China Daily 2026-02-13
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 behaviour 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.
Editor: Zhao Li
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 