Jeffrey Epstein (nonfiction)

Jeffrey Edward Epstein (/ˈɛpstiːn/ EP-steen;[1] January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender. Epstein began his professional life as a teacher but then switched to the banking and finance sector in various roles, working at Bear Stearns before forming his own firm. He developed an elite social circle and procured women and many underage girls who were then sexually abused by Epstein and some of these contacts.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida began investigating Epstein after a parent complained that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring an underage girl for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He served almost 13 months in custody, but with extensive work release. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a plea deal; federal officials had in fact identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had sexually abused.

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. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, although Epstein's lawyers have disputed the ruling. Because his death eliminates the possibility of pursuing criminal charges, a judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019.

Origins of wealth

NY Mag

This article at NY Mag suggests that Epstein made his money not as a hedge fund manager, but as a blackmailer, as evidenced by:

1. Epstein says he acquired his wealth as a hedge fund manager for billionaires, starting at a young age
2. All high-level hedge fund managers know each other and do business with each other
3. The high-level fund manager interviewed by NY Mag had never done business with Epstein or heard of anyone doing business with him
4. Epstein had an office staff but handled all of the billionaire clients by himself alone

Quontian

This Twitter post by Quontian presents a closely reasoned argument that Epstein is a blackmailer pure and simple:

... a quick little THREAD to explain my theory of what the Epstein story really is ... a neat little explanation that IMO perfectly fits the known facts (0/13):

(1/13) Let's take as our starting points two givens.

(A.) You are a committed, unrepentant pedophile
(B.) Because of your old job in private banking, you are very connected to lots of very, very wealthy people

We'll also assume a goal:

(Z.) You want to become very rich

(2/13) The obvious route is, well, obvious: you could just be a pimp, offering underage prostitute services to very rich people. This has two problems: you're very disposable (see: DC madam), and it's also not super lucrative. You can't charge millions of dollars up front.

(3/13) The second level though follows instantly: You don't need to charge up front, just get them to have underage sex, and then blackmail them afterwards for hush money. Better ROI, but you're still a liability, and producing and receiving big bribe money raises big questions.

(4/13) So, what to do? Well, the second idea has some merits. First, you need to recruit people in. Have lots of massive parties at your spacious home (check), invite top academics, artists, politicians to encourage people to come (check), and supply lots of young women (check)

(5/13) You don't even have to do anything, and most people invited might even be totally unaware of the real purpose of the parties! But, sooner or later, some billionaire will get handsy, she'll escort him to a room with a hidden camera, things happen. Morning after, you strike.

(6/13) You inform him she was really 15, but you offer him a nice, neat way to buy your silence: a large allocation to your hedge fund, which charges 2/20 (check). To ensure nobody else asks questions, you also take the extraordinary step of demanding power of attorney (check)

(7/13) The fund is offshore in a tax haven (check) and nobody will see the client list (check). Of course, you don't really know anything about investing, instead making up some nonsense about currency trading (check), and nobody on Wall Street has ever traded with you (check)

(8/13) The fund itself doesn't need investment personnel (check), only some back office people to process the wires (check). You don't want to money from non-pedophiles, or they'll notice you've just put it in a S&P 500 fund, so you reject all incoming inquiries (check)

(9/13) A $20 million wire from Billionaire X to you with no obvious reason will raise many questions, and the IRS will certainly want to know what you did to warrant it. A $5 million quarterly fee for managing $1 billion in assets? Nobody bats an eye.

(10/13) Because of this structure, you're extraordinarily secretive about client lists (check) because they aren't clients, they're pedophiles paying you bribes, and they also are very secretive, which is why no letters or return streams ever leak (check)

(11/13) Occasionally you may also try this trick on other people: important political figures, mayors, prosecutors, etc. They don't invest in the fund, but it's nice to have them in your pocket. Others (academics, artists, etc.) can just be bought with money as a PR smokescreen.

(12/13) And, of course, the scam can be kept going as long as people are willing to pay, which is forever. If you're ever caught, just lean on some of your other friends in government to lean on the prosecutor to get you a sweetheart deal. There's almost zero risk.

(13/13) And the last piece of the puzzle is the evidence. You'd want it somewhere remote, but accessible: a place the US can't touch but you have an excuse to visit all the time to update. Remember that offshore fund?

I bet there's a *very* interesting safe deposit box there.

Two small points of clarification:

1. This scheme works just as well if the billionaires are in on it from the getgo as a way to buy sex; I assumed that was obvious but I guess not.
2. There’s no need to invoke the Mafia/Russia/Mossad/CIA/etc, that’s just needlessly overfitting.

Death: suicide or murder?

Boing Boing user LurksNoMore comments on Epstein's reported suicide:

It’s quite possible that this was a genuine suicide; based on what I’ve seen, Epstein must have known he was about to get nailed to the wall, and spend a long time, possibly the rest of his life, in prison as a known child molester. Him deciding to take the quick way out wouldn’t be too surprising.

However, due to the circumstances, it sure looks goddamn suspicious. I hope the investigations continue, and that his collaborators, like Ghislaine Maxwell, and customers get outed and punished.

Death

Commentary

nungesser

So let’s see: we have a child sex trafficker whose testimony could destroy the lives of multiple world leaders and oligarchs who died in a jail cell guarded by temps and replacements 2, some of which admitted to falsifying reports and who fell asleep and never actually checked on him, in an area in which the cameras all happened to be broken at the same time 29.

Sure, nothing odd about that.

— Comment by nungesser @ Boing Boing

Ryuthrowsstuff

The only unusual detail I’ve seen about the Epstein story is that after his first suicide attempt he was taken off suicide watch after something like 24 hours. At the insistence of his own lawyers.

Someone who’s been in the MCU suicide ward described it me as “they throw you naked into a padded room without even a bucket to shit in”. But Epstein wasn’t in the suicide ward when he died, and a lot of the “but how?” conspiracy comes out of the assumption that he was. Its not surprising that Epstein would want out, though. It is weird that his lawyers would fight to end it.

All of the staffing, funding, negligence and broken shit problems at this detention center had already been reported, and complained about in court for a long time before Epstein’s death. Including during his first suicide attempt. Hell it was his lawyers who asked for the suicide watch, and authorities tried to argue it wasn’t a real suicide attempt, with the broken cameras and lack of video in his cell during that attempt becoming a major part of that fight.

A lot of the other misunderstandings have to do with the fact that this is not a prison and is not part of the prison system. The MCU is a federal detainment facility or jail. Its not a big place where you go to serve time. Its where they hold people pending trial/charges. Jails have a different set of super fucked up problems then prisons. And one of the big ones is negligence and suicides, along with broken facilities and staff short falls.

Its a pretty big indictment of that situation that these people didn’t even give enough fucks to be more careful than usual with a case this high profile. But aside from the detail of who it was that lifted the suicide watch, the scandal here is that Epstein got treated like everyone else.

— Comment by Ryuthrowsstuff @ Boing Boing

In the News

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Crime (nonfiction)
• Jane Doe lawsuit against Donald Trump (nonfiction)

External links:

• Jeffrey Epstein @ Wikipedia
• Hedge fund managers have some thoughts on what Epstein was doing @ NY Mag
• Comment @ Boing Boing