Jeffrey Epstein

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Jeffrey Edward Epstein (EP; January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted child of child murderer.

Epstein started his career as a tutor but then moved to the banking and finance industry in various positions, including stints at Bear Stearns before forming his own company.

He developed an elite social circle and recruited several women, including teenage girls, who were then sexually assaulted by Epstein and some of his allies, beginning in 2005. A parent in Palm Beach, Florida, says Epstein and some of her relatives began investigating her 14-year-old daughter after a mother complained that she had sexually assaulted her 14-year-old daughter.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to receiving a teen prostitute and a Florida state court of procuring an underage girl for prostitution and soliciting a prostitute.

He was held in detention for almost 13 months, but with a lot of work released.

He was found guilty of just these two offenses as part of a plea bargain, but federal authorities had in fact arrested 36 women, some as young as 14 years old, who Epstein had sexually assaulted.

On August 10, 2019, he died in his prison cell.

The medical examiner ruled the death was a suicide, but Epstein's lawyers challenged the decision.

A judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019. His death barred the possibility of bringing criminal charges.

Early life

Epstein was born in 1953 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Pauline's parents, who lived in 1918-1994, and Seymour G. Epstein (1916–1991) were Jewish and married in 1952, just before his birth. Pauline was both a school assistant and a homemaker. Seymour Epstein served as a groundskeeper and gardener 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 Sea Gate, a coworking neighborhood in Coney Island, Brooklyn, and a private gated neighborhood.

Epstein attended local public schools, first attending Public School 188 and then Mark Twain Junior High School nearby. Epstein attended the National Music Camp at the Interlochen Center for the Performing Arts in 1967. He started playing piano when he was five years old. He graduated from Lafayette High School in 1969 at the age of 16, having skipped two classes. He continued to study at Cooper Union until 1971, when he switched colleges. He attended the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University beginning in September 1971 but left without a degree in June 1974.

Personal life

Eva Andersson-Dubin and publishing heiress Ghislaine Maxwell are among Epstein's long-term girlfriends. Epstein was romantically linked to Andersson-Dubin for an 11-year period, but the two later became close friends after her marriage to Glenn Dubin. By 1991, Epstein met Maxwell, the daughter of disgraced media baron Robert Maxwell. After the death of her father, Epstein required Maxwell to return to the United States in 1991 to recover from her grief. Many of Epstein's accusers also accused Maxwell of acquiring or recruiting underage girls in lieu of only being Epstein's girlfriends. Several of Epstein's household members testified that Maxwell played a key role in both his personal and private lives, referring to her as his "main mother" who also handled recruiting, supervising, and firing employees beginning around 1992. Epstein renamed one of his businesses, the Ghislaine Corporation in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1995; the firm was defunct in 1998. Maxwell converted a 7,000-square-foot townhouse in 2000, just less than ten blocks from Epstein's New York mansion. An anonymous limited liability firm purchased this townhouse for $4.95 million, with an address that matches J. Epstein & Co's. Darren Indyke, Epstein's long-serving advocate, was the one defending the buyer. Epstein referred to Maxwell as "my best friend" in a Vanity Fair interview in 2003.

Epstein, a long-time friend of Prince Andrew and Tom Barrack, attended many influential people, including Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, Donald Trump, Katie Couric, Woody Allen, and Harvey Weinstein. Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Michael Jackson, Alec Baldwin, and the Kennedys were among his contacts. Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were also among his contacts. Both Clinton and Trump denied ever visiting Epstein's island.

Former Trump chief Strategist Steve Bannon was a collaborator of Epstein. In December 2017, Michael Wolff, Bannon, and Epstein were first introduced. At his mansion in New York, Bannon met Epstein several times. Bannon also coached Epstein for a 60 Minutes interview, which never happened, according to Wolff. Bill Gates' relationship with Jeffrey Epstein began in 2011, just a few years after Epstein's deposition, and continued for some years, according to a New York Times article. Gates said in August 2021 that the reason he had meetings with Epstein was because Gates hoped Epstein would have money for philanthropic causes, but no one came up with the suggestion. "It was a huge mistake to spend time with him to give him the appearance of being there," Gates said.

