Latest news with #LeslieWexner
New York Times
23-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Nine Questions About the Epstein Case That Actually Need Answers
President Trump and members of his administration teased us with the prospect of making public Jeffrey Epstein's F.B.I. files. Instead, we got zilch. Mr. Trump then ordered the Department of Justice to seek the release of some grand jury testimony — a request that a federal judge in Florida denied on Wednesday. But even that information, though it might have filled in some gaps in the Epstein story, would have been only a sliver of what's in the F.B.I. files — which include a mind-boggling '300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,' according to the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. The American people — and above all, the victims of Mr. Epstein's crimes — deserve answers to outstanding questions about how he operated, with whose help and in whose service. With the exception of redactions required to protect the innocent and materials that must be withheld while under court seal, the complete F.B.I. files should be released. Here are nine unanswered questions about the Epstein case — ones that a curious, non-conspiracy-minded citizen might have — that the files might help answer: No. 1: How did Mr. Epstein make his money and how did he finance his sex trafficking over two decades? At the time of Mr. Epstein's death in 2019, his estate was worth an estimated $600 million. He worked briefly on Wall Street and built his wealth with the help of several billionaires, including the L Brands founder Leslie Wexner and the Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, for whom Mr. Epstein provided consulting, tax advice and other financial services. But it's still not clear how Mr. Epstein amassed such a large fortune — or how he was able to fund such a complex trafficking scheme. (Neither Mr. Wexner nor Mr. Black has been accused of wrongdoing by law enforcement in connection to Mr. Epstein's crimes, and both men have said that they did not know about his criminal behavior.) In addition to trafficking underage victims within the United States, Mr. Epstein imported young women and children from Russia, Belarus, Turkey and Turkmenistan, according to an investigation conducted by the office of Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This trafficking was presumably expensive. Treasury Department files reviewed by Mr. Wyden's staff members detail, among other things, 4,725 wire transfers adding up to nearly $1.1 billion associated with just one of Mr. Epstein's bank accounts. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Forbes
22-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Selloff Of Jeffrey Epstein's Tainted Homes
Jeffrey Epstein's former estate on Little St. James Island in the U. S. Virgin Islands. Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved Six years after his death in a Manhattan prison cell in August 2019, Jeffrey Epstein is once again dominating headlines as the Trump administration comes under increasing pressure to release more documents from the Justice Department's investigation into the convicted sex offender. In July 2019, federal prosecutors charged Epstein with sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underaged girls between 2002 and 2005, but his death a month later meant that all of the charges were dropped. Many of those alleged crimes took place at his extensive collection of homes around the world in Manhattan, New Mexico, Palm Beach, Paris and the U.S. Virgin Islands. After Epstein's death, the executors of his estate valued his fortune at $578 million, with his real estate holdings making up about $117 million. Between 2021 and 2023, those properties were all sold for roughly $160 million. Epstein's estate appears to have kept roughly $50 million from the sales, with the rest being paid out to the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program—a fund set up in 2020 to financially compensate more than 100 victims of the disgraced financier—and a trust to provide support to victims of sexual abuse in the U.S. Virgin Islands. At least two other properties that Epstein owned in New Albany, Ohio—home to retail billionaire Leslie Wexner, who was Epstein's principal client for several decades—were sold or transferred years before he died. Since 2019, Epstein's estate has distributed more than $160 million to victims, repaid a $30 million loan and agreed to a $105 million settlement with the U.S. Virgin Islands. Yet thanks to a $112 million tax refund from the IRS last year, the estate still had $131 million in assets as of its latest filing on March 31. Here's what happened to each of Epstein's homes: 9 East 71st Street, New York Jeffrey Epstein's former residence at 9 East 71st Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Getty Images The 7-story, 40-room neoclassical mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side is cited 14 times in Epstein's federal indictment in 2019, with prosecutors alleging Epstein recruited and brought dozens of underage victims to the palatial residence. Originally built for Macy's heir Herbert Straus in the 1930s, the house