Ghislaine Maxwell Cashed Out Years Ago

Several data points in the Ghislaine Maxwell saga have been ignored by nearly all media, US, UK, left, right, and center. This is probably because the whole story is mainly tabloid clickbait to the professionals, while what it says about our elites is better left unmentioned.

Maxwell's entry in Wikipedia is written mostly in UK English, and it does reflect a greater interest among UK tabloids at least to get the details right than in the US. Among the first neglected data points is this:

Following her personal and professional involvement with Epstein, Maxwell was romantically linked for several years to Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway computers. She attended the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010 as Waitt's guest. Maxwell helped Waitt obtain and renovate a luxury yacht, the Plan B, and used it for travel to France and Croatia before their relationship ended, in late 2010 or early 2011.

So given this timing, Maxwell appears to have distanced herself from Epstein somewhere around the time of Epstein's indictment and guilty plea in 2007-2008. Prior to that time, it's generally acknowledged that she'd been his key enabler, recruiter of young girls, keeper of his schedule, and effectively business administrator of his various households. But at some point, this stopped. We know nothing else about this, at least for now.

Another data point we know is that the Lolita Express Boeing 727 took its final flight on July 11, 2016, deteriorating in a Georgia airport ever since, with parts being seized and removed for non-payment of storage fees.

Although the Epstein estate still has a number of aircraft that will be sold to pay victim claims, this is an indication that as of three years prior to his 2019 arrest, this part of Epstein's accustomed lifestyle had become unsustainable. (The link above says the plane was built in 1969, so Epstein would have needed to replace it in any case, something he had almost certainly become unable to afford.)

The 2010-2011 early meetings with Bill Gates are themselves an intriguing data point. At that time, Epstein openly discussed with Gates the need to rehabilitate his reputation and standing in the wake of his guilty plea. But the enabler who "dropped by" the initial meeting was Eva Dubin, not Maxwell, who may well have checked out of the frammis by that time.

Another intriguing data poimt is Epstein's reported threat to the UK Parliament to induce them to approve Jes Staley's appointment as CEO of Barclay's:

On 2nd Nov 2015, The Times reported that the Daily Mail had been leaked emails from Jeffrey Epstein to Parliament or some connected source to blackmail Parliament into accepting Jes Staley as CEO for Barclays. Subsequently in August 2019 it was reported by Bloomberg that Staley had visited Epstein in prison and also on his island, travelling to the latter on Epstein's yacht.

Ever since hearing about this, my reaction was that people at that level simply do not need to make e-mailed threats of anything. That's for Don Corleone, not David Rockefeller. While in that case, Epstein seems to have got his wish, it strikes me as an indication that his hold was slipping, and he knew it.

It sounds to me as if Ghislaine Maxwell had figured this out well before then. According to Maxwell's Wiikipedia entry,

In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence. Following Epstein's release, although Maxwell continued to attend prominent social functions, she and Epstein were no longer seen together publicly.

By late 2015, Maxwell had largely retreated from attending social functions.

At least by 2015, the civil actions against Maxwell by the various underage Epstein victims had begun. At that point, she began to keep an extremely low public profile, and it appears that she married hedge fund CEO Scott Borgerson in 2016. (The photo at the top shows them attending a philanthropic function.) As part of that deal, she sold her principal asset, a Manhattan townhouse that Epstein had gifted her in 2000, and transferred the proceeds to a trust controlled by Borgerson. Given the legal expenses she's had since 2015, it's likely that this amount, plus much of Borgerson's own fortune, will go to lawyers regardless of the outcome.

The main takeaway I have from all these data points is that Maxwell had become aware at a very early point that Epstein was a fading star, and she cut her ties with him well before many of his other associates like Eva Dubin, Jes Staley, or Larry Summers. Indeed, at a certain point, she was forced to cash out.

