tyb
oldie but a goddie
I Tried to Warn You About Sleazy Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003
When Vicky Ward profiled Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair, allegations of his attempted seduction of two young sisters were excised from the final piece.
Editor's note: Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in New York on July 6, 2019, and faces federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking. For more information, see The Daily Beast's reporting here.
“Jeffrey wanted me to tell you that you looked so pretty,” the female voice said into my disbelieving ear.
It was the fall of 2002. I was pregnant, uncomfortably so, for the first time and with twins, due the following March. I was besieged by a relentless morning sickness. I was sick in street gutters, onto my desk, at dinners with friends. I suffered severe bloating and water retention.
But here was this faux-compliment coming, bizarrely and a bit grotesquely, from a woman I hadn’t met—a female assistant who worked for one Jeffrey Epstein, a mysterious Gatsby-esque financier whom I’d been assigned to write about by my then-boss Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair. (Epstein had caught the attention of the press when he had flown Bill Clinton on his jet to Africa. No one knew who he was or understood how he’d made his money.)
Upon hearing of my assignment, Epstein had invited me to an off-the-record tea at his Upper East Side house (during which I distinctly remember he rudely ate all the finger food himself) and then had his assistant call to tell me he’d thought I was pretty.
At first—it was the early stages of reporting—I was amused at having been so crassly underestimated. For a man who clearly considered himself a sophisticated ladies’ man (the only book he’d left out for me to see was a paperback by the Marquis de Sade), I thought his journalist-seduction technique was a bit like his table manners—in dire need of improvement.
If only it had all ended there. This was what it had been meant to be. A gossipy piece about a shadowy, slightly sinister but essentially harmless man who preferred track-pants to suits but somehow lived very large, had wealthy, important friends, hung out with models, and shied away from the press.
But it didn’t.
I haven’t ever wanted to go back and dwell on that dark time. But then the latest Epstein scandal broke, when Prince Andrew was accused in a Florida court filing of having sex with a 17-year-old girl while she was a “sex slave” of Epstein’s.
In the last 48 hours I’ve had a journalist from the U.K. Sun newspaper put herself inside my foyer. I’ve been inundated with requests for TV interviews. And Epstein’s old mentor, the convicted fraudster Steven Hoffenberg, recently released from jail after a 20-year sentence, has been pestering me and my agent to write a movie.
Separately, Hoffenberg’s daughter has gotten in touch—and it’s gotten me thinking. There are some injustices that maybe only time can right. And perhaps now is the time. Things happened then that simply shouldn’t have, and if I don’t talk about them, then probably no one will.
1/2
cont
But the New York gossip was focused on the many parties he gave at his house, where he regularly hosted a mix of plutocrats, academics from Ivy League schools, and nubile, very young women. Oh, and also Britain’s Prince Andrew, whom he introduced to everyone as just “Andy.”
James “Jimmy” Cayne, then the cigar-chomping CEO of Bear Stearns, not only phoned me up, he found the time in his busy day to give me a tour of the office. He was on his best behavior, talking up Epstein’s alleged supposed great brain, his value to the bank—never mind the fact that Epstein had had to leave it quickly in 1981; this Cayne put down to Epstein’s ambition “outgrowing” the place.
I also met with respected real estate developer Marshall Rose; the former Bear Stearns chairman Alan “Ace” Greenberg called me; so too did Leslie Wexner, the founder and CEO of The Limited, who trusted Epstein so much he had given Epstein carte blanche to insert himself into both Wexner’s family and business affairs, according to people who saw Epstein’s contract; they all chattered on about Epstein’s brilliantly creative mind, his intellectual prowess—a mental agility that, to put it bluntly, was simply not evident in the many phone conversations he had with me.
The women he directed me to were all respectable. There was a doctor, there was a socialite, there was Ghislaine Maxwell; they were all grown-ups, with the appearance of financial independence.
While Epstein’s friends speculated that retailer Les Wexner was the real source of Epstein’s wealth, Wexner (who called him “my friend Jeffrey”) never commented on this, though he did send me an email praising Epstein’s “ability to see patterns in politics and financial markets.”
After a bit of digging I found myself not in some plush office setting but going through the metal detectors inside the Federal Medical Center at Devens prison in Massachusetts, where I met with one Steve Hoffenberg, a fraudster who’d been convicted of bilking investors of more than $450 million in one of the largest pre-Madoff Ponzi schemes in history. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Hoffenberg told me that he’d met Epstein shortly after Epstein had been kicked out of Bear Stearns in 1981 for “getting into trouble” and that Hoffenberg had seen charm and talent in him —“he has a way of getting under your skin”—and had hired him as a “consultant” to work with him.
Hoffenberg, officially, ran Towers Financial, a collection agency that was supposed to buy debts that people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies, but instead the funds paid off earlier investors and subsidized his own lavish lifestyle. Hoffenberg told me had he had been Epstein’s mentor and that Epstein had made a terrible mistake in doing something so high-profile as flying Bill Clinton, since that would only draw a spotlight to his business dealings. “I always told him to stay below the radar,” he said.