Epstein owned a private Boeing 727 jet and traveled in it frequently, clocking "600 flying hours per year... often with guests on board." The jet was referred to by the Virgin Islands' locals as the Lolita Express because of its regular arrivals at Little Saint James with clearly underage girls. Epstein traveled to Cuba on board with Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango at the request of Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2003. Epstein is believed to have relocating to Cuba in order to avoid US court oversight; at the time, US law enforcement was investigating Epstein; at the time, it was under scrutiny. Epstein's brother Mark said that Trump had flown on Epstein's plane at least once in 2009. Trump flew "numerous times" on Epstein's plane, according to Mark, who was on only one of the flights. Trump flew Epstein on his own plane at least once, according to Michael Corcoran. In September 2002, Epstein brought Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker to Africa. Bill Clinton visited at least a dozen international destinations in 2016, according to flight records collected in 2016. Any Secret Service detail for at least five flights on an Asia trip was missing, according to the Secret Service, there are no reports of the former president landing on Epstein's private island. In 2019, a Clinton spokesperson said that Clinton made four trips on Epstein's plane, making stops on three continents, all with his staff and Secret Service detail. At the time of Epstein's detention, Clinton's spokeswoman Angel Ugo said that she had "not talked to Epstein in a decade" and that he had never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein's ranch in New Mexico, or his home in Florida."

"I would certainly call him a colleague and a supporter," former Democratic Senate leader George J. Mitchell wrote in a New York magazine profile of Epstein in 2002. "I've known Jeff for fifteen years," Donald Trump said in a parallel column. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he loves beautiful women as much as I do, and that many of them are on the younger side. Jeffrey is a natural performer who enjoys his social life, there is no doubt about it. "I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him," Trump said in July 2019, when he said four times that he had not been "a fan" of Epstein and that he had not met him in about fifteen years. At Mar-a-Lago, a video shot taken in 1992 of the two men partying together was discovered. Epstein was reportedly barred from his Mar-a-Lago club for unethical pursuit of young females by 2007, according to a reporter. The ban was included in court records filed by attorney Bradley Edwards, but Edwards later said it was a rumors he tried to defame, but could not confirm it.

Bill Clinton's spokesman lauded Epstein as a "conserved philanthropist" with "insights and kindness" in 2002. Epstein, then a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, was a major contributor to Harvard University at the time.

Epstein appeared on the White House when Clinton was president on four separate occasions. In 1993, he and his companion Ghislaine Maxwell attended a White House fundraiser. He also met with President Clinton's aide Mark Middleton at least three times at the White House around the same time. Lynn Forester, a 1995 financier, wrote a book about "Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization" with Clinton. Epstein, according to his own account, was heavily involved in the international currency market and exchanged substantial amounts of currency in the unregulated forex market. In 1995, Epstein attended a small political fundraiser dinner for Bill Clinton, which included 14 others, including Ron Perelman, Don Johnson, Jimmy Buffett, and dinner host Paul Prosperi.

Epstein often socialized with future President Donald Trump from the 1990s to the mid-2000s. Trump, Epstein, and Tom Barrack were at the time like a "set of nightlife musketeers" on the social scene, according to author Michael Wolff. Both Epstein and Trump were active in New York City and Palm Beach, where they both had homes. In April 2003, a New York magazine announced Epstein hosted a dinner party to honor Bill Clinton, who did not attend, although Trump attended. According to The Washington Post, one individual who knew Epstein and Trump during this period said "they were close" and that "they were both the other's wingmen." Epstein and Trump's friendship in November 2004 fell into disarray when they became embroiled in a bidding war for a $40 million mansion, Maison de L'Amitie, which was being auctioned in Palm Beach. Trump won the auction for $41 million and then sold the house for $95 million to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev four years later. That was the last time Epstein and Trump had met in public.

