Chapter Two: The Money Train

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Jeffrey Epstein was a brilliant, brilliant Wall Street mastermind. In criminality, he sometimes helped dictators hide their money. He sometimes helped Americans recover the money that dictators hid. Epstein was very heavily involved in the illegal side of the business of the money laundering, the spying, the arms sales. Welcome to Episode 2 of Epstein, Devil in the Darkness.

I'm your host, Danielle Robay. Jeffrey Epstein's lifestyle of excess and abuse was funded by the supposed billions he had made on Wall Street. But where did the money really come from? In this episode, we're going to dive deep into that fortune to find out how legitimate his financial dealings were, and even if the riches existed at all.

I kind of said to myself, these are some of the greatest investors of all time, and Jeffrey Epstein doesn't have money with them. So does he have as much money as he says? We're also going to see how he abused that wealth. and how it not only opened doors to mix with the world's most powerful and influential men, but enabled Epstein to operate outside the rules of normal society, and instilled in him a belief he was above the law. As a smart man once said,

Follow the money. I think what it goes back to, what I'm curious about is what was his job? Where was his money coming from? I would say Jeffrey Epstein's money, how much there is, how he got it is a complete mystery and not just to me. Jeffrey Epstein had arrived in Wall Street as an ambitious 23-year-old college dropout, and after rising to become a limited partner at Bear Stearns, abruptly left again five years later.

One of Epstein's clients at this time was controversial Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi, who was implicated in the Iran-Contra affair for transporting weapons from Israel to Iran. Epstein also possessed an Austrian passport under a false name that showed his place of residence as Saudi Arabia. And then in 1987, he was introduced to Steven Hoffenberg of Tower Financial Corporation, a debt collection and corporate rating agency.

my name is steven jude hoffenberg i'm a former wall street executive retired who had a substantial experience with a man named Jeffrey Epstein over many years under a very difficult cloud of criminality at a company named Towers Financial Corporation. where I was the chief executive officer. Jeffrey Epstein applied to Towers Financial for a position in investment banking. I was greatly impressed with his demeanor.

his ability to understand complex securities underwritings and sales to investors and he was also broke was literally without funds because he got into trouble in Europe and had gotten into trouble at Bear Stearns. According to Hoffenberg, Epstein's work prior to joining Towers Financial was anything but legitimate. He was working in investment banking, money laundering, spying, and arms deals in different countries overseas.

And he had taken advantage of his expense account and overcharged an awful lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. At this late hour of many years later, I... like being concise and i don't want to misquote but i can tell you that they sold armament throughout the middle east and around the world There was a sale of aircraft, I believe, the AWACS or the Air Force Protective Planes for spying.

They were involved in that. They were involved in all types of armament being sold. They did work a partnership with Adnan Khashoggi's group in Saudi Arabia regularly. in selling Alma men with Adnan Khashoggi's folks in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East. Hoffenberg was immediately impressed by Epstein's energy.

And the pair began to make serious money together in what was later discovered to be a huge illegal Ponzi scheme. Ponzi definition is you raise money from one investor to pay another investor. That's the simple definition of Ponzi. Jeffrey Epstein participated full time and was a mastermind in that part of the Towers Financial Crimes. His ability to sell you securities when you weren't looking to acquire securities was remarkable. He would end up convincing you to buy securities.

in towers financial and you weren't even considering that he had that gift he was a master manipulator Tower's financial collapsed in one of the biggest financial scandals in American history. Investors had been swindled out of nearly $500 million, and Hoffenberg was sentenced to 20 years in prison, plus a $1 million fine and $463 million in restitution.

He was able to fund his criminal enterprise that he operates, Financial Trust Company and Jay Epstein and Company. And there was another one, I believe it was International Asset Collections. He was able to fund it with the assets and money from the Towers Financial crimes. Jeffrey Epstein had made millions from Towers Financial. And as his partner in crime, Hoffenberg took the fall.

he skipped away without a scratch. But from there, it becomes less clear exactly how he continued to generate wealth. Writer and socialite Jesse Kornbluth was part of Epstein's increasingly sophisticated social circle in Manhattan at this time. He remembers one odd encounter that led him to also question Epstein's supposed millions.

And it was largely empty, and you couldn't tell what work was being done there. So I said, Jeffrey, I'd like to see you work. So we arranged to meet in the lobby of a Park Avenue building, and we took the elevator up to a law office where Jeffrey was going to serve. And here's Stuart Pivar. an art collector who was also friends with Epstein at this time.

