Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Is Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex trafficker and sexual assaulter of dozens of underage girls potentially guilty of financial crimes as well? His criminal profile suggests that may well be worth investigating.
Bernie Madoff knew he was no genius and could never compete with the physics and math geniuses employed by the major trading firms on Wall Street. So he simply generated fake investment statements to reassure his thousands of clients of his trading prowess and didn’t buy one stock for their portfolios over the decades he was looting their assets, according to prosecutors.
But the criminal profile that emerges for Jeffrey Epstein is that of a man so arrogant and confident of his genius that he felt he could beat anybody – by hook or by crook, or by hiring ruthless lawyers to intimidate and compromise Federal prosecutors.
Armed with an aptitude for physics and math, Epstein became a math teacher at the exclusive Dalton School in Manhattan – despite the fact that he lacked a college degree. He traded up from that position to work for Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, which blew itself up in the early days of the financial crash of 2008. Epstein’s exit from Bear Stearns coincided with an SEC investigation of the firm, the details of which remain murky. No charges were brought. Epstein moved on to collect $25,000 a month from Towers Financial, whose CEO Steven Hoffenberg went to prison for 20 years for turning the company into a $450 million Ponzi scheme. Hoffenberg has alleged in an affidavit filed in a previous court case that Epstein was a major participant in the Ponzi scheme.
In the years that followed, Epstein flaunted his wealth and appeared eager to promote himself as a billionaire hedge fund manager that accepted only billion dollar accounts. But other than billionaire Les Wexner, founder of The Limited retail clothing chain and the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, it’s unclear if Epstein actually managed money for other people in a hedge fund.
What is clear, if we can believe the public tax filings Epstein’s accountants made to the IRS for his nonprofit charity, is that Epstein, unlike Bernie Madoff, actually did know how to make money trading stocks – especially when he was gifted with hot Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), something that the average American rarely has access to at a Wall Street brokerage firm.
…