What does this mean? I think the most important conclusion is that Epstein, by the time of his arrest, was probably aware that he no longer had the ability to run the operation he was able to run in the 1990s and early 2000s, that all his prior allies and enablers would be cutting their losses (and indeed, everyone was getting older), he wouldn't have an additional chance to dodge legal consequences as he had, and he'd come to the end of his run. That his prior cronies and marks were all aging meant that that the value of anything he could disclose about them was steadily decreasing, which meant that any blackmail leverage he may have held was also worth less and less.

My bet is that he hanged himself in his cell.

Glenn And Eva Dubin

The American noir writer Jim Thompson (1901-1977) portrayed better than anyone else the strange bonds that hold people in orbit around pimps, con artists, and other crooks. Glenn Dubin, a New York hedge fund manager and philanthropist, was among those apparently unable to leave Epstein's orbit. He is married to Eva Andersson, a former Miss Sweden who, like Melanie Walker, dated Jeffrey Epstein and then became an MD. Although she married Dubin in 1994, she remained in Epstein's stable of senior women as a key fixer and enabler for the rest of his life.

The couple's social, financial, and philanthropic ties to Epstein were intricate. Vanity Fair published in September 2019,

One of Epstein’s more puzzling relationships was the one he had with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund manager, and his wife, Dr. Eva Andersson-Dubin, the founder of the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. Could one of Manhattan’s most prominent power couples know more about the Epstein mystery?

The three were close, after all. Andersson-Dubin, a former Miss Sweden, dated Epstein for years before she and Dubin married in 1994. Even after Epstein’s conviction in 2008, the couple stayed in contact with the registered sex offender, inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner at their home in Palm Beach the following year. Andersson-Dubin also wrote an email to Epstein’s probation officer, asserting that she was “100% comfortable with Jeffrey Epstein around my children,” who were then all minors. Multiple sources told me last month that Epstein was the godfather to the Dubins’ three children, although a spokesman for Dubin disputed that assertion. (“The Dubins are Jewish and Jewish people do not typically do godparents,” he said.)

Epstein and Dubin had business ties as well. Epstein introduced Dubin to Jes Staley, then a senior executive at JPMorganChase & Co. and now the CEO of Barclays, the big British bank. After JPMorganChase bought control of Highbridge Capital, Dubin’s hedge fund, in stages, starting in 2004, Epstein reportedly received a $15 million fee. Dubin also directed some of Epstein’s money, for which Epstein was a fiduciary, to at least two hedge fund managers—Dan Zwirn and Joseph Kusnan—who once worked at Highbridge before starting their own firms.

By early 2020, Dubin's Epstein associations may have prompted his retirement as a hedge fund manager. According to Business Insider,

Billionaire Glenn Dubin is retiring from the hedge fund space, he told Reuters on Friday.

He'll relinquish his role and equity in quant fund Engineers Gate, which he founded in 2014, in the next week and focus on direct investing.

Dubin told Reuters the decision had nothing to do with his family's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Last month, Business Insider detailed how the relationship between Epstein and the Dubin family was much more complex than previously known.

The Dubins are best known for helping to rehabilitate Epstein folloing his 2008 guilty plea to felony prostitution charges, providing a character reference to his probation officer and reintroducing him socially. More recently, Eva Dubin is reported to have "dropped by" an initial get-together with Bill Gates and Epstein. at which Gates recounted that he stayed "quite late".

Glenn Dubin's name comes up in a depositions for lawsuits from Epstein's victims, in which there is a strong implication that he participated in sex parties on Little St James Island:

During a 2010 deposition of Epstein’s alleged co-conspirator and “sex slave” Nadia Marcinkova, victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards asked various questions, including “Do you know Bill Clinton?” and “Do you know what Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship is with Alan Dershowitz?”

Marcinkova pleaded the Fifth in response to each query.

“Do you know Glenn Dubin?” he asked the young woman.

She pleaded the Fifth.

The allegation in one of the depositions is that Epstein regularly supplied underage women to Dubin. The marriage to Eva has strong echoes of the marriages in Jim Thompson's pulp thrillers.

