The 2020 review said ‘no contact.’ The 2025 emails proved that was a lie…
Leslie Wexner says he cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein in early fall 2007. That’s when the Florida investigation into Epstein’s sex crimes was making headlines. Wexner claims he stepped back, discovered financial misappropriation, and severed the relationship.
The timeline doesn’t hold up.
Four days before Epstein submitted his guilty plea to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, on June 26, 2008, Wexner sent him an email. “Abigail told me the result,” Wexner wrote. “All I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule. Always be careful.” Epstein’s reply was contrite: “no excuse.”
That’s not the email exchange you’d expect from someone who severed ties nine months earlier. It’s sympathetic. It’s familiar. It’s the language of an ongoing relationship, not a clean break.
But the June 2008 email isn’t the biggest problem. The real issue is what happened in the months immediately after Wexner claims he cut ties.
In February 2020, the Wexner Foundation released an independent review of Epstein’s involvement with the organization. The review was meant to put questions to rest. It concluded that Wexner Foundation staff had “no contact” with Epstein after his resignation as a trustee in September 2007. Before that, according to the review, Epstein “played no role in the management or administration of the Foundation’s operations” and “did not make decisions regarding the Foundation’s use of funds.”
Drop Site News says none of that is true.
This month Drop Site News published a cache of leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo inbox spanning 2005 to 2008. The emails were obtained by the whistleblower nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets and tell a completely different story about Epstein’s role in the Wexner financial empire.
Inside Wexner’s family financial office in Ohio, staff treated Epstein as the de facto chief financial officer. Major decisions about taxes, lines of credit, eight-figure fund transfers, and politically sensitive grants went through Epstein’s lawyer, Darren Indyke. They required Epstein’s approval.
Wexner’s financial controller, Peg Ugland, sent email after email to Indyke with account balances for a web of Wexner entities. Charitable trusts. Private investment vehicles. Personal trading accounts. The refrain was always the same: “Please ask Jeffrey if I can transfer.”
Epstein was the final authority on which Wexner entity should cover which expense. He decided how to move assets between entities. He approved large fund transfers for the Wexners’ accounts. He continued to advise on IRS filings and multi-million dollar transactions until at least December 2007. More than three months after he supposedly resigned as trustee.
The emails show something else. Even after Epstein’s supposed departure, the Wexners remained dependent on him. In November 2007, Abigail Wexner was buying a million shares of Limited Brands stock, worth almost $20 million. Epstein emailed her a detailed plan for making the trade on Black Friday. He told her Indyke thought she didn’t want him involved. She wrote back that “in the end it is not a problem.”
In December 2007, Leslie Wexner found himself in a similar situation. He’d been asked during a board meeting at Ohio State University whether he had any holdings in Mellon Bank. He couldn’t answer the question. Indyke emailed Epstein for clarification.
This wasn’t a clean break. This was a slow disentanglement of a financial relationship so complex that even the billionaire himself didn’t know what he owned without asking Epstein.
The Wexner Foundation’s 2020 review claimed its reviewers couldn’t find any relevant emails because “the Foundation’s archive of emails does not go back to Epstein’s time as a Trustee.” Convenient. The leaked emails tell us what the foundation either couldn’t or wouldn’t say.
The emails show that Darren Indyke served as both Epstein’s personal lawyer and attorney for the Wexner Foundation. Drop Site News says he was the “middleman,” cloaking Epstein’s foundation-related activities with attorney-client privilege. Indyke is also the executor of Epstein’s estate, which has been accused of obstructionism for withholding privileged emails from civil lawsuits and congressional subpoenas.
Then there’s the property. Wexner claims he severed ties in fall 2007. But the Manhattan townhouse at 9 East 71st Street wasn’t formally transferred to Epstein until 2011. Four years after the supposed clean break.
The property transfer is documented in public records. Around 1996, Wexner appears to have handed the deed to Epstein without receiving payment - though Wexner now says Epstein bought it for what he was told was the appraised value. A $0 transfer of a mansion worth tens of millions. But the formal title change didn’t happen until 2011, when ownership passed from a trust connected to both Wexner and Epstein to a Virgin Islands entity controlled by Epstein alone.
If Wexner had truly severed all ties in 2007, why did it take four more years to complete the paperwork on a property of that magnitude?
After Epstein was arrested again in July 2019 and died in jail that August, Wexner addressed L Brands investors. He said Epstein had taken advantage of him and called him “so sick, so cunning, so depraved.” He positioned himself as a victim. A man deceived.