was purchased for $13 million in 1989 by retail tycoon Leslie Wexner, who was Epstein's main client and business partner for decades starting in the late 1980s. (Wexner has said he severed ties with Epstein in 2007.) In 2011, Wexner transferred the property to Maple Inc., a U.S. Virgin Islands-based company controlled by Epstein. Epstein's executors valued the home at $56 million after his death in August 2019 and put it up for sale for $88 million; it ultimately sold for $51 million in March 2021 to Michael Daffey, a former Goldman Sachs executive. A lawyer for Epstein's estate told Forbes at the time that just under $51 million from the sale was transferred to the estate and the victims' compensation fund. Epstein also had ties to the house next door at 11 East 71st Street, now owned by Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, his neighbor for at least two decades. In 1988, SAM Conversion Corp.—a company based in Columbus, Ohio registered to an address then associated with Wexner—purchased the three-story home for an undisclosed amount. Epstein is listed as the vice president of SAM on the deed, and four years later, in 1992, SAM transferred the property to a trust where Epstein was the trustee, also registered at the same Columbus address. In 1996, that trust sold the property to another entity, the Comet Trust—unaffiliated with Epstein or Wexner—for an estimated $6.2 million, according to Crain's Business Journal . That trust ultimately sold the house for an estimated $7.6 million in 1998 to Lutnick, who has owned it since. 358 El Brillo Way, Palm Beach, Florida Jeffrey Epstein's former home in Palm Beach, Florida. TNS via Getty Images The other property that appears in Epstein's 2019 federal indictment is his 14,000-square-foot, six-bedroom home in Palm Beach. The indictment mentions the property 13 times, alleging that Epstein ensnared a network of underaged girls that he sexually abused at the house. Palm Beach police searched the home in 2005 as part of the first investigation into Epstein, which led to a grand jury trial that indicted him on a single count of soliciting prostitution in 2006. Epstein bought the home in 1990 for $2.5 million, five years after President Donald Trump bought his residence at Mar-a-Lago, which is located two miles to the south. That's also when Epstein and Trump appear to have first met, starting a friendship that lasted until at least 2004. The two men reportedly had a falling out that year after they got into a bidding war for the Maison de L'Amitié, a French Regency-style estate in Palm Beach; Trump ultimately won, purchasing the 270,000-square-foot palace for $41 million. (He then sold it in 2008 to a trust tied to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million.) Epstein's estate valued the Palm Beach house at $12.4 million in 2019 and listed it for $22 million in 2020. It finally sold a year later in January 2021 for $18.5 million, and the proceeds of the sale reportedly went to the victims' compensation fund. The local developer who bought it, Todd Michael Glaser, tore down Epstein's house, changed the address and flipped the empty lot for $26 million eight months later. Great St. James Island and Little St. James Island, U.S. Virgin Islands Epstein's former compound on Little St. James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. TNS Epstein bought the 70-plus-acre Little St. James Island, located in the U.S. Virgin Islands, for nearly $8 million in 1998. It came to be known as 'pedophile island' after Epstein allegedly used it as the center of his sex trafficking ring. In 2016, he also purchased the larger island right next to it, the 160-plus-acre Great St. James, for $22.5 million. Between 2001 and 2018, Epstein allegedly brought underaged girls and young women to Little St. James and forced them to engage in sexual acts and forced labor, according to a criminal case filed by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2020. The complaint also alleged that Epstein had bought Great St. James to 'further shield his conduct on Little St. James from view' and 'prevent his detection by law enforcement or the public."' Epstein's estate valued the islands—which featured a helipad, a private dock, a main residence and several villas—at a collective $31 million after his death in 2019 but later listed them for an asking price of $125 million. The estate settled with the U.S. Virgin Islands government in December 2022, agreeing to pay $105 million in cash, repay $80 million in tax benefits plus pay an additional $450,000 to repair environmental damage around Great St. James, due to Epstein's alleged razing of centuries-old structures built by enslaved workers on the island. In May 2023, Epstein's estate sold the islands for $60 million to private equity billionaire Stephen Deckoff, who told Forbes that he planned to build a 25-room luxury resort on the islands. Under the settlement, half of that amount went to the U.S. Virgin Islands government to be placed in a trust set up to provide counseling programs and other services for victims of sexual abuse and human trafficking. Zorro Ranch, Stanley, New Mexico Epstein bought the 10,000-acre ranch outside of Santa Fe