Epstein's fortune is uncertain, but it is uncertain. Leslie Wexner was one of Epstein's first richest sources. Robert Maxwell, the media mogul father of Ghislaine Maxwell, was also an assistant of Epstein.

Epstein's attorneys said he was a billionaire with a net worth of over one billion dollars when he pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and selling prostitution. However, a variety of sources have questioned Epstein's fortune and his fame as a billionaire. According to an article in The New York Times, his "fortune may be more illusion than reality." Following his pleaded guilty to prostitution charges in 2008, Epstein lost "huge sums of money" in the 2008 financial crisis, and "friend and supporters"—including retail billionaire Leslie Wexner—"deserted him." "There are scant evidence" of Epstein's "financial bona fides," according to a New York magazine, and Forbes published an article titled "Why sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is not a billionaire."

Spencer Kuvin, the counsel representing three of Epstein's alleged victims, said that "he and his team searched every possible way" to find out Epstein's net worth, although he discovered that a substantial portion of his income is offshore, although that some of his fortune is offshore." Epstein had multiple financial accounts with millions of dollars in offshore tax havens, according to a Miami Herald investigation into the Swiss Leaks documents. Epstein became a client of Appleby, a Bermuda-based law firm that specialized in the development of offshore companies and investment vehicles for the ultra-wealthy in the Paradise Papers. According to a client biography of Epstein, his work was referred to as the "Manager of Fortune."

Federal prosecutors announced in legal papers on July 12, 2019 that Jeffrey Epstein was "extravagantly wealthy" and had assets worth at least $500 million and more than $10 million per year, based on information from one financial institution, and earned more than $10 million per year. The amount of his income, on the other hand, was unknown because he didn't have to sign a financial statement for his bail application. "Today, so little is known about Epstein's new venture or clients that can be valued with any certainty are his homes," Bloomberg News reports. Epstein's fortune is likely to be spread across the globe, according to the Miami Herald as a result of their investigation into the Paradise Papers and Swiss Leaks' findings.

Epstein Estate's finances reported that it paid out almost $50 million between June 2020 and December 2020 to more than 100 women who applied for the "Epstein Victims Compensation Fund" scheme, which was established in the United States Virgin Islands in 2020. The estate was valued at $240 million by February 2021, down from forecasts of $630 million a year ago. Denise George, the attorney general of the Virgin Islands, was compelled to file an emergency request for the immediate asset freeze. She argued in the court complaint that the estate executors had "mismanaged" the funds, which the victims understood.

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Epstein owned the Herbert N. Straus House on 9 East 71st Street. Les Wexner, Epstein's mentor, bought it for $13.2 million in 1989 but then restored it to its original form. After Wexner married and moved with his wife and their family to Columbus, Ohio, to raise their family, Epstein moved into the mansion in 1995. When he paid Wexner $20 million for the house, he took it in full ownership. Federal prosecutors estimated the house's value at $77 million in 2019, but the city estimated its value at $56 million. The mansion is said to be Manhattan's most prominent private residence at 21,000 sq ft (2,000 m2). A lead-lined bathroom with its own closed-circuit television screens and a telephone are concealed in a cabinet under the sink, which are both hidden under a flight of stairs. To melt away the snow, the house has its own heated sidewalk. The entrance hall is lined with rows of individually framed prosthetic eyeballs that were made in England for wounded soldiers.

The financier's other properties include a mansion and guest houses built in 1990 in Palm Beach, Florida; seven units in an apartment building near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France; and a 7,500-acre (30 km2) ranch named Little Saint James, which includes a mansion and guest houses built in 1998; and the neighboring island of Great Saint James, which includes a mansion and guest houses built in 2016. Initially, Epstein was building an amphitheater and a "underwater office & pool," but they ran into difficulties when a stop-work order was released in late 2018; despite the order, work continued despite the order.