The documentary evidence suggests something more complicated. The emails show an ongoing financial collaboration that continued months past the claimed severance date. The property records show a transfer that happened years later. The June 2008 email shows a sympathetic tone that doesn’t match the story of discovery and betrayal.
Wexner and the Wexner Foundation have worked hard to draw a bright line at fall 2007. The leaked emails erase that line. They show a relationship that was slowly unwound over months, not cleanly severed in a moment of discovery. They show Wexner family members still asking Epstein for financial guidance well into the period when he was supposedly out of their lives.
The Wexner Foundation’s 2020 review concluded that Epstein “played no meaningful role” in the foundation’s operations. The leaked emails show Wexner’s financial controller asking Epstein’s lawyer to get approval before transferring millions of dollars between accounts. They show Epstein advising Abigail Wexner on a nearly $20 million stock trade. They show Epstein’s own lawyer turning to Epstein to answer a basic question about Leslie Wexner’s own holdings.
That’s not “no meaningful role.” That’s control.
The gap between Wexner’s public statements and the documentary record isn’t just about dates. It’s about power. Epstein didn’t just manage Wexner’s money. He knew where it all was, how it moved, and who controlled what. That kind of knowledge creates dependency. The emails show that dependency didn’t end the moment Epstein’s legal troubles became public.
Wexner wants us to believe the relationship ended cleanly in fall 2007. The evidence says it took years to fully disentangle. And even in June 2008, as Epstein prepared to plead guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution, Wexner was still writing sympathetic emails about violated rules and being careful.
The Wexner Foundation commissioned an independent review to settle questions about Epstein’s role. The review concluded there was no contact after September 2007. Leaked emails put that conclusion in serious doubt - the family office that kept the foundation’s books was still dealing with Epstein for months after he left.
Wexner hasn’t publicly explained the discrepancy. Neither has the foundation - it didn’t answer when Drop Site News asked.
If you want to understand how elite networks protected Epstein’s operation for decades despite widespread knowledge of his crimes, watch “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” on Netflix - it maps the institutional failures that allowed a sex trafficker to operate with impunity.
SOURCES:
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-leslie-abigail-wexner-pro-israel-philanthropic-foundation
Letter from Les
https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Wexner-Foundation-Report-Following-Independent-Review4.pdf
https://ddosecrets.com/article/epstein-emails
https://www.alternet.org/jeffrey-epstein-wexner-foundation/
Jeffrey Epstein ‘played no meaningful role’ as Wexner Foundation trustee, third-party review concludes
https://www.wosu.org/news/2020-02-27/review-finds-jeffrey-epstein-played-no-meaningful-role-at-wexner-foundation
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/a28340797/jeffrey-epstein-townhouse-upper-east-side/
https://web.archive.org/web/20191018141151/https://www.businessinsider.in/heres-how-jeffrey-epstein-publicly-acquired-a-77-million-upper-east-side-townhouse-for-0/articleshow/70205752.cms
https://abcnews.go.com/US/billionaire-businessman-leslie-wexner-refuses-reveal-full-scope/story?id=68461262
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/les-wexner-im-embarrassed-that-i-put-my-trust-in-depraved-jeffrey-epstein.html
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/investigates/where-les-wexner-appeared-in-epstein-estate-documents/
Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first said Abigail Wexner was confused about a Black Friday stock trade and asked Indyke, who passed it to Epstein - the emails show Epstein advising her directly on a nearly $20 million trade. It said Wexner’s staff asked Epstein about his Mellon Bank holdings - it was Indyke, Epstein’s own lawyer. It said Wexner told L Brands employees after the July 2019 arrest that Epstein “took advantage of me” - he spoke to investors that September, after Epstein died, and those weren’t his exact words. It also said the foundation commissioned its review in February 2020 - that’s when the review came out; that the review said staff had no access to the emails - it said its reviewers couldn’t find any; that Epstein kept advising two months after he resigned - it was more than three; and it slightly misquoted the review’s line on the foundation’s use of funds.
Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - Drop Site News on what the emails show and on Indyke’s role as middleman - and others now say Wexner appears to have handed Epstein the house around 1996 (he now says Epstein paid the appraised value), that Wexner and his foundation drew the fall 2007 line, that the leaked emails put the review in serious doubt, and that neither Wexner nor the foundation has publicly answered, while one line no longer says every big decision went through Indyke and a dead source link now points to an archived copy.