Melanie Walker

Melanie Walker is among the small group of close Epstein associates who, like Boris Nikolic, haven't been tainted by him and continue in the financial and philanthropic upper crust. Her current official thumbnail reads:

MD clinically specialized in Endovascular Neurosurgery and Vascular Neurology, with post-doctoral studies in computational neuroscience. Formerly: Neurotechnology and brain science adviser to William H Gates III at bgC3; Director, World Bank Group; Deputy Director for Global Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Adviser for Macroeconomics and Health, World Health Organization; practitioner in the developing world. Currently: Rockefeller Fellow and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Washington School of Medicine. Author of numerous peer reviewed publications. Member, Executive Board, American Medical Association Foundation. Young Global Leader and co-chair for the Global Future Council on Neurotechnology and Brain Science, World Economic Forum.

There's no mentioni of Epstein. Nevertheless, she turns up at several times in the Epstein story, according to numerous sources. The UK Daily Mail says,

Dr Walker is said to have met Epstein in 1992, six months after graduating from the University of Texas. He told her he could get her an audition to model for the lingerie firm Victoria's Secret.

The company was owned by fashion magnate Les Wexner, for whom Epstein acted as financial adviser. Dr Walker moved into one of Epstein's New York apartments. In 1999, she began to appear as a passenger on his pilot's flight logs.

It's worth pointing out that in 1992, Epstein was in fact beginning his relationship with Wexner, but he was also deeply involved in the Towers Financial Ponzi scheme, which turned out to be the biggest in history until Bernie Madoff. Epstein worked behind the scenes at Towers Financial beginning in 1987 and is credited with being the brains behind the fraud. According to the Wikipedia link above,

In February 1993, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged that the company, while fraudulently reporting a profit of $13 million ($25,000,000 in current dollar terms) for the four years ended June 30, 1991, actually lost $137 million ($260,000,000 in current dollar terms). In March 1993, Towers Financial filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Nevertheless, although Epstein was apparently a co-conspirator with the other organizers, who went to prison for various terms, Epstein escaped any penalty. What did Dr Walker, whom I suspect was no ingenue, know? In any case, she appears to have continued her association with Epstein through her time in medical school. Again from the UK Daily Mail link,

That same year [1999], having graduated from medical school, she took up a new role as Epstein's science adviser.

She would later join the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and became an intermediary between Epstein and the Microsoft co-founder.

But at the turn of the century Dr Walker, then 28 years old, seems to have been an important pivot in the tycoon's burgeoning relationship with the Duke [Prince Andrew].

In June 2000, the neurosurgeon attended — according to the guest list — the 'Dance of the Decades' party thrown at Windsor Castle by the Queen to mark a number of royal birthday milestones, including the Duke's 40th and Princess Anne's 50th.

I have several questions. What need did Epstein, a cheesy pimp, con man, embezzler, and blackmailer, have for a "science adviser"? One would think that a qualified science type, hired off the street, would discover fairly quickly that the job was without meaningful duties and move on as quietly and tactfully as could be done. Yet Walker not only stayed with it, but she got on board the Lolita Express. Why on earth would an MD. who of anyone must be familiar with the whole range of sexual infections, step into an environment like that in anything but a hazmat suit? Some science adviser.

But it gets stranger. According to the UK Sun,

[Prince] Andrew first met Texas-born Melanie in New York in 1999 — the same year he met Epstein. The brain and nervous system specialist praised the Duke in a 2003 interview.

Melanie, who lives with ex Microsoft exec Steven Sinofsky, insisted they were just friends who chatted “mostly about science and medicine” and kept in touch via email.

She added: “He calls me Mel and addresses me ‘Hey Dork’ or ‘smarty pants’.” Melanie declined to comment to The Sun.

In November 2000, accordinmg to the UK Daily Mail, Walker spent several days in a guest house with Prince Andrew at Epstein's Zorro Ranch in New Mexico.

The Duke was accompanied by the same senior Personal Protection Officer (PPO) who was to stay with him at Epstein's mansion in New York the following Easter.

The police inspector — the Duke's bodyguard for 15 years — kept a private Filofax diary in which he recorded his daily duties and observations. He still has that Filofax, sources say.