I opened the first box, and there was Epstein’s deposition in a civil case explaining in his own testimony that he had indeed been guilty of a “reg d violation” while at Bear Stearns and that he’d been asked to leave the investment firm; it was the nail in the coffin I needed.
I had to put all my findings to Epstein and, bizarrely, he seemed almost unconcerned about the financial irregularities I’d exposed. He admitted to working with and for Hoffenberg but quibbled with some of the specifics of Hoffenberg’s allegations, reminding me that Hoffenberg was a convicted felon. Third parties in turn quibbled with his accounts, and he was irritated, but not overly so.
I was a little mystified at how benignly he responded to my questions about his business activities. Now, when I look at my meticulous notes, I notice that his tempo quickened—and he was much more focused—when he himself asked: “What do you have on the girls?” He would ask the question over and over again.
What I had “on the girls” were some remarkably brave first-person accounts. Three on-the-record stories from a family: a mother and her daughters who came from Phoenix. The oldest daughter, an artist whose character was vouchsafed to me by several sources, including the artist Eric Fischl, had told me, weeping as she sat in my living room, of how Epstein had attempted to seduce both her and, separately, her younger sister, then only 16.
arn-you-about-sleazy-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-in-2003
https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-tried-to-warn-you-about-sleazy-billionaire-jeffrey-epstein-in-2003
like seeing these again anon
yes I remember when that original article got put in here early, before I was a contributor-lurked for many months. must have been late january last year or maybe even on half prior…can't remember, been a long ride. Most of the wall street stuff was done then too.
She knew it all but once past a certain point there was no way out.
Looking back on it now how they even allowed it to be published but "they never thought she would lose….."
U.S. SEC defends pace of Volkswagen suit after emissions scandal
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday defended the pace of its investigation into Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) after a judge had asked why the agency waited two years after a global scandal related to vehicle emissions to sue the automaker.
The SEC filed a civil suit in March accusing Volkswagen and its former chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, of defrauding investors in U.S. bond offerings.
VW has said the SEC complaint “is legally and factually flawed, and will contest it vigorously.”
Volkswagen was caught using illegal software to cheat U.S. pollution tests in 2015, triggering a global backlash against diesel vehicles that has so far cost it 30 billion euros ($33.65 billion) in fines, penalties and buyback costs. In May, it set aside an additional 5.5 billion euros in contingent liabilities.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in May had questioned the SEC’s “lateness” in suing VW more than two years after the German automaker settled the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal probe, pleading guilty to three felonies and paying $4.3 billion in penalties.
“My basic question is what took you so long,” Breyer said, adding he was “totally mystified” as to why the SEC waited until 2019.
On Monday, the SEC disclosed details of its probe in court filings and said it held extensive settlement talks with the automaker before deciding to file suit.
The SEC said it received about 2 million pages of records from VW and delayed immediately issuing formal subpoenas after VW agreed to voluntarily produce materials.
In its court filing on Monday, the SEC said that its “staff worked hard and as quickly as possible under very difficult circumstances to complete an investigation into numerous different securities offerings conducted by a foreign company and three of its affiliates over many years,” and “treated VW fairly and afforded the company full process throughout its investigation.”
The agency added that its challenges “included long delays by VW in producing documents and other information,” and “uncooperative witnesses who were reluctant or altogether refused to speak to the staff.”
Volkswagen did not immediately comment on Monday.
SEC offices in New York and Chicago opened inquiries in September 2015, wrote Jeffrey Shank, an SEC attorney who supervised the probe, in a court filing, adding the agency was unaware of the existence of the VW bonds until 2017 and that it then took 10 months for VW to disclose who “was responsible for statements “made to VW bond investors.”
The SEC said former Volkswagen of America CEO Michael Horn refused to be interviewed by the SEC even after it told his lawyers in September 2017 the U.S. Justice Department would be willing to offer Horn safe passage.
The SEC also was unable to interview Winterkorn.
Shank said the SEC held settlement talks over several months and gave VW and Winterkorn’s lawyers an opportunity to argue why the SEC should not file suit.
Regulators and investors argue VW should have informed them sooner about the scope of the scandal, while the automaker says it was not clear it would face billions of dollars in fines and penalties.
VW issued more than $13 billion in bonds and asset-backed securities in U.S. markets at a time when senior executives knew that more than 500,000 U.S. diesel vehicles grossly exceeded legal vehicle emissions limits, the SEC complaint said.
Volkswagen reaped hundreds of millions of dollars “by issuing the securities at more attractive rates for the company,” the SEC said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-sec/u-s-sec-defends-pace-of-volkswagen-suit-after-emissions-scandal-idUSKCN1U32NJ
o7
need to get rid of that bad juju on jeffy boy