“She told me a story about how she had an agreement, a nondisclosure clause . . . a seven-figure check,” said Fitrakis. “Delivered by Epstein with ‘Don’t ever contact Mr. Wexner again.’”
It was unclear what the purpose of the nondisclosure agreement was, but Fitrakis said the ex-girlfriend claimed at the time that Wexner was bisexual. She was also “very afraid of Jeff Epstein,” according to Fitrakis.
“People will not say anything negative [about Wexner],” said Dianne Morosky, the wife of Wexner’s longtime vice-chairman at the Limited, Robert Morosky, in an interview. “They’ll think it. They’ll talk about it to each other, but they won’t say it publicly. And they’re afraid of him, too, because of his power.”
Wexner’s problems also seemed to go away after Epstein entered his life and started taking the reins. His financial portfolio recovered. He ended up marrying Koppel. And he moved his new bride into a home in the dream town he was finally able to build—New Albany, Ohio, an ode to his wife’s hometown of Albany, Georgia.
Just a couple years before he reportedly met Epstein, Wexner had added to his portfolio with the purchase of a small San Francisco lingerie chain, Victoria’s Secret, which he bought for a mere million dollars when it had only six stores. Over the coming decades he’d grow it into the behemoth it is known as today—a thousand stores in 2014 and sales of $7.2 billion.
But Wexner did not excel at managing money, nor did he pay much attention to it. When in the 1980s his company was buying the plus-size brand Lane Bryant, Wexner cared about the idea of the takeover, but not about the share purchase price.
“He didn’t understand the numbers,” Wexner’s former financial adviser Sandy Lewis told Vanity Fair.2 “He’s never understood numbers. This is not his strength. This man is a genius at dressing women. This is a guy who feels what they feel. That’s his strength. And I figured that out when I first met him and I don’t know how he got that set up in his brain but in his soul, he has a sense of how people feel when they wear his clothing. And that’s a gift. That’s just what it is. Some guys write music, this guy knows how to dress women. He’s very, very talented.”
As talented as he was, he did not seem to be a particularly good judge of character. At age fifty-four, the cautious Wexner turned over the keys to his multibillion-dollar financial empire to a mystery man from Coney Island whose short career in finance had included a termination from Bear Stearns for financial improprieties and a stint at what was then the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. What nobody in Columbus could figure out was why.
Lewis had thought he would turn on him. He felt blindsided when the would-be clothing mogul turned to Epstein, instead of allowing Lewis to manage and invest his finances.
This upset Lewis, who believed Epstein was a “con artist,” he said in his interview with Vanity Fair. “I can’t imagine, frankly, why a man of his intelligence would simply hand the controls over to another guy,” Lewis said, attributing it to Wexner’s loneliness.3 “And this con artist, this fucking idiot, comes into his life . . . My feeling is that he had been seduced. And I don’t mean seduced in a physical sense, I mean emotionally seduced out of his loneliness to trust this guy and he figures, he’s so fucking smart he can trust anybody.”
Perhaps Wexner trusted Epstein with his business because he had helped him with his relationships. Perhaps it was because of tax strategies or other recommendations. Perhaps it was simply because of timing. Or perhaps there was another factor altogether.
Around this time another thing happened that rocked Wexner’s financial world. His primary tax lawyer, Arthur Shapiro, was brutally murdered in Columbus in 1985. The still-unsolved murder had ties to the mob, Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press would report. It would rock the small city; Fitrakis would later discover that police started investigating whether Shapiro’s work as the Limited’s attorney had led to his murder. According to a 1991 memo from the Columbus Police Department’s Organized Crime Bureau, Shapiro could have had knowledge of Wexner’s bribing public officials in Ohio. The findings “lead to a question of ethics and legality of other unknown transactions and associates with which Wexner may be involved,” said the memo. “Arthur Shapiro could have answered too many of these sorts of questions, and might have been forced to answer them in his impending Grand Jury hearing.”
According to the memo, Wexner’s company had substantial business dealings with the mob, through its connection with Walsh Trucking, a New Jersey trucking company affiliated with the Genovese crime family. The head of Walsh Trucking, Frank Walsh, who was later convicted of racketeering, had even been using the Limited’s Columbus office as his mailing address, according to the memo. The connection raised questions in the minds of police when Shapiro, who had insight into Wexner’s finances, was killed by the mob. But nothing ever came of the memo, and no one was ever charged with the murder, though there was also a suspect unrelated to Wexner who was later found to have killed another one of his business associates.
Whatever the reason, Shapiro’s death left a key position in Wexner’s orbit open. He would need someone to help him with taxes.
Epstein professed expertise in this area. He was of course neither a lawyer nor an accountant. Yet his ease with numbers and his dazzling mind would be able to tackle complex ideas, especially transnational tax shelters and tricks.
Steven Hoffenberg, the former chairman of Towers Financial Corporation who himself had his own complex dealings with Epstein, said in an interview, “Epstein bonded with Wexner over a couple of years initially.”