in northern New Mexico for an estimated $12 million in 1993. The property featured a 30,000-square-foot main residence, a caretaker's home and several smaller houses, plus a greenhouse, stables and an air strip. According to the Department of Justice's indictment of Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, Maxwell and Epstein groomed a minor victim at the ranch in 1996. (Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.) Epstein's estate valued the ranch at $17.2 million in 2019, just before New Mexico's land commissioner cancelled the lease of 1,243 acres of state land to Cypress Inc., the U.S. Virgin Islands-based company that Epstein used to own the property. His estate put the ranch on the market in 2021 for $27.5 million, before reducing the price to $18 million. It ultimately sold in August 2023 for an undisclosed amount to a company that renamed it San Rafael Ranch. An attorney for Epstein's estate told Albuquerque-based TV station KRQE at the time that the proceeds of the sale were used for 'estate administration, including payment of creditors.' 22 Avenue Foch, Paris, France Epstein's former apartment on Avenue Foch in Paris' 16th arrondissement. AFP via Getty Images Epstein bought a 7,400-square-foot apartment—composed of two units joined together—in the upscale 16th arrondissement for a reported $3.2 million in 2001. Through a French company named SCI JEP, Epstein owned three units on the second floor with views of the nearby Arc de Triomphe, plus two units on the fifth floor and two cellars in the basement. French police searched the apartment, along with the offices of a modeling agency owned by Epstein's associate, Jean-Luc Brunel, in September 2019 to investigate sex-trafficking allegations. Brunel was arrested in December 2020 while trying to board a flight to Senegal and detained on charges of rape, sexual assault of minors and human trafficking. He was found dead in his Paris prison cell in February 2022. Epstein's estate valued the apartment at $8.7 million in 2019 and later listed it for about $12.5 million. It sold in June 2022 for roughly $10 million to Georgi Tuchev, a Bulgarian businessman who runs a plastic packaging company. A lawyer for Epstein's estate told Bloomberg at the time that part of the proceeds would be paid out to Epstein's victims. 5025 East Dublin Granville Rd and 7558 King George Drive, New Albany, Ohio Epstein also owned at least two properties in New Albany, Ohio, a town that was greatly expanded and developed by Wexner starting in the 1990s through his New Albany Company. He purchased 5025 East Dublin Granville Road, a 4-bedroom house less than a mile from Wexner's main residence—a 60,000-square-foot Georgian-style estate—in 1993 for $3.5 million. In 1996, Epstein hired Maria Farmer, a young artist who was in her mid-20s, to work at Wexner's estate for the summer. Farmer told the New York Times just recently that she had informed the FBI in 1996 and 2006 that she also met Trump at Epstein's Manhattan offices in 1995. She reportedly recalled feeling scared as Trump looked at her legs, before Epstein entered the room and told Trump that 'she's not here for you.' White House communications director Steven Cheung denied that Trump was ever in Epstein's office. Years earlier, Farmer had alleged that Epstein and Maxwell had molested her on Wexner's property. Wexner's security guards allegedly blocked her from leaving the home for 12 hours while she attempted to flee, according to a 2019 affidavit that Farmer filed as part of a defamation lawsuit led by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre against attorney Alan Dershowitz, which was later dropped. (Farmer also separately sued Epstein's estate that same year but dismissed it in 2021, after the estate made her an offer through the victims' compensation program.) Epstein sold this home for $8 million in 1998 to HHD & B LLC, a company with the same mailing address as Wexner's New Albany Company, which still owns the house today. Epstein also owned another, smaller home in New Albany at 7558 King George Drive, which he purchased for $365,000 in 1994. In 2007, he transferred it for $0 to a trust for Wezner's wife Abigail, who then sold it for $365,000 in 2011. Since Epstein sold or transferred both of his New Albany homes years before his death, neither one was included in his estate. With reporting by Jemima McEvoy
Mint
25-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Victoria's Secret Needs a Different Kind of Angel
