How Jeffrey Epstein Made Millions From His Connections
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Jess.
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So when this big batch of Epstein files came out in late January, do you remember where you were?
I was really sick in bed trying not to work, actually.
That's our colleague Emily Glazer, who writes about the rich and powerful, including about people with ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
And I got a call from Khadija Safdar, who is our lead reporter on all things Epstein. And she's like, oh, my God, you won't believe it. And I was like, not really that with it. I'm like logging into these files, kind of like a little like out of it. And I was just like, oh, my gosh. And so I became obsessed. Every night I'd log in after my son went to sleep and I would spend like hours searching different things to see what I could find.
So in your pastime, you're just spending hours and hours reading the Epstein files.
Okay. In fairness, my husband was on a work trip. And so I literally like each night I would stay up for a couple of hours just reading through it and finding new things. And I started to create a timeline. And my editor, this poor guy, I'm just constantly messaging him with like this and that and that.
One of the things Emily found was that Epstein was frequently receiving confidential company information from powerful people in his network and making millions of dollars in the process.
What we are writing about here is how Epstein really collected all this information and tips about stocks and startups, both public companies and private companies, and would oftentimes then invest and sometimes make money and sometimes not make money.
We have this unprecedented access to all of these emails and all of these little snippets of conversations that we never had insight into before. How would you describe how these people were talking to each other?
Good question. Very casually and often not abiding by...
What are the details of the recent Epstein files release?
typical rules or guidelines that exist when you're handling confidential information.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Thursday, March 26th. Coming up on the show, how Jeffrey Epstein leveraged his elite network to make financial investments.
We know that Jeffrey Epstein made hundreds of millions of dollars advising a few billionaire clients. But his other income is still somewhat of a mystery.
Most of Epstein's wealth came from advising billionaires like Leon Black, who ran a private equity juggernaut, Apollo, and Les Wexner, who oversaw L Brands, which owns Victoria's Secret and a number of other retailers. And he made a lot of money advising them over the years. And his estate... when he, according to court papers filed after Epstein's death, put his worth at at least $577 million, which includes his private island and properties.
That's a lot of money.
It is.
And then it also, I mean, even the work that he was doing, at this point, it's still not extremely clear as to why he was being paid so much for that work. Because in the market, usually those services often are much cheaper than what it seems like he was being paid.
Yes, that's been a big question over the years and subject to a lot of, I think, elements of lawsuits and investigations. And it's hard to fully divorce what Epstein was doing with trafficking women and trying to like understand his whole empire because he had a lot of things going on at once. And oftentimes, not always, his relationships with different people, you know, would have this like sort of business component and then also sometimes this social or like sexual component.
But also now based on your reporting, it's clear that he was also to some degree making money in the stock market.
He was, yes. And it's really interesting to see how sometimes he would get tips and then somewhat soon after would advise his bankers or his accountant to purchase shares of these companies that he was getting information about.
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