How Epstein made his money: four theories

[struggle4progress]

By Matt Stieb

... his only known client is Victoria’s Secret founder Les Wexner, who reportedly ditched Epstein over a decade ago.

... “He’s supposed to run an enormous FX <foreign-exchange> trading firm,” said Enrique Diaz-Alvarez, chief risk officer at Ebury. “But I never once heard of him or his firm or anyone who worked or traded with him” ...

A Ponzi scheme has been floated as a possible source of Epstein’s wealth ...

... alleged Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre ... claimed that Epstein “debriefed her” after she was forced into sexual encounters so that he could possess “intimate and potentially embarrassing information” to blackmail friends into parking their money with him ...

... because the Southern District of New York’s Public Corruption Unit is handling the case, the likelihood of a financial or tax-related charge is much higher than if another arm of the mother court were in charge ...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/how-did-jeffrey-epstein-make-his-fortune.html

[PoliticAverse]

1. It's interesting how the prosecutors made a point of telling people "not to read anything into"

the fact that the public corruption unit was handling the case during their press conference.

[struggle4progress]

2. Mystery around Epstein's fortune

By TOM METCALF, SOPHIE ALEXANDER and CALEB MELBY
| BLOOMBERG |
JUL 08, 2019 | 5:40 PM

... He taught calculus and physics at Manhattan’s .. Dalton School from 1973 to 1975 ... His students at Dalton included the son of Bear Stearns Chairman Alan Greenberg ...

He joined Bear Stearns in 1976 as a lowly junior assistant to a floor trader. In a swift rise .. he made partner four years later ...

... A person answering the phone at the St. Thomas company hung up after a request for comment was made.

The main client was Wexner ...

None of Epstein’s other clients have been identified ...

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jeffrey-epstein-fortune-mystery-20190708-story.html

[True Blue American]

8. Maxwell brought Epstein

To the hedge fund. No one knows why.

[struggle4progress]

3. The most egregious enabler was his wealth

By Monica Hesse
July 9 at 7:03 PM

The pa­thol­ogy described in Jeffrey Epstein’s 14-page indictment is as much about money as it is about sex ...

Epstein made the girls massage him, then he paid them, the indictment alleges. He asked the girls to bring him new girls, then he paid both the recruiters and the new recruits. The children were as young as 14, according to the indictment, and he allegedly groped them, and masturbated in front of them, and used sex toys on them, and then paid them on the spot. Cash. “Hundreds of dollars,” the indictment says, which must be an unfathomable sum to a 14-year-old but which, to someone with Epstein’s wealth, is the equivalent of a regular person molesting a child and then tossing her a shiny new dime.

The amount of money isn’t the point, but if it were, can you imagine what a cheapskate you’d have to be, to come up with such a callous measurement of human dignity? ...

Eleven years ago — yes, the allegations of this behavior go back that far — he paid famous lawyers such as Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr to defend him. Back then, those attorneys worked with Alexander Acosta, then the U.S. attorney for southern Florida, now the U.S. secretary of labor, to arrange a secret deal. The deal allowed Epstein to plead guilty to two counts of soliciting a minor for prostitution and serve just 13 months in the private wing of a county jail. It also permitted him to be released from jail for 12 hours every day so he could go to work ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jeffrey-epstein-paid-big-money-to-enable-his-pathology-maybe-now-finally-hell-really-pay-for-it/2019/07/09/e60a06d8-a1ad-11e9-b8c8-75dae2607e60_story.html

[panader0]

4. He used the young girls for more than gratification.

He also used them to blackmail rich guys--as kompromat.

[Pachamama]

6. +100000

Its also very creepy that his wealthy benefactor was Leslie Wexner, founder and owner of Victoria's Secrets....

You are very correct that he had his Kompromat and way to keep the code of silence....

I think that Jeffrey Epstein laundered money and provided the goods for the club.....

[struggle4progress]

5. Fortune built on fraud, former mentor says

By Heather Timmons
July 9, 2019

... it is really not that complicated, according to Steven Jude Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former mentor. Epstein used fraudulently gotten funds as seed money ...

... In the late 1980s, Hoffenberg “hired his new protégé as a consultant at $25,000 a month.” They traveled the world together on Hoffenberg’s plane ...

In 1997, Hoffenberg — the head of bill-collection firm Towers Financial — was sentenced to 20 years in jail for running one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in US history. Thousands of investors were bilked of more than $450 million ...

... a lawsuit filed in August 2018 by former Towers investors ... calls Epstein an “uncharged co-conspirator.” It also alleges that the millions in stolen investment was the seed capital for Epstein’s hedge fund, which it values at $50 billion. The suit says Epstein “knowingly and intentionally utilized funds he fraudulently diverted and obtained from this massive Ponzi scheme for his own personal use to support a lavish lifestyle,” but does not elaborate ...

Hoffenberg, a former Trump Tower tenant, started the pro-Trump political action committee Get Our Jobs Back in April of 2016 ...

https://qz.com/1661999/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-mentor-accuses-him-of-fraud/

[struggle4progress]

7. Borrowed 'Tainted Money' From Deutsche Bank

By Davis Richardson • 07/09/19 9:46pm

... “Its a very simplistic financial fraud that he concealed from everybody that gave him tainted money,” said Hoffenberg. “He never told anybody, and I literally mean anybody, that gave him any money since he left Towers, that he was part of Towers. And that’s a securities fraud because when you take money from people, you have to tell them your history” ...

“If Jeffrey Epstein was materially involved in the management of Towers Financial, as his former associate Steven Hoffenberg has alleged, or he substantially assisted and had knowledge of the Ponzi scheme through various corporate transactions with Towers Financial, then he would be subject to liability for that Ponzi, and further, may have committed securities fraud on his future clients by not disclosing his prior involvement,” Jeff Sonn, a securities attorney and founder of Sonn Law Group, told Observer. “The problem I see is that Hoffenberg waited some 20 years to come forward with these new allegations, and he may have reduced his 18-year sentence by implicating Epstein in the Ponzi scheme back in 1994 but didn’t do so” ...

“His lead bank is Deutsche Bank, Germany, that runs the lead on his financial trust company. They run the platform in the trading of the currencies for Epstein and with Epstein. He’s never disclosed to the investors that provide the money to Deutsche Bank his true legacy, that’s securities fraud,” said Hoffenberg. “And that makes the government available to seize all his money, literally all his money. He’s not going to be able to use his money because it’s got to go to a restitution fund because it’s tainted money” ...

Long considered an investment platform for the rich and powerful, Deutsche Bank has been plagued with scandals since the 2008 Financial Crisis. In 2017, the bank reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over allegedly misleading investors on mortgage-backed securities, and was later fined $630 million for alleged involvement in Russian money laundering ...

https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-deutsche-bank-tainted-money/