Dalton School (1974–1976) In September 1974, at age 21, Epstein started working as a
calculus and
mathematics teacher at the
Dalton School on the
Upper East Side of
Manhattan. The school's newspaper announced the hiring of Epstein.
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. and in 1980, Epstein became a
limited partner at 27 years old with a salary of $200,000 per year (over $800,000 in 2025 dollars). While at Bear Sterns, Epstein started a relationship with Paula Heil, a well-connected saleswoman and former Miss
Indianapolis. In the early 1980s, Epstein and Heil began taking trips to England. She introduced him to a wealthy defense contractor, Douglas Leese, who had connections in the British government and arms industry. Epstein began spending time in the Leese family's social circle, tutoring Douglas's younger son Julian, and accompanying Douglas to meetings with prominent figures while serving as a consultant. Epstein recruited a federal prosecutor, Bob Gold, and the pair spent a year trying to find their missing funds that Drysdale had shifted to offshore bank accounts. In 1984, Epstein discovered his clients' funds in a
Cayman Islands branch of a Canadian bank. He hired a jet and had the branch manager hand over bond certificates for the funds. Epstein returned the funds to his Spanish clients, and they rewarded him significantly, making him a millionaire. Khashoggi was a middleman in transferring American
weapons from Israel to Iran as part of the
Iran–Contra affair. During this period, Epstein possessed an
Austrian passport under a
false name. The passport showed his place of residence as
Saudi Arabia. By mid 1980s, Epstein was a valuable client to his former employer Bear Sterns. Epstein was calling his former manager Clark Schubach to place trades on stocks, bonds and options. Epstein also pursued a sexual relationship with Schubach's assistant, a 23 year old Patricia Schmidt, who he tasked with conducting research in the Bear Stearns library on potential clients. 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 (). 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. In 1986, Epstein met Wexner through their mutual acquaintances, insurance executive Robert Meister and his wife, in
Palm Beach. A year later, Epstein became Wexner's financial adviser and served as his right-hand man. Within the year, Epstein had sorted out Wexner's entangled finances. In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full
power of attorney over his affairs. The power of attorney allowed Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties, borrow money, and do anything else of a legally binding nature on Wexner's behalf. Epstein managed Wexner's wealth and various projects such as the building of his yacht, the
Limitless. and that Epstein dated models like
Stacey Williams. Epstein represented himself as a global talent scout for Victoria's Secret during this time and used this powerful position to sexually manipulate young women. By 1995, Epstein was a director of the
Wexner Foundation and Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was also the president of Wexner's Property, which developed part of the town of
New Albany outside
Columbus, Ohio, where Wexner lived. Epstein made millions in fees by managing Wexner's financial affairs. Epstein often attended Victoria's Secret
fashion shows, and hosted the models at his
New York City home, as well as helping aspiring models get work with the company. Epstein, who capitalized on his relation with
Jes Staley while the latter was employed by
JP Morgan, maintained close relations with that bank's subsidiary in the USVI. In 2002, as reported by the
New York magazine, his financial-administrative staff numbered 150 employees (among whom 20 accountants) across three sites:
Villard House in Manhattan, the Wexner operation in Columbus, and St Thomas USVI. Despite facing increased pressure from federal regulators, the bank did not discard Epstein until 2013, coincidentally the year of Staley's departure from the bank. Epstein thereafter moved his trade to the American affiliate of
Deutsche Bank. In the course of his life, Epstein engaged with no fewer than 75 lawyers, including
Alan Dershowitz,
Kenneth Starr,
Roy Black and
Jay Lefkowitz. Senator
Ron Wyden said in Congress that the U.S. Treasury Department file on Epstein detailed from one account no less than 4,725
wire transfers that totaled $1.1 billion, and that he had extensive financial correspondence from Russian banks over his sex trafficking activities. Another report from
Forbes says that between four banks (
JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank,
Bank of New York Mellon and
Bank of America) the transfers totaled more than $1.9 billion. The company was a pioneer in expanding the kind of debt that could be accepted on repurchase, or the
repo market, which involves a lender giving money to a borrower in exchange for
securities that the borrower then agrees to buy back at an agreed-upon later time and price. The innovation of Liquid Funding, and other early companies, was that instead of having
stocks and
bonds as the underlying securities, it had
commercial mortgages and investment-grade
residential mortgages bundled into
complex securities as the underlying security. In April 2007, the fund had a
leverage ratio of 17:1, which meant for every dollar invested there were 17 dollars of borrowed funds; therefore, the redemption of this investment would have been equivalent to removing $1billion from the thinly traded CDO market. The selling of CDO assets to meet the redemptions that month began a repricing process and freeze in the CDO market. The repricing of the CDO assets caused the collapse of the fund three months later in July, and the
collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008. Losses to investors in the two Bear Stearns funds were $1.6 billion. By the time the Bear Stearns fund began to fail in May 2007, Epstein had begun to negotiate a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office concerning imminent charges for sex with minors. In August 2007, a month after the fund collapsed,
Alexander Acosta, the U.S. attorney in Miami, entered into discussions about the plea agreement. As part of the negotiations, the
Miami Herald reported that Epstein provided "unspecified information" to the Florida federal prosecutors for a more lenient sentence and was supposedly "Unnamed investor #1" for the New York federal prosecutors in their unsuccessful June 2008 criminal case against Cioffi and Tannen, two managers of the failed Bear Stearns fund.
