Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier, child sex offender, serial rapist, and human trafficker. He began his professional career as a teacher at the Dalton School. After his dismissal from the school in 1976, he entered the banking and finance sector, working at Bear Stearns in various roles, before starting his own firm. Epstein cultivated an elite social circle and procured at least 1,000 underage girls and women who were subjected to repeated rape and sexual violence by him and his associates.
In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Federal officials identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, 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 of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal agreed by the U.S. Department of Justice's Alexander Acosta, and he served almost 13 months in custody but with extensive work release.
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 New York City medical examiner, controversially ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden has disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death, resulting in conspiracy theories. In July 2025, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released closed-circuit television footage to support the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell. When the Department of Justice released the footage, approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds of it was missing, and the video was found to have been modified despite the FBI's claim that it was raw.
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 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.
According to The New York Times, Epstein made much of his fortune by providing tax and estate services to billionaires. He was also a renowned social networker, whose vast network included business people, royalty, politicians and academics. His friendships with public figures including Donald Trump, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Bill Clinton have attracted significant controversy. Documents released by the House Democratic Caucus in September 2025 show that he maintained connections with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Larry Summers, and Steve Bannon. In January 2026 more Epstein files were released, showing extensive contact with Ehud Barak, Steve Tisch, Howard Lutnick, Kathy Ruemmler and Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway.
Early life
Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born on January 20, 1953, in Brooklyn a borough of New York City. His parents, Pauline "Paula" Stolofsky and Seymour George Epstein, 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.Jeffrey 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, Brooklyn. Within the family, Epstein was nicknamed Bear, while Mark was called Puggie. 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". "He was just an average boy, very smart in math, slightly overweight, freckles, always smiling", a female friend later described.
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
Private school teacher (1974–1976)
At age 21, Epstein started working in September 1974 as a physics and mathematics teacher for teens at the Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. 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.Epstein allegedly showed inappropriate behavior toward underage female students at the time, paying them constant attention, and even showing up at a party where young people were drinking, according to a former student. Other former students also often saw him flirting with female students. Eventually, Epstein became acquainted with Alan Greenberg, the chief executive officer of Bear Stearns, whose son and daughter were attending the school. Greenberg's daughter, Lynne Koeppel, pointed to a parent-teacher conference where Epstein influenced another Dalton parent into advocating for him to Greenberg. In June 1976, after Epstein was dismissed from Dalton for "poor performance", Greenberg offered him a job 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, such as Seagram president Edgar Bronfman, 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., 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 US attorney general. An anonymous source met with Epstein and Leese as early as 1981. Epstein also stated to some people at the time that he was an intelligence agent. Epstein associate Hoffenberg in 2020 alleged that Epstein was recruited in the 1980s by Leese to work for British intelligence, and that Hoffenberg 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 US 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.
Towers Financial Corporation (1987–1993)
hired Epstein in 1987 as a consultant for Towers Financial Corporation, a collection agency that bought debts people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies. Hoffenberg set Epstein up in offices in the Villard Houses in Manhattan and paid him per month for his consulting work.Hoffenberg and Epstein then refashioned themselves as corporate raiders using Towers Financial as their raiding vessel. One of Epstein's first assignments for Hoffenberg was to implement what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987. A similar unsuccessful bid in 1988 was made to take over Emery Air Freight Corp. During this period, Hoffenberg and Epstein worked closely together and traveled everywhere on Hoffenberg's private jet.
In 1993, Towers Financial Corporation imploded when it was exposed as one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in American history, losing over of its investors' money. In court documents, Hoffenberg claimed that Epstein was intimately involved in the scheme. Epstein left the company by 1989 and was never charged for involvement in the massive investor fraud committed. It is unknown if Epstein acquired any stolen funds from the Towers Ponzi scheme.