July July 2019. The North American financier’s legal team declares that its client has more than $550 million in assets. They had to contribute the forced relationship of their wealth in the process that was being carried out against him for being a pedophile. The following month, without being held accountable to justice or making reparations to his many victims.
Epstein died with the label of a tycoon, a millionaire, but he was not always that. Now that his name has returned to the headlines following the release of those connected to his cause, the question arises again: how did he get rich? Where does your fortune come from? Was he an heir to the family business, or what is often called a self-made man?
Cheating beginnings
Jeffrey Edward Epstein (Brooklyn, New York, January 20, 1953 / Manhattan, August 10, 2019) was a Jew from Coney Island, son of a middle-class family, only a passing student in high school.
He began his career with a brief experience as a teacher, but it didn’t take him long to enter investment banking, working first at Bear Stearns, before founding his own firm in 1982.
Although he attended college, he did not graduate in his major, Mathematics and Physics, but he still later went to work at the quite prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. Despite his elitism, they did not realize that he was a teacher without a teaching degree, who was barely involved in giving private classes at home to children from his community, in order to pay for part of their studies.
It was at said school where he met the father of one of his wealthy students, who saw Epstein’s potential and called Ace Greenberg, one of the directors of Bear Stearns, a Wall Street firm.
According to the British newspaper thanks to those friendships he met Michael Tennenbaum, one of the most prestigious consultants in the Big Apple, who eventually described him as an “exceptional salesman” and hired him instantly. Epstein already had one foot in the doors of Wall Street, which is what he wanted.
a shark
In 1976, Epstein began working at Bear Stearns, a prominent New York-based global investment bank and brokerage that collapsed in March 2008 during the crisis. Its sinking was, in fact, one of the elements that serve to date the beginning of the disaster, the end of an era.
The unqualified professor rose quickly in the company – and, it is said, his mathematical ability served him well both in doing things well and in fascinating his bosses – and within four years, he became a partner in the firm. .
But the following year, he was fired. An investigation of discovered the reason: Tennenbaum, Epstein’s supervisor at the house, reviewed his resume and discovered that Epstein had two college degrees from California. The only problem was that no university had it registered. Lies again, but this time, in the air.
When Tennenbaum brought Epstein into his office to question him about the matter, he planned to fire him, but Epstein openly admitted as much, saying he “knew no one would give him a chance” without those documents. He, discovered, asked for a second one, what does it cost you. And Tennenbaum gave it to him. Now, publicly, he says he regrets it. “I didn’t realize that I was creating one of the monsters of Wall Street,” he told the aforementioned newspaper.
“I didn’t realize I was creating one of the monsters of Wall Street”
Not only was his shark-like soul encouraged, but while working for Bear Stearns on Wall Street, Epstein even began swindling money from the company’s expense account, spending more than $10,000 on jewelry and clothing for one of his lovers and partners. Finally, the company investigated him for that and other financial irregularities and suspended him from his position with a large fine. But instead of taking the consequences, he quit completely.
own business
But he already had the contacts made and the desire fed, he had learned how to move and he was smarmy as ever. So he ended up founding his own wealth management business, called J. Epstein and Co., later renamed Financial Trust Co., which began operating in 1982.
In his company, which grew like wildfire, Epstein exclusively took care of clients worth more than a billion dollars, betting on a profile of millionaires that he liked: the people he wanted to rub shoulders with, different from those who surrounded him in the beginning. From that time are his first photos at major millionaire events. The news agencies only put his name in the captions, not yet knowing who he was, but he was there.
For example, he held the accounts for Les Wexner, the business giant behind L Brands, which once ran stores such as Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch. He hired Epstein as a wealth manager when his fortune was soaring and recommended him to other wealthy people. He found that Epstein earned about $200 million from his work for Wexner over a period of about 20 years.
In the 1990s, Epstein had already managed to accumulate properties and apartments in several countries, according to several court documents that emerged in his trial. He even owned a private island in the Caribbean.
The Ghislaine clave
In all his homes he rubbed shoulders with some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, usually organizing parties that everyone wanted to attend. A good part of the success of these meetings is due to them, first as a couple and then as a partner, friend and accomplice (according to the justice system) in their abuse of minors. Among the people usually invited were Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, former President Bill Clinton and Trump himself, then a real estate and gambling businessman.
All of them deny having engaged in punishable conduct during their visits.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, in an image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, December 19, 2025.
The key to his ex-partner is essential to understanding, too, how he consolidated his wealth: in 1990, Epstein was going through a breakup with a long-time girlfriend when a business partner introduced him to the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a media baron, hoping to help him overcome his heartbreak and give him a new business connection. But after Robert’s sudden death in 1990, Ghislaine reportedly flew to New York, where she met with Epstein, who began supporting her financially.
The couple quickly became a couple and, in 1992, Epstein is believed to have begun manipulating and abusing teenage girls, something Maxwell helped him with and for which she is sentenced to 20 years in prison, a sentence she is now trying to reduce.
His aristocratic bearing and his intelligence in moving among the rich and famous gave him more business portfolio, friends and partners. And so he accumulated millions and was able to buy properties such as Little St. James, his private island, in 1998, for about 12.3 million today’s dollars. Later, in 2016, he purchased Great St. James for $22 million. During a business meeting in 2012, Epstein said the US Virgin Islands are “perfect” because of their isolation.
The attorney general of those islands later described it as “the perfect refuge and hiding place for the trafficking of young women and underage girls for the purposes of sexual servitude, child abuse and sexual assault.”
