Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 - August 10, 2019) was an American financier. ^[2] He worked at Bear Stearns early in his career and subsequently formed his own firm, J. Epstein & Co. In 2008 Epstein was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and given an eighteen-month prison sentence, of which he served thirteen months. ^[3] He was a registered level three sex offender. ^{[2] [4]}

He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a middle-class Jewish family. Epstein's father worked for New York city’s parks. ^[5]

Epstein attended Lafayette High School. He attended classes at Cooper Union from 1969 to 1971 and later at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. He left without a degree.

Epstein taught calculus and physics at the Dalton School in Manhattan from 1973 to 1975. ^[6] One of his pupils was the son of Bear Stearns chairman Alan C. Greenberg. ^[5]

In 1976, Epstein began his financial career as an options trader at Bear Stearns, ^[6] where he worked in the special products division, advising high-net-worth clients on tax strategies. ^[6] In 1980, Epstein became a partner at Bear Stearns. ^[6] In 1982, Epstein founded his own financial management firm, J. Epstein & Co., managing the assets of clients with more than a billion dollars in net worth. In 1987, Leslie Wexner, founder and chairman of Ohio-based The Limited chain of women's clothing stores became a well-known client. ^[6] Wexner acquired Abercrombie & Fitch the following year, and in 1992 converted a private school into an enormous residence that later became Epstein's in the wealthiest part of Manhattan, the Upper East Side. In 1996, Epstein changed the name of his firm to The Financial Trust Company and based it on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. ^[6]

In 2003, Epstein publicly bid for New York magazine. Other bidders were advertising executive Donny Deutsch, investor Nelson Peltz, media mogul and New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, and film producer Harvey Weinstein. They were ultimately outbid by longtime Wall Street investor Bruce Wasserstein, who paid $55 million. ^[7] In 2004, Epstein and Zuckerman committed up to $25 million to finance Radar , a celebrity and pop culture magazine founded by Maer Roshan. Epstein and Zuckerman were equal partners in the venture, and Roshan, as its editor-in-chief, retained a small ownership stake. ^[8]

Since all but one of his financial clients are anonymous, it has been speculated that much of Epstein's lavish lifestyle was once financed by Wexner.

^[6] In September 2002, he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa in his private Boeing 727 to promote the former president's anti-AIDS efforts. ^[6]

He is also a longtime friend of Prince Andrew, Duke of York : they have stayed at each other's homes, and have vacationed together in Thailand. In December 2010, the prince was a guest in Epstein's New York residence for several days, shortly after Epstein completed his Florida sentence for soliciting an underage girl. His dinner with Andrew at the mansion was attended by (among others) Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, Charlie Rose, and Woody Allen. ^[9] The 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m 2 ) 9-story mansion is just off Fifth Avenue and overlooks the Frick Collection. It is reported to be the largest private residence in Manhattan, having originally been built as the Birch Wathen School.

Epstein's other properties include a villa in Palm Beach, Florida; an apartment in Paris; a 10,000-acre ranch, including a hilltop mansion in Stanley, New Mexico; ^{[10] [11]} and a mansion with guest houses on his private island near St. Thomas called Little Saint James.

In 2000 he established the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, which funds science research and education. Prior to 2003, Epstein's foundation funded Nowak's research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. ^{[6] [12]} In May 2003, Epstein established the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University with a $30 million gift to the university. ^[13] Under the direction of Martin Nowak, the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics is a graduate department that studies the evolution of molecular biology with the use of mathematics, focusing on diseases such as cancer, HIV and other viruses.

The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation has also funded genetic research leading towards advances in such fields as Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, colitis and Crohn's disease. Epstein has given funds to the American Cancer Society, for projects such as CTC technology, a blood test to identify genetic mutations to anti-inhibitor cancer drugs. ^[14]

Epstein, in the past has associated with many well-known scientific personalities, such as Gerald Edelman, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Lawrence Krauss, Lee Smolin and Gregory Benford. ^{[6] [15] [16]} In 2006, Epstein's foundations sponsored a conference on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands with Hawking, Krauss, and Nobel laureates Gerard 't Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek, covering such topics as unified gravity theory, neuroscience, the origins of language and global threats to the Earth. ^[16]

More recently, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation has backed research into artificial intelligence; it had been supporting Marvin Minsky at MIT (until his death) and is supporting Ben Goertzel in Hong Kong. ^{[17] [18]}

The extent of Epstein's claimed philanthropy is unknown since the Epstein's foundation fails to disclose information which other charities routinely disclose.

Concerns have been raised over this and the New York Attorney General has been trying to get information. ^[19]

In March 2005, a woman contacted Palm Beach police and alleged her 14-year-old daughter had been taken to Jeffrey Epstein's mansion by an older girl and paid $300 after stripping and massaging him. ^[11] She had undressed, but left on her underwear. ^[21]

Police started an 11-month undercover investigation of Epstein, followed by a search of his home.

Subsequently, they alleged that Epstein had paid several escorts to perform sexual acts on him.

Interviews with five alleged victims and seventeen witnesses under oath, a high-school transcript and other items they found in Epstein's trash and home allegedly showed that some girls were under 18.

^[23] A search of Epstein's home found large numbers of photos of girls throughout the house, some of whom had been interviewed earlier by the police.

^[21] Papers filed in 2006 state that Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places in his property to record sex between prominent people and underage prostitutes for criminal purposes such as blackmail. ^[3]

Epstein had set up a system of young women recruiting other women for his massage services.

^[11] Two housekeepers stated to the police that Epstein would receive "massages" every day whenever he stayed in Palm Beach.