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Among the demands of Barington Capital Group, one of two activist investors seeking to shake up Victoria's Secret & Co., is that the company bring back the 'angels' — the glamorous supermodels once synonymous with America's biggest underwear retailer. But what Victoria's Secret really needs is a different kind of angel: a buyer. Ideally, one that can offer a decent bid premium to long-suffering shareholders and enable the company to do the hard work needed to adapt to a new lingerie landscape, away from the glare of quarterly earnings. The agitators and the retailer should stop trading barbs, and instead work together to deliver value to all investors. If Victoria's Secret puts itself up for sale, the activists could facilitate a take-private by joining forces with the bidder or backing its offer. Both Barington Capital, which holds more than 1% of the retailer, and BBRC International Pte, which has acquired a 12.9% stake, are urging Victoria's Secret to make changes to its board and strategy to address the underperformance of its shares. They have a point. Since the company was spun out of L Brands Inc. four years ago, the stock has lost more than half of its value. For years, Victoria's Secret led the underwear market. But amid the #MeToo era, the company looked increasingly male-dominated and out of touch. The scandal sparked by the association of former L Brands' Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Wexner with the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein only hurt the brand further. As it prepared for life as a separately listed company, Victoria's Secret replaced the angels with a group of women recognized for their accomplishments and opinions. But the VS Collective, as it was known, failed to turbo-charge sales and was quietly disbanded. Last fall, under new CEO Hillary Super, the company staged an updated version of its fashion show, an annual marketing extravaganza that was once a cultural force. It was a step in the right direction. But Victoria's Secret is still struggling to find its place in a market populated by nimbler rivals, such as Kim Kardashian's Skims and Rihanna's Savage X Fenty, which Super previously led. Victoria's Secret needs to find a modern version of sexy, one that embraces different body sizes, but also changing underwear tastes. This includes the shift away from underwire bras to softer bralettes and sports bras, which have moved out of the gym into the everyday wardrobe. There are some encouraging signs. For example, Victoria's Secret has been dressing pop superstar of the moment Sabrina Carpenter. Amid a return to offices and anxiety about the job market, more formal clothing that requires structured undergarments is making a comeback. And the retailer remains the biggest underwear retailer not just in the US but also globally, notes Mary Ross Gilbert, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. The core brand — as well as sister line Pink — both have huge recognition, including with Gen-Z consumers, while other mall brands of yesteryear, such as Gap Inc., are proving it's possible to ride a wave of nostalgia to improved sales. But making the most of this potential — the company should go further in updating its image and stores, and foster closer ties with Carpenter — requires significant investment. With President Donald Trump's tariffs, which will cost the company $50 million this year, and growing pressure on US consumers, committing to an overhaul spells short-term financial pain. Victoria's Secret has introduced a so-called shareholder rights plan, a poison pill designed to stop an investor building a controlling stake without paying a premium. But it does not preclude the company considering an offer. Nor is Victoria's Secret too big a morsel to tempt a buyer. The company's market value has shrunk to about $1.5 billion. The 30% premium that is the standard in takeover deals would value the company's equity at about $2 billion. But given how far the shares have sunk, a 50% premium looks more appropriate. Add in expected net debt excluding lease liabilities of $600 million at the end this fiscal year, and the enterprise value would still be under $3 billion — not out of reach for many private equity groups. Assuming a successful repositioning lifts sales in the core underwear business, alongside progress with beauty, Pink, and relaunched swimwear and activewear units, the company could eventually be relisted at a higher valuation. Indeed, there is a precedent for how this could play out: Breitling AG. Like Victoria's Secret, the Swiss watchmaker had a lot of baggage, thanks to its sexist marketing. But since a majority stake was acquired by CVC Capital Partners in 2017, it has ditched the tasteless ads and introduced a suite of revamped products. It's paying off: Breitling's 2024 revenue is estimated at about 820 million Swiss francs ($1.02 billion), roughly double its 2016 sales. The company's valuation has soared from 800 million francs in 2017 to 4.2 billion in 2022, when CVC sold a majority stake in the watchmaker. Of course, the luxury market has slumped since then, but if the new owner of Victoria's Secret could stage a similar reinvention, it would be looking at healthy returns. Putting yourself up for sale can be seen as a sign of weakness. But some private equity buyers won't come knocking without the encouragement of an open door. And a deal to go private, which pays shareholders some of the recovery value in a takeover premium, looks like the best outcome. Its time for Victoria's Secret to pivot from selling lingerie to selling a lingerie company. Elsewhere in Bloomberg Opinion: This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Andrea Felsted is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. Previously, she was a reporter for the Financial Times. More stories like this are available on