Epstein, the father of his late Manhattan home, was living in a large townhouse that had been taken over by the State Department following the Iranian revolution in 1992. He also owned a mansion outside Columbus, Ohio, near Wexner's home from 1992 to 1998, which he bought from his mentor. Wexner purchased the adjoining townhouse at 11 East 71st Street in 1988, before the Herbert Straus house was purchased. Epstein was the trustee of the 11 East 71st Street house as the trustee, as in the case of the 9 East 71st Street house. In 1996, the townhouse was sold to the Comet trust, which holds a portion of the de Gunzburg/Bronfman family's money.

Epstein rented offices in the Villard House at 457 Madison Avenue for his company dealings. When Steven Hoffenberg first started working for Tower Financial, he created the Epstein offices. Epstein's offices were used until at least 2003. Michael Wolff was in his office, which had previously been the Random House's offices. Epstein's offices, according to Wolff, were a strange place with no corporate feel at all. The offices were "most European," Wolff said. It's old—old-fashioned, unrehabbed in its way," the narrator said. "The trading floor is brimming with guys in yarmulkes," Wolff said. I have no idea who they are. They're like a throwback, a group of guys from the fifties. Jeffrey is in this incredibly beautiful office, with works of art and a view of the courtyard, and he seems to be the world's most relaxed guy.

You want to say 'What's going on here?'

"He gives you the Cheshire smile."

At 301 East 66th Street, Epstein rented multiple flat units for his employees, designers, and visitors since the 1990s. The majority of the apartment complex at this address is owned by Ossa properties, which is owned by Jeffrey Epstein's brother, Mark, who purchased the building in the early 1990s from Wexner. During the years, Epstein has hosted various people on 11 East 71st Street, including Eva Andersson, the ex-girlfriend who is now married to MC2 Models founder Jean-Luc Brunel, and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In the apartment building, he has housed some of his employees, including his pilot, housekeeper, and office workers. Brunel scouted for his MC2 modeling company, and Epstein has also housed underage girls. Pedro Gaspar, a model and party promoter for MC2, died of what some believe to be a fatal drug overdose on August 6, 2012.

Epstein's donations surpassed $139,000 to US Democratic party federal candidates and committees, as well as over $18,000 to Republican candidates and organizations from 1989 to 2003.

Epstein contributed $50,000 to Democrat Bill Richardson's reelection bid in 2006 and again for his campaign in New Mexico. He also contributed $15,000 to Democrat Gary King's election for Attorney General of New Mexico this year. He later contributed $35,000 to King's 2014 unsuccessful bid for Governor. Epstein also made a $10,000 donation to Jim Baca's campaign to become the land commission's chairman, as well as $2,000 toward Santa Fe County Sheriff Jim Solano's bid for reelection. "You are not allowed to register [as a sex offender] with the state of New Mexico," Epstein said. This was in violation of federal law, and it would appear that his arrest in Florida required him to register in New Mexico.

Epstein was one of four contributors who pledged to raise US$2 million for a Hillel student dormitory, Rosovsky Hall at Harvard University in 1991. Epstein founded the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation in 2000, which supports science and education. Prior to 2003, the foundation funded Martin Nowak's research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Epstein pledged a series of gifts totaling US$30 million to establish a mathematical biology and evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard, which was directed by Martin Nowak in May 2003. Epstein's octane payment, according to The Boston Globe, was US$6.5 million. After The New York Times revealed that Epstein, "one of the top backers of cutting edge science," was paid $600 to submit it incorrectly as his own in 2019, Forbes deleted a 2013 story that named him "one of the top backers of cutting edge science."

Epstein was "part of the initial group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative," according to attorney Gerald B. Lefcourt. The Mindshift Conference, hosted by Epstein and skeptical Al Seckel, coincided with an esthetic and skeptical scientist. The conference took place on Epstein's private island, Little Saint James, in 2010. Murray Gell-Mann, Leonard Mlodinow, and Gerald Jay Sussman were among the scientists on hand.

