Who was Jeffrey Epstein?

Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and convicted sex offender.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Epstein built a career in finance after a brief stint teaching at the elite Dalton School in Manhattan. He joined Bear Stearns in 1976 and rose to limited partner before leaving in 1981. He subsequently managed the fortune of billionaire retail magnate Leslie Wexner, which afforded him extraordinary access to the ultra-wealthy and the powerful.

Epstein cultivated a vast social network that included politicians, royalty, academics, scientists, and entertainers. Behind this public facade, federal and local investigations ultimately revealed a decades-long operation involving the sexual trafficking of underage girls.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges in Florida and served 13 months in a county jail with work-release privileges — a deal widely condemned as inadequate. In 2019, he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges by the Southern District of New York. He was found dead in his cell on August 10, 2019, with the official cause of death ruled suicide by hanging — a ruling that remains widely disputed.

His longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of five counts related to sex trafficking and is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.