He liked to keep things interesting. And when he would reveal himself as a hoax, it's a form of practical joke which people don't do. But Jeffrey did things which people don't do. Jeffrey Epstein did have one high-profile client, however, the billionaire businessman Les Wexner, CEO of lingerie empire Victoria's Secret, amongst other businesses. He met Leslie Wexner socially. And they became bonded together as friends and business colleagues and business partners in the Leslie Wexner businesses.

and the leslie wexner family assets they had a very deep bond a very deep friendship and a very deep business relationship for a number of years Was Jeffrey Epstein legitimately earning money through financial consulting for the likes of Les Wexner? Or was something shadier going on? Here's journalist Laura Goldman.

I believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a genius, a savant at understanding rich people. He understood how to intimidate Leslie Wexner into giving him control. Here, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of his own safety.

is his private chauffeur then you come to find out he got his money from the guy wexner who knows how that happened with the money came the trappings of the super rich and properties all over the world. In 1993, Epstein purchased the Zorro Ranch, a sprawling 10,000-acre site in New Mexico. Amongst the staff, there was Deidre Stratton, who remembers one incident that may provide an insight into Epstein's powers of manipulation.

and attitude towards other people. I always flash back on this. Jeffrey and Dylan in the kitchen in the mansion was this very large table. And this one time they arrived and they wanted... someone that was an expert at photography someone else that was an expert at something and they would invite him to lunch and Ghislaine would have this tablet and she would write down the facts that they you know would tell them and at one point she told me

I mean, well, you get the information from an expert and then you get rid of them. In other words, you just get the information you want, you use them as you want, and then, you know, goodbye. And it's very sad when you have enough money to buy the world that you lose your integrity as a human being. And that's very, very sad. Jeffrey Epstein may have been playing a role, but he was playing it with everything he had.

Here is his private chauffeur. He made everybody believe he was a billionaire, that he had unlimited wealth because he owned an island, he owned penthouses, he owned apartments, he owned planes. So he was playing this role.

Almost like Bernie Madoff, you know what I mean? He was playing a role of this big high role. And then when they come to find out that he really wasn't worth, not even close to what he was claiming. And then that most of his money came from somebody else. It's like the house of cards. Everything's falling in on him. I mean, this guy, he sent me one time from Teterboro to Long Island. He wanted to change the seats on his plane. He paid $150,000 to change seven...

Seats, you know, the bottom of the seat, seat cushions, $150,000. This is the kind of guy he was. He didn't care. He thought money was power and he could do whatever he felt like.

and nobody could touch him he flew a 32 million dollar jet like we drive our cars they would come in in the morning land in Teterboro in the morning 11 o'clock in the morning and at four o'clock in the afternoon they're taking off again be back that night at nine o'clock and and go back out the next one like it was unbelievable like this guy was flew around like money was no object we had

Guys that were big time bankers, hedge fund managers and all that, that were customers of ours, celebrities that had jets. Nobody flew like he did. It was unbelievable.

Epstein also used his wealth to purchase lavish properties in Palm Beach, Florida and overlooking Central Park, Manhattan. One visitor to his Palm Beach property was journalist Laura Goldman. It wasn't the most grandest house on the block. But it was the most private. Remember, it had a pool. The interior was not fancy. It was kind of creepy looking. It was not what you would expect from a Palm Beach mansion. If Epstein's Palm Beach mansion lacked the wow factor...

Its appeal for Epstein may have lay elsewhere. Palm Beach is a live, let live kind of place. Lots of rich libertarian types. And I don't think that they mixed with their neighbors because they didn't want their neighbors to know what they were doing. I think the police force down there is pretty ineffective. I think that people are there on vacation. They didn't want to rock the boat. The Palm Beach police showed me that they weren't interested in policing the billionaires on the island.

Palm Beach was where all the decadent people went and the Palm Beach police kind of looked the other way. If you were rich and you made a donation to the police athletically, they didn't care what you did. Epstein's New York residence was a different matter. The 40-room Beau Arts Mansion at 9 East 71st Street was one of Manhattan's most lavish private residences. Melissa Cronin, a journalist who's covered the case since 2014, explains.

So Epstein's place in New York City is like the most ridiculous, over-the-top, rich person mansion that you could possibly imagine. There's one place that is distinctly his, and that is the bathroom and a massage studio. Calling this place a bathroom is definitely understating it. It's a giant antechamber with a huge dome and a skylight. The dome is painted with kind of like an orgy scene.