Epstein's contributions are unclear. The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation is unable to disclose details that other charities routinely publish. Concerns have been raised over the lack of transparency. In 2015, the Attorney General of New York was supposed to be trying to find details, but was refused because the charities were based outside of the state and did not solicit in New York State. Epstein, in addition to making contributions through the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, made a number of charitable contributions through his three private charities: Epstein Concern, the COUQ Foundation, and Gratitude American Ltd. Epstein gave $30 million between 1998 and 2018, according to federal tax reports, through these three charities. Following his death, a number of researchers and companies, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came under fire for taking money from Epstein and his foundation, with others promising to give away funds donated by Epstein.

Epstein, beginning in the early 2000s, expressed a keen interest in "improving" the human race by genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, including the use of his own sperm. He spoke to the scientific community at various times and occasions and expressed his fascination with eugenics. Epstein was first reported in August 2019 that he planned to "seed the human race with his DNA" by impregnating up to 20 women at a time, where mothers will give birth to his offspring. He advocated for cryonics and his own idiosyncratic interpretation of transhumanism, and had claimed that he intended to have his penis and head frozen.

"Scients need funds for critical research, and there is nothing wrong with receiving financial assistance from a billionaire," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center director, said. However, scientists would not have been able to pay for his research if they were aware that he was planning an eugenics experiment that could have a lot to do with their identities. Professor George Church, who pled sorry for meeting Epstein after his 13-month term, says, "There should have been more conversations about, should we be doing this, and should we be assisting him." "There was just a lot of nerd tunnel vision."

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Career

In September 1974, Epstein began teaching at the Dalton School on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Donald Barr, the headmaster from June 1974, was known to have made several odd jobs at the time, but it's unclear if he was involved in recruiting Epstein. Despite the lack of credentials three months after Barr's resignation, Epstein took up teaching at the academy three months after Barr's departure. Epstein is accused of inappropriate conduct toward children under the age of 18 at the time. He became acquainted with Bear Stearns' chief executive officer, Alan Greenberg, whose son and daughter were attending the kindergarten. Lynne Koeppel, Greenberg's daughter, pleaded for him to Greenberg at a parent-teacher conference, where Epstein influenced another Dalton parent into advocating for him. Greenberg suggested Epstein a job at Bear Stearns in June 1976, following his dismissal from Dalton for "poor results."

Epstein joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a low-level junior assistant to a floor trader. He quickly rose to become an options trader, embedded in the bank's special products group, and then advised the bank's richest clients, such as Seagram president Edgar Bronfman, on tax minimization policies. Jimmy Cayne, the bank's later chief executive officer, praised Epstein's success with wealthy clients and complicated products. Epstein became a limited partner in 1980, four years after joining Bear Stearns.

According to his sworn testimony, Epstein was asked to leave Bear Stearns in 1981 for a "Reg D infringement." Despite Epstein's demise abruptly, he remained close to Cayne and Greenberg, and was a Bear Stearns client before the 2008 disaster.

Epstein founded Intercontinental Wealth Group Inc. (IAG), a fraud recovery company that helped clients recover stolen money from fraudulent brokers and attorneys in August 1981. Epstein referred to his work as a high-level bounty hunter at this time. He told friends that he worked as a consultant for governments and the wealthy in order to recover embezzled funds, but that he also worked for clients that had embezzled funds at other times. Ana Obregón, a Spanish actress and heiress, was one of Epstein's most wealthy clients who had been unable to recover her father's millions in lost investments, which had been missing when Drysdale Government Securities fell due to fraud.

Epstein also told several people at the time that he was an intelligence agent. Epstein had an Austrian passport with his photograph in the 1980s, but with a different name. The passport revealed his place of residence in Saudi Arabia. Alexander Acosta, the United States Attorney for Epstein's criminal trial in 2008, told Trump transition interviewers that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" and to "leave it alone," and that Epstein was "above his pay grade."

