Even At JP Morgan They Wondered Who Jeffrey Epstein's "Clients" Were.

New Court Papers Intensify The Mystery About The Money That Enabled The Crimes

So, papers filed last week in the US Virgin Island’s suit against JPMorgan, alleging the bank knowingly benefitted from the sex-trafficking schemes of its former client Jeffrey Epstein, contains the charge that senior executives knew the seriousness of claims against Epstein as far back as 2006 - and banked him anyway. The amended suit claims that "senior executives joked about Epstein's interest in young girls." According to the complaint, in 2008 Mary Erdoes, CEO of JP Morgan Assets and Wealth Management, “received an email asking her whether Epstein was at an event ‘with miley cyrus.’” And, according to the suit, Erdoes also “admitted in her deposition that JPMorgan was aware by 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying cash to have underage girls and young women brought to his home.” JP Morgan has denied the charges. It stopped banking Epstein in 2013.

I’ve always maintained, that based on my reporting, Epstein’s sex trafficking was enabled by an entire eco-system of people, men mostly, who either invested with him, or attended his dinners, or took his money, or agreed to put his name on a building or institute - and in general legitimized him. And that it’s a travesty that the identities of these people are mostly still hidden in the shadows. Significantly, the list of names of high net-worth and high-profile individuals Epstein was allegedly helping woo to JP Morgan’s “Donor Advised Fund” is still not public.

Also cloaked in obscurity, even now, are the very pertinent details of how he made his money. Who were the ultra-wealthy clients, whose money he claimed to manage? He always insisted to me that the retail magnate Les Wexner was not his only client. But he wouldn’t divulge who was. Even the bankers at JP Morgan wondered about this among themselves, according to the new court filing.

From the suit: One senior compliance official reviewing JP Morgan’s information on Epstein in 2011 declared that there was: “Lots of smoke. Lots of questions.” This included that they saw no evidence that Epstein had any ‘clients” because they never saw any disbursements, even in the “rocky” years of 08-09. See below

Yet Epstein could not have begun his sex-trafficking enterprise without significant funding. Leslie Wexner accounts for a large chunk of it, but not all.

It’s significant that in 1980s, when Epstein still lived in a studio apartment on East 66th street, there’s no evidence I’ve found of him abusing minors. It’s when he suddenly catapults into a New York mansion, a plane and a private island in the 1990s, that the iniquity begins.

We may learn more about the sources of Epstein’s money as the civil proceedings against JP Morgan unfold. You’ll recall that two weeks ago four billionaires were subpoenaed by lawyers for the Virgin Islands in connection to the suit against JP Morgan: Sergey Brin, Mike Ovitz, Thomas Pritzker and Mort Zuckerman. We know that all of them knew Epstein. But did he get money out of them, too?

A source who was pitched by Epstein told me recently that what was striking was his lack of original ideas when it came to estate planning. “He had nothing new,” this person told me. Which begs the question: what on earth did Les Wexner ever see in his financial advice? Wexner once told me of Epstein ““Jeffrey sees patterns in politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends.”

What, also, did the former CEO of Apollo, Leon Black, who has said he paid Epstein $158 million for financial advice see that was so exceptional?

After seven failed attempts Wexner has finally been subpoenaed as part of this suit.

So, as always, stand by for more to come.