There was also a really big shower on the antechamber. What was really distinctive about this shower was it actually had four different shower heads. Epstein didn't let normal visitors go in there, but right off of the main antechamber was the massage room. It kind of seemed to emanate this red glow. One of the most interesting rooms in Epstein's house is one that most visitors didn't really see, the security room.

At the desk in the middle, there were six different video monitors showing what was happening all over the house. Given the context of his life, it's really disturbing. If Palm Beach gave Epstein privacy and Manhattan gave him opulence... Then it was his Zorro Ranch in New Mexico that provided the best of both worlds, even if he was hardly ever there. He was only in residence at the ranch at that time, maybe 30 days out of the year.

He prided his privacy so very much and we were hardly ever allowed to say who we worked for. Like if you'd asked me who I worked for, Zora Ranch, I didn't mention his name. The employees had to sign. that they would never disclose any information. It was just all very secret. I think maybe people move out here because they think that, you know, we're so far away from media.

You know, other things. So maybe that's why he decided to build up here. Amongst those living at Zorro Ranch full time was Ian Royal, whose father was part of the general maintenance staff. As a teenager... Ian would occasionally help his dad with odd jobs, and so gained access to the lavish 26,700-square-foot main residence. The only time I was ever in that mansion was when I was working on it or walking with my dad to just check on it. It was super lavish. I mean...

There were, and don't hold me completely to this, but I'm almost positive there had to have been maybe a lion that wasn't even a taxidermy lion at one point. It was mind-blowing. He had a freaking stuffed sheep in the elevator. Like, I would get into the elevator and he'd be just standing next to this stuffed animal. Just in the elevator, just chilling. Beautiful furniture.

And it just didn't make sense because it's like, man, you have all of this stuff and no one even uses it. This house is empty 80% of the time and we just come in to maintenance it. The eccentricities of the Zorro Ranch went beyond stuffed animals. Yeah, there was some really high-end medieval stuff. There was a whole suit of armor in there. There was an observatory room, like a little study had a balcony.

look out through this telescope and kind of look wherever, because it had an open site. This was on the second floor, and there was this huge parlor room. It almost looked like something you'd find in Sherlock Holmes. You'd walk in there, it's this really nice brown desk. On one side, you got couches in the middle, and then you got loads of books everywhere. Of course, books were all over. It's totally like a Gatsby thing. It really looked like there could have been...

like a secret room. If I pulled one of the books, the shelf would move or something. Oh, there was this room right next to the theater room. There was cabinets of old guns, like old, like I'm talking like Civil War guns. Also amongst the staff was housekeeper Deidre Stratton. And, you know, not necessarily who they were attached to. And I remember this one photo of Caitlin and I think two other girls in a bathtub and they were naked.

Epstein may not have been at the Zorro Ranch more than 30 days a year, but when he did come to town, he had some very specific requirements. And with him to help facilitate those needs would be his right-hand woman, Ghislaine Maxwell.

come wheels down they get in the mansion she'd be in her office and immediately open the book and start calling girls to see if they would be willing to come there to entertain jeffrey and of course i just you know thought he wanted to be surrounded by beautiful women There was this woman, and I can't recall her name, but Jeffrey took a real interest in her. She was from Palm Beach, I think.

And she was an opera student and he took a great interest in her. She was quite beautiful. He would invite her, I think because she was under eight, he would invite her. like to the ranch or to here and there and her parents wouldn't allow it and then he stepped in to pay for her schooling and

Maybe she then got of an age and, I mean, I don't know the ins and outs, but she ended up getting a role on, like, The Young and the Restless for a while. She was beautiful, but she's in one of those pictures of in the bathtub. Epstein even paid to bring in scores of masseuses to the ranch, and Deidre was charged with finding the required number and type of girls. ... ... ... ... ...

of willing massage therapists that were willing to drive out there at a moment's notice. And they would get compensated well for their trouble. Then, of course, they needed to be young, attractive. No visible piercings or tattoos. We always had to put a washcloth on the massage table. You know, I mean, that's kind of just the, you know, you put a man in a washcloth in the same room. What do you think happens?

