How Leslie Wexner’s money built Jeffrey Epstein’s empire
Forbes traced the money in 2025. After years of speculation about Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious fortune, someone finally followed the receipts. And the receipts lead back to Ohio.
Between 1999 and 2018, Epstein collected approximately $490 million in fees from wealthy clients. On paper, not from some shadowy intelligence operation. Not from blackmail schemes. From fees. The biggest chunk - around $200 million - came from Leslie Wexner. The second largest, roughly $170 million, came from Leon Black, the private equity titan. Two men. Seventy-five percent of his fees.
So when people ask how a college dropout with no financial credentials became wealthy enough to own a private island, the answer isn’t complicated. Wexner wrote the checks.
Here’s what Epstein actually did for Wexner’s $200 million.
He ran Wexner’s family office - the private financial operation that managed every dollar. Staff members couldn’t move funds without emailing Epstein’s lawyer to “ask Jeffrey” for approval. Between 1991 and 2006, he oversaw the sale of more than $1.3 billion in stock from Wexner-linked trusts that listed him as trustee. He called the shots as money moved out of Wexner’s Bear Stearns account, while his own companies put tens of millions into Bear Stearns funds.
When Merrill Lynch offered exclusive investments limited to clients with a billion-dollar net worth, Epstein’s firm got in. The Hertz deal alone paid out $2.2 million each to Epstein’s firm and a Wexner trust. He supervised the drafting of Wexner’s prenuptial agreement. He advised on the payment plan for Abigail Wexner’s private jet. He even judged executives at Wexner’s retail empire, calling one “mighty mouse” and warning Wexner that a company director had “NO judgement.”
JPMorgan Chase flagged only $4.3 million in suspicious transactions from Epstein’s accounts between 2002 and 2016 - then, after his 2019 arrest, reported more than 5,000 wire transfers moving about $1.3 billion. The bank saw something strange. Then kept processing the transactions.
Senator Ron Wyden’s investigators found a Treasury Department document listing more than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein and his associates between 2003 and 2019 - $1.1 billion flowing in and out. That’s not money management. That’s an entire financial ecosystem.
Leon Black’s $170 million bought something different.
Between 2012 and 2017, Black paid for tax and estate planning that he believed was worth more than $1 billion to him. According to the report Apollo’s board commissioned, Epstein solved a trust problem that could have cost Black $1 billion or more in estate taxes. He helped complete another deal that Epstein said saved Black $600 million - though Black’s own lawyers later told the Senate the idea came from his other advisors.
The Senate Finance Committee found that Epstein’s fees “far exceeded” what Black paid any other financial advisors - and exceeded the median compensation of Fortune 500 CEOs. Black’s other advisors, who were paid considerably less, consistently had to vet Epstein’s work because some of it “did not hold up under scrutiny.”
Yet Black kept paying. In 2023, Black settled with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $62.5 million, and the settlement itself says Epstein “used the money Black paid him to partially fund his operations in the Virgin Islands.”
After Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008, his lawyers agreed in a Florida civil case that his net worth was “in excess of nine figures” - and the press ran with “billionaire.” That was wrong. Forbes ran an article titled “Why sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is not a billionaire.” When he died in 2019, his actual net worth was around $600 million. The billion-dollar myth was part of the con. But the $600 million was real, and most of it traced back to fees from Wexner and Black.
Wexner now says Epstein misappropriated vast sums. When Epstein made a $46 million payment in 2008 to a charitable fund run by Wexner’s wife, Wexner called it only a portion of what was stolen. He has never disclosed the full amount. Never explained why decades of wire transfers didn’t raise alarms.
The Drop Site News investigation published this week found emails showing Epstein was still advising on multimillion-dollar transactions for the Wexners until at least December 2007 - two months after he supposedly resigned as trustee. Staff would ask Epstein’s lawyer to “ask Jeffrey” before moving money. Tens of millions of dollars, flowing through accounts where Epstein remained the gatekeeper.
The Wexner Foundation claimed for years that Epstein had no meaningful role in their finances. The emails suggest otherwise.
People keep looking for the mystery of Epstein’s money. There isn’t one. A billionaire gave a con man the keys to his fortune, and the con man used that access to build an empire. The private island, the Manhattan mansion, the planes, the entire apparatus of predation - all of it funded by a relationship that operated in plain sight for twenty years while banks flagged transactions and executives looked the other way.
Wexner remains the richest person in Ohio. He sold most of his L Brands holdings after the scandal broke. His net worth still sits around ten billion dollars. Epstein’s victims have received compensation from his estate. But the larger question - how this financial relationship operated for so long without consequence - has never been satisfactorily answered.
Go Deeper: Senator Ron Wyden’s November 2025 memorandum on JPMorgan Chase details how compliance failures become institutional policy when the client is wealthy enough.
SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-jeffrey-epstein-emails-wall-street/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/07/25/how-jeffrey-epstein-got-so-rich/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-did-jeffrey-epstein-make-his-money/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/jeffrey-epstein-not-billionaire-forbes-report
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said JPMorgan Chase flagged about $65 million in suspicious wire transfers in the mid-2000s, all involving trusts controlled by Wexner - that figure and the Wexner link are out, and Senator Wyden’s memo says the bank flagged only $4.3 million of Epstein’s transactions between 2002 and 2016. It also said Epstein managed Wexner’s art collection, yacht and jet - those were Leon Black’s art, yacht and plane, and for the Wexners he advised on the payment plan for Abigail Wexner’s jet; said Black’s tax planning saved him at least $1.3 billion - Black believed Epstein’s advice was worth more than $1 billion to him; said Epstein put tens of millions into Bear Stearns funds for Wexner - his own companies did; said Wyden’s investigators found 4,725 wire transfers from one Epstein account - it was one Treasury document covering Epstein and his associates; said Epstein’s lawyers claimed he was worth over a billion dollars - they agreed to “in excess of nine figures,” and the press called him a billionaire; and said investigators revealed the Virgin Islands line before Black settled - it’s in the settlement itself.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so and add caveats - the 75 percent is Epstein’s fee income, by Forbes’ count, the trust problem and the $600 million deal come from the report Apollo’s board commissioned, and Black’s lawyers told the Senate that deal’s idea came from his other advisors - and others now say Epstein oversaw the Wexner trust stock sales, got into Merrill Lynch’s billionaire-only Hertz deal, and was advising the Wexners until at least December 2007.