In fact, the relations became so close, so quickly that Wexner eventually allowed Epstein to make every financial decision of his life on his behalf. “Eventually, he took over managing my personal finances. He was given power of attorney as is common in that context, and he had wide latitude to act on my behalf with respect to my personal finances while I focused on building my company and undertaking philanthropic efforts,” Wexner has said.
Epstein was known to have helped Wexner with the building and decoration of his sixty-thousand-square-foot villa in New Albany, Ohio.
Wexner had undertaken a somewhat bizarre social experiment—buy up tons of land, just outside Columbus, turning it essentially into a company town for executives of his L Brands. It was an enormous undertaking, the purchase, development, and sale of ten thousand acres. The project wasn’t going well.
“Before Epstein came along in 1988, the financial preparations and groundwork for the New Albany development were a total mess,” Fitrakis told New York magazine.4 “Epstein cleaned everything up, as well as serving Wexner in other capacities—such as facilitating visits to Wexner’s home of the crew from Cats and organizing a Tony Randall song-and-dance show put on in Columbus.”
Epstein in fact at some point purchased his own New Albany home near Wexner’s so that they could be even closer. It was the second most valuable home in the area. (He purchased it in 1994 and gave it to Wexner, for free, in 2007.) But he preferred socializing at Wexner’s. Eventually, their social circles began to merge.
Epstein’s attorney Alan Dershowitz remembers his client inviting him to a dinner at Wexner’s.
“It was just men, which I didn’t like. I remember calling my wife halfway through, telling her this was boring . . . [Wexner] was married and already had at least one or two kids; they were running around the house, I remember. But his wife was not at the dinner,” Dershowitz recalled in an interview.
“The only people at the dinner I remember is Shimon Peres, who talked a lot about art because Wexner has a beautiful art collection including some major Picassos. So Shimon talked a lot about Picasso. And John Glenn, who was then a United States senator from Ohio, was there. The man who at the time owned Sotheby’s was there. And Jeffrey was there, and I was there, and Wexner was there,” he said.
“But that was a relatively small dinner party and a very serious intellectual discus
sion. We talked a lot about the Middle East as well because of Shimon Peres being there, and I’m very interested in the Middle East and so is Leslie Wexner. So the two subjects that dominated were the Middle East and art. And then I flew back with [Epstein] that night on his plane, he dropped me off in Boston. And then the next time I saw him was at Harvard.”
The Boeing Epstein liked best and possibly used to shuttle Dershowitz to and fro for the party? That, the pilot David Rodgers has said in court documents, was previously owned by Wexner, or one of his many companies. But it was Epstein who dubbed it the Lolita Express.
It would be the same plane Epstein used for his trip to Africa with Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker. It was, after all, one of the things Clinton found most attractive about his new friend.
To friends, Epstein would either say he ran money for billionaires or, one recalls, simply say he ran only Wexner’s money.
A source who would go on to become good friends with Epstein recalls when he first met him asking, “How do you make money?”
“Well, I’m paid to manage every part of Wexner’s life,” Epstein replied.
“Every part?” the friend asked, fishing for more details.
“Yes,” Epstein confirmed. “If he gets up to go to the bathroom, I’m there to help.”
In an interview, the friend commented, “And so he was Wexner’s boy. And so Wexner is literally who gave him that house in New York.”
Which is very likely true. Some press reports suggest Wexner was paid $20 million for the New York mansion, reportedly the largest residence in the city. Real estate records do not reveal a purchase price, because the property was shielded in a trust, so there’s no public paper trail to confirm any money was ever paid. The property was officially transferred in December 2011.
“Nobody gives their financial adviser a huge mansion. It’s Seventy-first and Fifth. I’m sorry, that just doesn’t happen,” a former Wall Street executive said in an interview.
Talking more broadly about the Epstein story, a good friend of Epstein’s added, “Wexner is the unspoken subplot here.”
* * *
—
Epstein was probably never a billionaire. Perhaps never even close. But he was nevertheless extremely rich.
The best, most accurate accounting of the financier’s finances was what he turned over to the court upon his second and final arrest, less than a month before he would be dead.
His total assets, according to his filing with the court, were listed at $559,120,954. (Later, there were reports indicating perhaps his net worth was $100 million greater than the amount disclosed in federal court.)
The breakdown is as follows:
Cash: $56,547,773
Fixed income: $14,304,679
Equities: $112,679,138
Hedge funds and private equity: $194,986,301
Properties: $180,603,063
9 East Seventy-first Street, Manhattan, New York, estimated to be worth: $55,931,000
49 Zorro Ranch Road, Stanley, New Mexico, estimated to be worth: $17,246,208
358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, Florida, estimated to be worth: $12,380,209
22 Avenue Foch, Paris, France, estimated to be worth: $8,672,823
Great St. James Island, Virgin Islands, estimated to be worth: $22,498,600
Little St. James Island, Virgin Islands, estimated to be worth: $63,874,223
The assets are consistent with the amount of money some believe Epstein made from Wexner directly. The New York Times has reported that Epstein received assets worth $100 million previously owned by Wexner or his companies: the New York mansion, the New Albany mansion (which was later sold), and the Boeing airplane. That sum does not include payments received by Epstein.