Using this resource, the PPO recalls that the Duke stayed in one of the guest lodges at Zorro, while he was quartered in a building near the ranch entrance.

'He knew who went in and who went out,' says a source. 'And for most of the time the only person who was there with the Duke, apart from the ranch's domestic staff, was his then girlfriend, Melanie Walker.'

Walker's relationship with Epstein and her membership in his inner circle continued past his 2008 arrest. According to the Seattle Times,

Two members of Gates’ inner circle — Boris Nikolic and Melanie Walker — were close to Epstein and at times functioned as intermediaries between the two men.

. . . Walker later met Steven Sinofsky, a senior executive at Microsoft who became president of its Windows division, and moved to Seattle to be with him. In 2006, she joined the Gates Foundation with the title of senior program officer.

At the foundation, Walker met and befriended Nikolic, a native of what is now Croatia and a former fellow at Harvard Medical School who was the foundation’s science adviser. Nikolic and Gates frequently traveled and socialized together.

Walker, who had remained in close touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the men became friendly.

It's hard to avoid thinking that Walker was, like Ghislaine Maxwell and Eva Andersson Dubin, one of a stable of senior women who continued as part of Epstein's inner circle and did various favors for him over many years.

My main takeaway here is that I would not allow Dr Walker to get anywhere near me with a scalpel. Come to think of it, maybe not without a hazmat suit, either.

What, Precisely, Was The Lolita Express?

According to the New York Post, a Boeing 727 belonging to one of Jeffrey Epstein's companies, which has tail number N908JE, is parked in a long-term storage area at Brunswick Golden Isles Airport in southeastern Georgia. This plane, which was given the nickname Lolita Express, was just one of four helicopters and three planes Epstein owned. Other accounts say it is in derelict condition, with engines and other parts removed.

The photo above is from the UK Sun and is purportedly of this plane, but the tail number has been retouched out.

According to the Post link, "A record of its last flight shows the plane took off from West Palm Beach, then zig-zagged above Florida before touching down at the Georgia airport more than four years ago." This suggests to me that in spite of Epstein's efforts to rehabilitate his reputation via figures like Bill Gates, his prior lifestyle before his 2008 arrest had become at least in part unsustainable. Removal of the engines suggests the airport operator has seized them to cover storage fees.

Names of people who've flown on the plane with Epstein include Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Larry Summers, Alan Dershowitz, Kevin Spacey, Ron Burkle, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Ehud Barak, Ted Kennedy, Alec Baldwin, and Courtney Love. Prosecutors have issed subpoenas for the full flight logs.

Possibly out of delicacy, most accounts of the plane suggest it was nothing but a luxurious corporate jet. However, accounts from the underage girls forced to work on the plane, both in the media and in depositions, indicate that it was used extensively for in-flight orgies. The Post link carries this description of the interior:

James McCloskey, a 53-year-old aviation consultant, told The Post he was given a tour of the jet in March 2020 while doing work for Scroggins Aviation, a Las Vegas-based company that buys planes — and plane parts — for the film industry.

McCloskey snapped more than two dozen photos of the plane’s interior, revealing the VIP jet’s velour-upholstered reclining chairs, love seats and even the pedophile’s notorious on-board bed, where he and his guests allegedly had group sex with girls.

He said the plane felt like a “playground.”

“When you get inside the aircraft, it’s a playground. Everything lays out to be a bed. That was kind of creepy,” McCloskey said.

“It’s not like the aircraft is set up for a business meeting — because it’s not. There’s no chairs for anyone to sit in, except for the lie-flat chairs.”

He added that the interior design looked like something from the Disco Era.

“You get on Epstein’s airplane and it’s decorated from the 1970s. I mean, you would almost think that Elvis flew on this thing because it’s like velour, and bright red colors,” he said.

. . . Ghislaine Maxwell, who is awaiting trial on charges she procured underage girls for Epstein to abuse, allegedly took part in sexual romps aboard his planes, according to a newly unsealed deposition by Giuffre.