Adnan Khashoggi, a middleman in moving American arms from Israel to Iran as part of the Iran–Contra case in the 1980s, was one of Epstein's clients during this period. Khashoggi was one of several defense contractors that he knew. Epstein travelled between the United States, Europe, and Southwest Asia in the mid-1980s. Epstein met Steven Hoffenberg while in London. They had been introduced by Douglas Leese, a defense contractor, and John Mitchell, the former US Attorney General.

Steven Hoffenberg hired Epstein in 1987 as a consultant for Towers Financial Corporation (unaffiliated with the company's name and purchased by Old National Bancorp in 2014), a collection firm that acquired loans from hospitals, banks, and phone companies. Hoffenberg installed Epstein in Manhattan's "Villard Houses" office and paid him US$25,000 per month for his consulting services (equivalent to $60,000 in 2021).

Hoffenberg and Epstein then rebranded themselves as corporate raiders by using Towers Financial as their raiding ship. One of Epstein's first assignments for Hoffenberg was to launch what turned out to be a fruitless attempt to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987. In 1988, a failed attempt to overthrowrown Emery Air Freight Corp. Hoffenberg and Epstein worked closely together and traveled extensively on Hoffenberg's private jet.

Towers Financial Corporation imploded in 1993 after it was revealed as one of America's biggest Ponzi schemes, losing $450 million (equivalent to $844,126,000 in 2021). Hoffenberg stated explicitly that Epstein was intimately involved in the scheme in legal documents. Epstein left the firm by 1989 and was never charged with being complicit in the massive investor fraud committed. It is unknown if Epstein obtained any stolen funds from the Towers Ponzi scheme.

J. Epstein & Company formed in 1988, when Epstein was still consulting for Hoffenberg. Epstein said the firm was established to handle client assets worth more than US$1 billion in net worth, but others have expressed reservations that he was selective of the clients that he accepted.

Leslie Wexner, chairman and CEO of L Brands (formerly The Limited, Inc.) and Victoria's Secret, Epstein's only publicly acknowledged billionaire client. Epstein and his wife, insurance executive Robert Meister, and his associates, met in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1986. Epstein became Wexner's financial advisor and served as his right-hand man a year later. Epstein had sorted out Wexner's entangled finances by the end of the year. Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney over his cases in July 1991. Epstein was allowed to recruit people, sign checks, buy and sell houses, borrow funds, and do anything else of a legally binding type on Wexner's behalf.

Epstein was a director of the Wexner Foundation and Wexner Heritage Foundation by 1995. He was also the president of Wexner's Property, which developed a part of the town of New Albany outside Columbus, Ohio, where Wexner lived. By governing Wexner's financial affairs, Epstein saved millions of dollars. Despite not being employed by L Brands, he maintained a regular contact with the company executives. Epstein aided aspiring models in finding jobs with Victoria's Secret fashion shows and hosted the models at his New York City home as well as assisting young models in getting jobs.

Epstein changed the name of his company to the Financial Trust Company in 1996, and it was based on the island of St. Thomas, one of the United States Virgin Islands, in the United States Virgin Islands. Epstein was able to minimize federal income taxes by 90 percent after relocating to the United States Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands acted as an offshore tax haven while still having the benefit of being a part of the United States banking system.

Epstein attempted to purchase New York magazine in 2003. Donny Deutsch, investment Nelson Peltz, media mogul and New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, and film producer Harvey Weinstein were among the other bidders. Bruce Wasserstein, a long-serving Wall Street investment banker who paid US$55 million, was the ultimate buyer.

In 2004, Epstein and Zuckerman pledged US$25 million to finance Radar, a celebrity and pop culture magazine established by Maer Roshan. Epstein and Zuckerman were equal partners in the venture. Roshan, the company's editor-in-chief, retained a modest ownership stake. It ceased being a print magazine after three issues and became exclusively an online one.

