overrode those concerns. The money enabled Epstein’s crimes, and JP Morgan has so far paid $365 million to settle related cases.
No accountability
What the Epstein files have revealed has dismayed many ordinary Americans about the US system.
One New York Times reader said the case revealed a “fundamentally rotten business culture” — a comment that got over 4,100 likes.
“It was the rich who made Epstein in their likeness and image, to serve their foul desires. His butler’s job as a procurer and pimp was simply to interpret the fickle predatory desires of his rich ‘betters’,” wrote another NYT reader, calling Epstein “the personification of the capitalist ruling class and their patriarchy”.
“It’s maddening there’s no accountability for all the other rich men Epstein was trafficking women to and working shady financial deals with,” said another reader.
Some online comments noted that in Europe, people associated with Epstein are facing consequences voluntarily or otherwise, but in the US, those people are mostly “weaseling out of any responsibility”.
“In the United States, politicians and many high-powered business executives have lost the capacity to feel shame. They can do whatever they want, with no consequences,” said an online comment.
Democratic Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff said that the US is being ruled by “the Epstein class”.
“You remember we were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans,” he said last Saturday at a public rally in Atlanta. “But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class, ruling our country. They are the elites they pretend to hate.”
– By May Zhou in Houston | China Daily
mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com
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