Moody's reported that on April 18, 2008 "all outstanding rated liabilities" of Liquid Funding were "paid in full". At the time, the liquidator had not yet sold the beleaguered fund to its new owner as of May 1: JP Morgan.
Epstein & Zuckerman (2003–2004) In 2003,
New York Daily News publisher
Mortimer Zuckerman partnered with Epstein, advertising executive
Donny Deutsch, and investor
Nelson Peltz in a bid to acquire
New York magazine. In 2004, Epstein and Zuckerman committed up to to finance
Radar, a celebrity and pop culture magazine founded by
Maer Roshan. Epstein and Zuckerman were equal partners in the venture. Roshan, as its editor-in-chief, retained a small ownership stake. It folded after three issues as a print publication and became exclusively an online one.
Zwirn (2002–2008) Between 2002 and 2005, Epstein invested $80million in the
D.B. Zwirn Special Opportunities Fund, a
hedge fund that invested in
illiquid debt securities. In November 2006, Epstein attempted to redeem his investment after he was informed of accounting irregularities in the fund. By this time, his investment had grown to $140million. The D.B. Zwirn fund refused to redeem the illiquid investment. exchanging private emails with him and meeting more than 30 times between 2013 and 2017. He also facilitated Barak's interactions with prominent figures, including
Peter Thiel, as well as Sergey Belyakov and
Viktor Vekselberg, who were connected to
Vladimir Putin's circle. In business, Epstein leveraged his relationship with Barak to get access to Thiel. The company's leadership included CEO Amir Elihai, a former special forces officer, and director Pinchas Bukhris, a former defense ministry director general and commander of the
IDF cyber
unit 8200. In many years, Epstein's acquaintances had repeatedly encouraged Thiel to meet him.
Reid Hoffman, Thiel's friend from the
PayPal Mafia, directly introduced the two and joined some meetings. Epstein had previously invested US$40 million into funds managed by Valar in 2015 and 2016. In 2018, another Thiel co-founded firm,
Founders Fund, participated in Carbyne's $15 million Series B funding round (non-leading role). There is no record of Thiel's social visits to one of Epstein's homes or flights on his private jet.
Other businesses Epstein participated in funding rounds for the crypto ventures
Coinbase and
Blockstream, giving the former $3 million and the latter $500,000 in 2014. Epstein's donation to Coinbase was brokered by
Brock Pierce, the co-founder of
Tether, while his donation to Blockstream was brokered by
Joichi Ito, who was the director of MIT's Media Lab at the time. Barak discussed with Epstein in the leaked Barak–Epstein emails about meeting Putin's ally Viktor Vekselberg on the June 6 and 8, 2014. An email sent in April 2015 showed that Barak had asked Epstein for his opinion on Vekselberg-backed Fifth Dimension, a startup which would later be shut down after being sanctioned in 2018 by the United States for alleged election interference.
Geopolitical activities (2012–2019) Ivory Coast security agreement Between 2012 and 2014, Epstein assisted
Ehud Barak in what began as a private business initiative involving internal security-related projects in
Ivory Coast, according to documents released by the
U.S. House Oversight Committee from Epstein's files and leaked emails from Barak. Epstein played an operational role in advancing the effort: he coordinated Barak's meetings during the
United Nations General Assembly, connected him with Ivory Coast President
Alassane Ouattara's chief of staff and other officials, and helped arrange connections with the president's family. He assisted in the promotion of Israeli
surveillance technology for the Mongolian government. == Legal issues ==