“I’ve had people say it was a billion dollars, which I discount, or $200 million. I’m thinking more in the $400 or $500 million range,” the Columbus-based journalist Bob Fitrakis said in an interview. “And the question is, there’s always a question is, how much did Les know he was taking? He had absolute durable power of attorney to get rid of his properties, his assets, move stuff everywhere.”
There’s also the fact that Wexner has accused Epstein of stealing more than $46 million. The details are hazy. Wexner is an extremely private guy and has taken most opportunities to keep his head down and to not comment on his relationship with Epstein. The eighty-two-year-old these days prefers reclusiveness. He’s now married, with four kids.
Yet after Epstein was arrested for the second time, in 2019, but days before his death, Wexner addressed shareholders of his L Brands holding company about his controversial relationship with his ex-consigliere.
“We discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family,” Wexner stated in an August 2019 letter.5 “This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now.”
The amount of money, financial press reporters would soon say, was in excess of $46 million.
Wexner indicated he was able to get some of the money returned.
But $46 million alone, depending on when it was taken and how it was spent, could account for all of Epstein’s assets at the end of his life.
That is, if Epstein had simply invested that sum in an S&P index fund that returned over that period on average roughly 10 percent, compound interest alone, with no further investments, he would have netted more than $800 million. Plus, the properties have appreciated in value quite a bit since Epstein acquired them, and some were allegedly not acquired with money.
Of course a full financial forensic account of Epstein’s finances has never been publicly released. (There’s no indication one has ever been performed, nor is there any sign that Epstein’s remaining trust has ever authorized such an expedition either.)
* * *
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Wexner’s money was not the only benefit afforded to Epstein. The financier also took advantage of his client and friend’s connections to the modeling industry.
In May 1997, Epstein was in California and met the model Alicia Arden, whom he invited back to his hotel room. She was, Epstein told her at the time, being asked to try out for a spot in the prestigious catalog the company produced.
“She met the suspect, Jeffrey Epstein, at Shutters Hotel for a modeling interview,” a police officer would write in a May 20, 1997, Santa Monica Police Department report.6
“During the interview Epstein told her to undress and actually assisted her to do so while saying, ‘Let me manhandle you for a second,’” the police report added, going on to allege assault.
“Epstein groped her buttocks against her will while acting as though as he was evaluating her body . . . [A]t one point Epstein asked her to undress a second time [and he] actually assisted her by pulling her blouse up and pulling her skirt up and groping her buttocks.”
The reason she was there in the first place, despite being hesitant to be so, was the power of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. Being featured in the glossy could make a career.
Nevertheless, the accusation, which was first reported by The New York Times in 2019, never led to further punishment.
After this alleged assault, Wexner did nothing to distance his consigliere from his personal life or his company.
“Why would someone that powerful and successful befriend someone like Jeffrey Epstein?” Arden told the Times, speaking of Wexner.7 “I don’t get it.”
It was one of the first warning signs about Epstein that would go unprosecuted by law enforcement. His friends also did not heed the warnings.
An L Brands spokeswoman told the Times, “While Mr. Epstein served as Mr. Wexner’s personal money manager for a period that ended nearly 12 years ago, we do not believe he was ever employed by nor served as an authorized representative of the company.”
&nb
sp; The first recorded warning of Epstein’s predatory ways received by law enforcement officials would also go unpunished. And it would also, at least tangentially, involve Wexner.
That summer Maria Farmer, Epstein’s first known victim, was brought to Ohio to visit Wexner. She was familiar with Wexner before the visit. “Epstein told me what their relationship was. He said Wexner would do anything for him. He bragged about it,” she told CBS.
She even says that she referred to Wexner as “The Wizard of Oz” because “he was the one behind the curtain that had all the power.”
At the Wexner house, Farmer alleges that Epstein and Maxwell “asked me to come into a bedroom with them and then proceeded to sexually assault me against my will. I fled from the room and called the sheriff’s office but did not get any response. The Wexners’ security staff refused to let me leave the property. I pleaded with them and my father drove up from Kentucky to Ohio to help me. I was held against my will for approximately 12 hours until I was ultimately allowed to leave with my father.”
The Wexners have denied Farmer’s claims, telling CBS they “never met her, never spoke with her.”8
Farmer reported her alleged assault to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which she says did not pursue an investigation, despite the evidence of her witness testimony.
* * *
—
The connection between Epstein and Wexner went deep. When Wexner was building his 316-foot yacht, Limitless, Epstein was involved in the minutiae. “He didn’t take B.S. from anybody,” the ship’s ex-captain told The New York Times about Epstein.9 (Epstein, however, did not like boating; he’d “look at a glass of water and get seasick,” the ex-captain said.)
More curiously, the two were connected through a series of obscure business ventures and charitable foundations. The complex web will never be unraveled without the help of Epstein, who of course is dead, and Wexner, who remains hidden. But serious accusations of financial shenanigans have been levied, with strong evidence suggesting that the money, for the most part, was not going to charity but straight into Epstein’s pocket.
A Convenient Death Page 13