Epstein was president of Liquid Funding Ltd. from 2000 to 2007. The company was a pioneer in the field of debt consolidation on repurchase, or repo market, which involves a lender loaning money to a borrower in exchange for collateral that the borrower then promises to buy back at a later date and price. Liquid Funding's and other early companies' breakthrough was that instead of having stocks and bonds as the underlining asset, it had commercial mortgages and investment-grade residential mortgages bundled into confusing securities as the underlying protection.

Bear Stearns' Liquid Funding was initially owned by 40%. Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings, and Moody's Investors Service supported businesses in obtaining a gold-plated AAA rating, thanks to the help of the credit rating agencies – Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings, and Moody's Investors Service. Because of their poor ratings, these complicated securities' implosion sparked Bear Stearns' demise in March 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession. If Liquid Funding had been left holding large amounts of such assets as collateral, it would have lost significant sums of money.

Epstein invested $80 million in the D.B. between 2002 and 2005. The Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, a hedge fund that invested in illiquid debt securities, invested in Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund. Epstein tried to recover his investment after being alert of accounting fraud in the fund in November. By this time, his investment had increased to $140 million. The D.B. The investment was rejected by the Zwirn fund, who refused to repay it. Hedge funds that invest in illiquid securities often have years of "lockups" on their funds for all investors and require redemption requests to be submitted in writing 60 to 90 days in advance. The fund was closed in 2008, but Fortress Investment Group, which included Epstein's investment, was transferred to Fortress Investment Group shortly after the firm acquired the funds in 2009. Epstein and Fortress went to court about his repentance attempt later. The decision of the case is not revealed in a public forum.

Epstein invested $57 million in the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage hedge fund in August 6, a month after the federal probe into him began. This fund was heavily leveraged in mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).

An investor in the fund, who had $57 million invested, discussed redeeming his investment on April 18, 2007. The fund had a 17:1 leverage ratio at the time, meaning that for every dollar invested, there were seventeen dollars in borrowed funds; therefore, the repayment of this investment would have been equivalent to removing $1 billion from the thinly traded CDO market. The selling of CDO assets to support the redemptions that came earlier this month. The refining of the CDO assets resulted in the fund's demise three months later in July and its eventual demise of Bear Stearns in March 2008. Epstein is likely that the bulk of the money was wasted, but it is unclear how much money was spent.

Epstein had begun to discuss potential charges of sex with minors by the time the Bear Stearns fund began to fail in May 2007. The United States attorney in Miami, Alexander Acosta, began direct talks about the plea deal in August 2007, a month after the fund collapsed. According to Acosta, he broke a lenient agreement because higher government officials had told him that Epstein was a person of concern to the government. Epstein was reportedly providing "unspecified information" to the Florida federal prosecutors for a more lenient sentencing in the case against the two administrators of the failed Bear Stearns hedge fund, according to the Miami Herald, and was reportedly an unidentified witness for the New York federal prosecutors in their unsuccessful June 2008 federal lawsuit against the two managers of the failing Bear Stearns hedge fund. One of Epstein's Florida attorneys, Alan Dershowitz, told Fox Business Network, "We would have been celebrating that if [cooperated]. Epstein's involvement in any investigation is new to me.

Epstein invested in Reporty Homeland Security, a Israeli newspaper, in 2015 (rebranded as Carbyne in 2018). The startup was connected to Israel's defense industry. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was also the defense minister and chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, was in charge of the Israeli Defense Forces. (IDF). Amir Elihai, the company's chief, was a special forces soldier, and Pinchas Bukhris, the company's chief, was at one time the defense ministry's chief general and commander. At 301 East 66th Street in Manhattan, Epstein and Barak, the owner of Carbyne, were close, and Epstein frequently offered him lodging at one of his apartment units. Epstein had prior involvement with Israel's academic and military sectors. In April 2008, he traveled to Israel and spoke with a number of academic researchers and visited various Israeli military bases. During this trip, he considered staying in Israel in order to avoid prosecution and possible prison for sex homicide charges; however, he returned to the United States.

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