In the testimony, Giuffre detailed “constant orgies” at Epstein’s private Caribbean island. She added that she had sex with Maxwell all over the globe — and in the air.

“If we’re going to talk about other countries we’ve got to talk about international travel space or plane space or whatever you want to call it,” Giuffre told an attorney in 2016 when asked where she had sex with Maxwell.

“It happened all the time on the planes,” she said.

Other accounts indicate that the females on the trips included the underage girls forced into the work, older women who were more clearly professional prostitutes, and senior Epstein associates like Maxwell and Melanie Walker. Apparently not all flights were orgies -- Bill Clinton's spokespeople will acknowledge four flights with secret service on board, but flight logs indicate Clinton was on 26.

According to the UK Daily Mail, the plane was stocked with pink lotion, wet wipes, tissues with the plane's tail number on them, and baby powder. It's worth noting that the UK press has been much more explicit and comprehensive in covering the story than the US media.

Thus it's possible that some individuals named as passengers on Epstein's plane may not have participated in sexual activity with women either underage or adults, but the normal use of the plane was for sex parties, not business travel, and it's becoming more clear that Epstein made his money from pimping and blackmail, using philanthropic non-profits to launder the payments.

The plane was just one part of his operation.

Boris Nikolic

One thing I find nore and more puzzling is that, at least on the web, there's no single "who's who" of the ever-widening circle of names surrounding Epstein. (If someone knows of such a thing, I'll be very grateful to hear of it.) Today I want to look at one of the few whose association with the guy hasn't resulted in job loss or similar calamity, Boris Nikolic. He's in the far right of the well-known 2011 photo of Gates with Epstein, Larry Summers, and Jes Staley.

In the famous photo, Nikolic comes off as a thuggish-looking James Bond villain. That he's named Boris doesn't help. But in other photos, he's housebroken and sincere. Which is it? His current position app;ears to be Managing Direcor of Biomatics Capital, where his thumbnail reads,

Dr. Nikolic is a physician and investor who previously served as chief advisor for science and technology to Bill Gates, leading select for-profit and not-for-profit investment activities. His investments spanned the life science, information technology and health care sectors, including companies such as Foundation Medicine, ResearchGate, Schrodinger and Nimbus Therapeutics.

In other words, he's an unassailable member of the tech investor elite, with credentials reaching back to a professorship at Harvard. The only glitch is that, as I noted in an earlier post here, he was inexplicably named in Epstein's will as “successor executor,” the person who would take control of the estate if the two named executors are unable or unwilling to. When this came up, Nikolic simply said he was "shocked" to learn of it, and the whole thing went away. Odd.

The most complete explanation of how Nikolic fit into the Epstein circle is in this story in the UK Daily Mail.

Before ever meeting Gates, Epstein knew of two people who were in his inner circle - Melanie Walker and Boris Nikolic.

Walker met Epstein just after she graduated college in 1992.

. . . Walker, who kept in touch with Epstein, introduced him to Nikolic, and the two became friends.

That eventually led to the first face-to-face meeting between Gates and Epstein, which took place at Epstein's New York City townhouse in January 2011, according to the Times.

The meeting is said to have included other associates of Epstein, including Eva Andersson-Dubin, the former Miss Sweden who is married to hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin.

After the hours-long meeting, Epstein wrote an email to friends saying: 'Bill's great.'

Gates also reportedly had positive things to say about Epstein.

In an email to colleagues obtained by the Times, he wrote: 'A very attractive Swedish woman and her daughter dropped by and I ended up staying there quite late.'

. . . Soon afterward in May 2011, Gates paid another visit to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse, according to the Times.

The Times published a photo showing Epstein, Gates, Nikolic, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and James Staley, who at the time was an executive with JPMorgan.

At the time, the Gates Foundation and JPMorgan began discussions about creating a global charity that would fund health care projects in poor countries.

So what we're seeing is an extended network that includes two Epstein girlfriends who become connected with Nikolic, who acted in this episode as a go-between who could set up meetings with Bill Gates.