Occasionally, however, it seems the local massage therapist would not be enough for Jeffrey Epstein or his guests. Cameron Humphreys is the former Santa Fe airport director. He remembers that despite Epstein's attempts at privacy. Rumors began to circulate of dark goings-on at the ranch. Santa Fe is a destination and a lot of people fly in with a private aircraft. What is unusual is to have somebody fly in with a large commercial type of aircraft that's been converted into

to their own private aircraft. And I remember distinctly one afternoon there was a 737 that was sitting on the ramp. It was obviously a private aircraft. This employee said, you know, there's a rumor that he has a ranch here in New Mexico and that he flies in prostitutes, some of them, you know.

may not be of age of consent. Cameron's uneasiness about Epstein's activities led him to talk to the local police. I'd never heard the name before, so I didn't know if he had been in prison or not or whatever. But I was... So appalled by this idea that I called our airport law enforcement liaison officer. And I said, hey, listen, this is just a rumor.

But there's this guy named Jeffrey Epstein that flew his private aircraft in, and apparently he's also flying in underage women to his ranch. I was just so upset about it. This idea of this man flying around the country with that kind of impunity that I felt like I needed to tell somebody. And so reaching out to our law enforcement officer. He said that he had heard the rumors as well and that it was his understanding that there was a federal investigation ongoing.

and that, you know, that there's probably not much that they could do locally, but that he certainly reported up. That was kind of the end of it for me. You know, after reporting it, you know, knowing that that at least I had said something. But I'll tell you, it was frustrating. Because it's a bit of a black hole, right? You know, you report it and then what? We didn't question it back then. I mean...

I remember a pilot saying, one day, one day Jeffrey is going to get nailed for transporting underage girls across state lines. It was not just underage girls who were flown into Santa Fe on board Epstein's private jet. the so-called Lolita Express. Amongst his guests at the Zorro Ranch were politicians, royalty, and leading figures in the worlds of science, law, and business. And for his VIP guests, some suitably exclusive entertainment.

They would go shooting, they would go horseback riding. As far as anything outside of that, they couldn't have just been going to go and do that, you know what I mean? Just go and shoot some guns and ride some horses, especially if they were important people. They had this little game where they would have the girls or a girl, whomever they were entertaining, down to the stables and the stable lady named Shanna would...

It was staged. She would already be sitting on a stool milking the goat. And she had this little jar with a little milk in it. So then the next thing that would... they would say is would you like to try to milk the goat so of course the girl sat on the stool and shanna would reach her hands under there to his like utter in air quotes which was actually his sexual organs, and tried to milk him. Well, nothing would happen. And then suddenly they'd go, oh, it's a male goat. That poor goat.

Were the girls part of Epstein's entertainment package? And if so, what could his motivation for providing such gifts have been? I'm sure what would happen is Epstein is buttering them up or whomever guessed that he would bring it over and giving them this as like a gift and then trying to get something out of them or from them. or whatever it may be, which is why governors would end up being there, or politicians would end up being there. See, to my knowledge, Zora wasn't.

set up with cameras at the time I was there, to my knowledge. I've read where the island was set up with cameras, where Jeffrey could tape these men with their underage people and use that as blackmail. I mean, that's the oldest. game in the book, isn't it? Next time on Epstein, Devil in the Darkness. Inside Epstein's little black book and the dirty secrets of the world's elite.

Well, you know, we know that Prince Andrew visited his home in Palm Beach, visited his mansion in New York. We know that Donald Trump visited his mansion in New York, visited his home in Palm Beach. would socialize with him. These are some of the individuals who may have been caught on camera if Mr. Epstein had a surveillance system within his home. And if that's the case, then some of these individuals may not want those videos to be released.

powerful men in every situation, not just sex. No one says no to them. No one. The way I feel about Epstein is he reminded me of John Gotti, like the Teflon Don. You know what I mean? He could do anything he wanted. He was the godfather of the sky. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

Nobody could touch him because he had money, he had influence, and he had dirt on all these people. He was able to control and manipulate everything because everybody was afraid of him. Nobody would want that stuff to come out. Epstein, Devil in the Darkness is narrated by me, Danielle Robay, executive produced by Dylan Howard and Melissa Cronin, and is a production of Broad and Water Studios and Endeavor Audio. Executive producers also include Tom Freestone.

James Robertson, Andy Tillett, and Robert Dixter. The series is written by Dominic Utton. Reporting by Aaron Tinney and Doug Montero. The series is mixed and engineered by Sean Cravett and Sam Ada. There is so much more to this story. And you don't want to miss anything, I can assure you. Make sure you subscribe to Epstein, Devil in the Darkness, wherever you get podcasts.

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