^[21] In May 2006, Palm Beach police filed a probable cause affidavit saying that Epstein should be charged with four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one molestation count.

^[21] His team of lawyers included Gerald Lefcourt, Alan Dershowitz and later Ken Starr. ^[11] Epstein passed a lie detector test in which he was asked whether he knew of the underage status of the girls—although lie detector tests are generally not admissible in a court of law. ^{[25] [3]}

Instead of following police recommendation, the prosecutors considered the evidence weak ^[25] and presented it to a grand jury. Former chief of Palm Beach police Michael Reiter later wrote to State Attorney Barry Krischer to complain of the state's "highly unusual" conduct and asked him to remove himself from the case. ^[11] The grand jury returned only a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution, ^[27] to which Epstein pleaded not guilty in August 2006. ^[28]

In June 2008, after pleading guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14, ^[29] Epstein began serving an 18-month sentence. He served 13 months, and upon release became a registered sex offender. ^{[4] [30]} There is widespread controversy and suspicion that Epstein got off lightly. ^[31]

After the accusations became public, several parties returned donations they had received from Epstein, including Eliot Spitzer, Bill Richardson, ^[12] and the Palm Beach Police Department. ^[23] Harvard announced that it would not return any money. ^[12] A range of charitable donations Epstein had made financing children's education were also brought into question. ^[29]

On June 18, 2010, Epstein's former butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, was sentenced to 18 months in jail for trying to sell a journal that he said recorded Epstein's activities.

Special Agent Christina Pryor reviewed the material and agreed it was information "that would have been extremely useful in investigating and prosecuting the case, including names and contact information of material witnesses and additional victims."

^{[32] [33]} Epstein allegedly lent girls to powerful people to ingratiate himself with them and also to get possible blackmail information. ^[31]

In January 2015, a 31-year-old American woman, Virginia Roberts, alleged in a sworn affidavit that at the age of 17, she had been employed by Epstein as a sex slave and he trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Prince Andrew and Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz. She claimed to have suffered physical abuse that made her fear for her life. ^[34]

She alleged that the FBI may have been involved in a cover-up. ^[35] Roberts said she served as Epstein's sex slave from 1999 to 2002, recruiting other girls. ^[36] Prince Andrew, Epstein and Dershowitz all deny having sex with Roberts, and Dershowitz is taking legal action over the allegations. ^{[37] [38] [39]} A diary purported to belong to Roberts was published online. ^{[40] [41]}

The BBC television series, Panorama planned an investigation of the scandal. ^[42] As of early 2015 no law court had tested these claims. ^[43]

On April 7, 2015, Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that the allegations made by Roberts against Prince Andrew had no bearing on the aim of the lawsuit to reopen Epstein's non-prosecution agreement and should be struck from the record. ^[44] Judge Marra made no ruling as to whether claims by Roberts are true or false. ^[45] Marra specifically stated that Roberts may later give evidence when the case comes to court. ^[46]

On February 6, 2008, an anonymous Virginia woman filed a $50 million civil lawsuit ^[47] in federal court against Epstein, alleging that when she was a 16-year-old minor in 2004–2005, she was "recruited to give Epstein a massage."

She claims she was taken to his mansion, where he exposed himself and had sexual intercourse with her, and paid her $200 immediately afterward.

^[27] A similar $50 million suit was filed by a different woman in March 2008, who was represented by the same lawyer.

^[49] Several of these lawsuits were dismissed, and all other lawsuits were settled out of court.

^[50] Epstein has so far made 17 out-of-court settlements, and some cases are ongoing.

^[51] A December 30, 2014 federal civil suit was filed in Florida against the United States for violations of the Crime Victims' Rights Act in agreeing to the 2008 plea; it accuses Dershowitz of sexually abusing a minor provided by Epstein. ^[52] (See Two Jane Does v. United States .) The allegations against Dershowitz were stricken by the judge and eliminated from the case however, after Dershowitz's attorney argued that they were baseless. ^[53] A court document alleges that Epstein ran a “sexual abuse ring”, and lent underage girls to “prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders”

Another woman, Katie Johnson, filed a lawsuit in June 2016 accusing Epstein and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of raping her in 1994, when she was 13 years old. ^{[54] [55]}

On February 21, 2019, Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida Kenneth Marra said federal prosecutors violated the law by failing to notify victims before they allowed him to plead guilty to only the Florida offense. The judge left open what the possible remedy could be.

On March 11, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit gave parties one week to provide good cause as to why the summary judgement and case documents should remain under seal, without which they would be unsealed on March 19, 2019.

On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on sex trafficking charges. According to witnesses and sources, about a dozen FBI agents broke down the door to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, the Herbert N. Straus House, with search warrants. Two days later, prosecutors with the Public Corruption Unit of the Southern District of New York charged him with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex. Court documents allege that at least 40 underage girls were brought into Epstein's mansion for sexual encounters. Judge Kenneth Marra is currently deciding whether the non-prosecution agreement that protected Epstein from the more serious charges should still stand.

Epstein owned a private Boeing 727 jet and traveled in it frequently, logging "600 flying hours a year (...) usually with guests on board."

On July 12, 2019, it was reported in a court filing that federal prosecutors accused Epstein of possible witness tampering. According to the filing, he made $350,000 in payments to two possible co-conspirators who could potentially testify against Epstein at trial. The prosecutors used this as reasoning to not grant Epstein bail.^[56]

On July 18, 2019, a federal judge denied bail, providing reasoning that he is a danger to the public and might flee the country.^[57]

Epstein died of an apparent suicide by hanging on August 10, 2019, while imprisoned at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

Prison officials found his body in his cell at 7:30 a.m.

He was 66 years old.^[60]