He sure seems proud of himself in the photo from the 2011 meeting, huh? But from what we read in the link, Nikolic and Melanie Walker, already friends, had both infiltrated the Gates operation on Epstein's behalf before any of the problem meetings with Ep;stein took place.

Gates Thought Epstein Could Get Him The Nobel Prize

Via The Daily Beast, which broke the story:

Gates hoped the well-connected pervert could help him secure the Nobel Peace Prize, one former Gates Foundation employee told The Daily Beast.

This person said members of the foundation’s communications team were alerted to Gates’ relationship with Epstein and were told it “was a maneuver to try to get himself a Nobel Peace Prize.” They said the tech mogul had even kept some employees on call on prize day in years past just in case he was awarded the distinction.

“We were aware of things that were potential reputational risks for the foundation and the co-chairs, Bill and Melinda,” said the former employee. “Even back then, people knew this guy wasn’t squeaky clean,” the person said, referring to Epstein.

Although much of the dirt on Gates and his ties to Epstein seems to come from Melinda's allies (like the quotes above), other information suggests Melinda was copacetic with Gates's effort to get the prize via Epstein and even complicit, at least insofar as a trip to France was involved:

According to People, Bill and Melinda Gates will continue as co-chairs of their foundation, even as they divide their $130 billion in marital assets, because of their shared ambition for the Nobel Prize. One source told the magazine: “They were really interested in trying to win a Nobel Prize. So one thing that was part of this is, if it gets worse, then it ends that. It seems as if that was on the agenda, and that’s for both of them.”

Bill Gates may have had the prize on his mind in March 2013, when he and Epstein reportedly visited Jagland’s home in Strasbourg, France.

The rendezvous was revealed by Dagens Næringsliv, Norway’s largest business newspaper, in an October 2020 report. At the time of the meeting, Jagland was chair of the committee which awards the Peace Prize, and Gates was a potential candidate for the honor.

The meeting also included members of the International Peace Institute (IPI)—a think tank run by former Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen that Epstein’s secret charity lavished with a $375,000 donation in 2017. (Rød-Larsen resigned from the New York-based IPI last October after it was revealed his group received $650,000 in donations from Epstein, who also provided him with a $130,000 personal loan.)

. . . The Strasbourg meeting may not have been Gates’ only visit abroad with Epstein.

In August 2019, the French news outlet Franceinfo reported on a roster of famous visitors to Epstein’s Parisian apartment, which included Bill and Melinda on at least one occasion, according to the financier’s former butler. A spokesperson for Melinda Gates told The Daily Beast that Melinda has never been to Epstein’s Paris home. >/p> The steady stream of revelations suggests the enormous range of people Epstein corrupted via blackmail or other conflict of interest. As the current crop of stories brings up new figures, one consistent feature seems to be the willingness of media worldwide to treat all these post-2019 resignations is discrete episodes that quietly fade awayu after a few stories in local media.

This new episode also raises questions about just what all those meetings between Epstein, Gates, and other members of a so-called "men's club" involved. They are said to have been frequent, and accounts make it fairly clear that they took place between at least 2011 and 2013 -- but when, exactly, did they stop? And were they just the innocent sessions for Bill to bellyache about Melinda? Donations from the Gates foundation were made, according to the Daily Beast story, to the Epstein-connected IPI well after the 2013 visit:

Not long after the Strasbourg gathering, the Gates Foundation granted IPI millions of dollars; records on the foundation’s website show IPI received a $2.5-million grant in October 2013, $5.5 million in March 2014, and $256,968 in June 2019 and July 2020.

The Gates foundation's connection with Epstein, and Gates's friendship with him, likely extended well beyond what's been revealed so far, in my view. All the denials of this, that, and the other from both Bill's and Melinda's flacks strike me as worth not much.

Melinda is a wronged woman, an innocent party. Right. I keep telling my wife that the divorce came about because Melinda started to think Epstein stole a lot more from the Gates fortune than she's been told, and the divorce is the only way to get the money straightened out by a third party, the court. My wife is starting to agree. But this goes way beyond the Gateses.

The Nymphets Are The Least Of It

The real question about Jeffrey Epstein has little to do with the Lolita Express, the private island, and the underage girls, although the prosecutions were over the nymphets alone, and the rest has been the focus of the tabloid news. But a much bigger question is how Epstein got his money in the first place, and, since there's a high likelihood that this involved fraud and blackmail, how much he stole, and maybe more important, from whom.

One potential early source of money was Les Wexner. This story in The New Republic gives details:

The founder and former chairman of L Brands, which includes stores like The Limited and Victoria’s Secret, Wexner was Epstein’s longtime friend and key enabler. A serial liar and cunning manipulator, Epstein sometimes approached women claiming to be a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. He said he was a money manager for billionaires, but Wexner was his only confirmed client. After meeting Epstein in the mid-1980s, Wexner eventually gave him power of attorney, allowing him full control over Wexner’s billions. The source of most of Epstein’s own fortune, estimated at nearly $600 million at the time of his death, remains mostly unknown, but much of it appears to have come from Wexner himself, including mansions in Ohio and New York that Wexner essentially gifted to Epstein. According to transaction records, it appears that Epstein also used his position as Wexner’s fiduciary to off-load huge chunks of Wexner-owned stock, while skimming millions for himself. (Wexner eventually disavowed Epstein, claiming he stole $46 million from him—a relatively small amount compared to the overall sum Epstein likely earned through the relationship.)

But the Wexner Manhatten mansion alone, which the story and other sources indicate was effectively "gifted" to Epstein, sold at a distress price of $51 million in March. And this leaves out the value of the other real estate Epstein somehow wangled from Wexner, plus an undetermined amount of cash. $46 million is pretty clearly a wildly lowball estimate meant to preserve both Wexner's self-esteem and his public image.

The public figures who've been suddenly named as Epstein cronies, now including Bill Gates, have all scrambled to insist that they only "discussed philanthropy", never went to the island, or whatever. Alan Dershowitz is such another:

Dershowitz admitted to being at the billionaire’s home but noted that he’d never seen an underaged girl at Epstein’s place despite sworn testimony from Epstein’s former butler who claimed that Dershowitz was at the residence at the same time that underaged girls were there. Dershowitz has an easy explanation for that: “Were there young women in another part of the house giving massages while I was around? I have no idea of that!”

Oh, and did Dershowitz ever receive a massage at Epstein’s house? Yep. But Dershowitz claimed that it was from an adult woman and he kept his underwear on.

But in 2003, before Epstein's 2008 first case, Dershowitz told Vanity Fair:

In the Vanity Fair piece, Dershowitz told the magazine, "I'm on my 20th book … The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey." In 2015, however, he relayed to The American Lawyer that he was an Epstein acquaintance, describing the relationship as "entirely professional."

Another prominent figure who's had to backtrack furiously over Epstein ties is Leon Black. According to the Financial Times,

Over two decades, Mr Black confided in Epstein regarding personal matters, leaned on him as an “architect” of, and “strict taskmaster” for, the private office that managed his investments. The men socialised or held meetings at Epstein’s Caribbean island and his other properties in New York, Paris, Florida and New Mexico.

. . .“Let me be clear, there has never been an allegation by anyone that I engaged in any wrongdoing because I did not,” Mr Black said then. “Any suggestion of blackmail or any other connection to Epstein’s reprehensible conduct is categorically untrue.”

The pair last spoke in 2018, after Epstein sent emails that made what Dechert called “unsubstantiated assertions” about the work he had performed and demanded more cash. Mr Black refused to pay anything more.

It sounds, though, as if Epstein was demanding payments over "unsubstantiated assertions". Er, isn't this blackmail?

The nymphets -- or whatever else -- were just a means to an end. We'll likely never get to the bottom of these relationships, Wexner, Dershowtiz, Black, Gates, and surely many others. But we can be fairly sure there's much beyond what they're willing to say publicly. How much Epstein stole may not be anything like the whole picture, either.