Speaker 1: Them back to the Epstein chronicles. In this episode, we're
gonna hop back to August first of twenty twenty one
and an article from Radar Online. In this episode, we're
gonna talk about the Ponzi scheme that Jeffrey Epstein was
involved in that somehow he avoided all responsibility for. So
let's dive into this article that was authored by Dominic Utten.
Headline how Jeffrey Epstein made a fortune from an illegal
Ponzi scheme then skipped away with millions of other people's money.
Sounds about right par for the course for mister scumbag himself.
And there was never any restitution for these people. They
stole millions of dollars. Him and Steve Hoffenberg. They stole
a grip of money from these people. And while Hoffenberg
paid his debt to society doing eight teen years in prison,
Jeffrey Epstein, of course, was able to go on and
continue his streak of rape and abuse and money laundering
and god knows what else. When the full horror of
billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's crimes were laid bare in twenty
and nineteen, the world wondered how he managed to get
away with his abuse for so long. But as authors
Dylan Howard, Melissa Crownin, and James Robertson revealing their book
Epstein Dead Men Tell No Tales, the man who would
be unmasked as the worst pedophile in American history was
guilty of other criminal acts too, and should have been
should have been jailed in the early nineteen nineties. All
of that is correct. Dudes should have been in prison
a long time ago. If it was you or I
who got involved in one of these Ponzi schemes or
you know, read erecting money from someone's pension, you better
believe we'd be doing prison time and we should be right.
You know. I'm all for prison rehabilitation, like I always say,
and for people being able to, you know, not get
felonies or not be put into jail for minor drug possession.
But if you're stealing money like this from people's pensions
and you're involved in financial dick hettery, well, my friend,
there is a nice place for you in jail. As
the authors explain, Epstein's rise through Wall Street was unusual
and unusually fast. Born in New York and raised in
the quiet Brooklyn community of Seagate, his early life seemed unremarkable,
and after leaving university without graduating, he initially worked as
a math teacher in Manhattan before being dismissed from the
prestigious Dalton School for his lackadaisical teaching style. Oh, I'm
sure that's all it was. I'm sure that he never
made any passes at any girls while he was at Dalton. Nah,
that never happened. He was a master manipulator. They right,
but Epstein's manipulations weren't always done through legal means. By
the early nineties, the authorities had set their sights on
Epstein for operating a multimillion dollar Ponzi scheme. Now think
about that for a minute. When the authorities zero went
on you for a Ponzi scheme and they're building a case,
you know, money laundering, wire fraud, all of their favorite charges, well,
you know that you're in big trouble. And it is
exceedingly rare for people to end up walking when they're
caught up in something like this. And usually when you
do walk, that's because you turn snitch. You're ratting out
all of your co conspirators. You're ratting out anyone who
was involved in the scheme, and you're looking to not
end up doing twenty years via co charges. So that's
obviously what Epstein did. He obviously turned rat, told the
authorities what was going on, and started his working relationship
with whichever scumbag in the government you want to add.
But the fact is, you don't just walk on stuff
like this if you're not being protected. Howard, Cronin and
Robertson also note that the master manipulator was to use
his dismissal to his advantage. True to form, Epstein somehow
managed to turn that failure into a stepping stone to
even greater success a job on Wall Street. They write,
during a parent teacher conference, the twenty three year old
had managed to dazzle one student's financier father. So when
Epstein was fired from Dalton, the broker connected Epstein with
Alan Greenberg, a Wall Street bigwig who was poised to
become chief executive officer of multi billion dollar global investment
bank and brokerage firm Bear Stearns. How many times are
you gonna fall face first and land clean? It was
a common procedure for Epstein. How many people leave, leave
their little shitty ass teaching job and go get a
job with bear Stearns. How many people happened to just
meet someone's dad during a parent teacher conference and go
on to have this whole Wall Street career. See that
whole entire thing, this whole genesis story here really doesn't
add up to me, honestly. Later that year, Epstein landed
a job at bear Stearns as a low level junior
assistant to a floor trader. He swiftly rose through the ranks,
and within four years he had become a limited partner,
taking on mega millionaire clients like Seagram president Edgar Bronfan Bromfman. Hm.
Where we heard that name before? Oh, that's right in
the Nexium trial. Huh, Clara Bromffman, her sister. They were
right at the top with Keith Rainiery. You see how
all of this is circular. You see how all of
these people at some point were rubbing elbows and breaking
bread and hanging out with each other, getting in on
Wall Street before the nineteen eighties banking boom allowed Epstein
to build a spectacular network of connections that made him
the toast of Manhattan during one of the most prosperous
decades it had ever seen. Well there's no doubt about
that this point in time, Wall Street was quite possibly
the greediest it has ever been. Remember the movie Wall
Street with Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas. That was a
good characterization of stockbrokers and Wall Street in general. Greed
is good. Remember that tagline, you ask me how I know, Well,
I might have a stockbroker or two floating around in
my family. Look, the moral of the story is the
financial sector is broken, and all of these people that are,
you know, running around in the financial sector. I don't
even know what to say, honestly, at this point. It
is an absolute shit show the way they conduct business.
In just a few short years with Bear Stearns, Epstein
had made millions of dollars, was traveling full time by
chauffeur Limo, had billionaires relying on his financial advice, and
was carousing around town with stunning women on both arms. Still,
it was not enough. Epstein's greed and ambition were to
push him to grow even more desperate and reckless in
his pursuit of money and influence. And that's how it
always is with these guys, right, Greed, greed, greed, and
more greed and thankfully a lot of times, that's also
what ends up getting them captured their greed at they're hubris.
In early nineteen eighty one, one of Epstein's colleagues at
bear Stearns tipped off management that Epstein was testing the
boundaries of the law, right Howard Cronin and Robertson. After
an investigation, Epstein admitted he had loaned twenty thousand dollars
to a friend, Warren Eisenstein, who then used the money
to invest in stocks, with Epstein's insider knowledge guiding him.
It was unethical and potentially illegal, not for Epstein always
finds a way to wiggle off, doesn't he. Epstein somehow
managed to escape with a twenty five hundred dollars fine,
but a few days later he was under the spotlight
again when the US Securities and Exchange Commission opened an
investigation into Epstein's client, Edgar Bronfman, and Epstein was accused
of illegal secure these violations, that should have been the
end of it right there. He should have been busted
and absolutely disgraced. But that's not the case, is it.
We all know that Epstein somehow, some way parlayed this
into what we see occur later on. Depending on who
you ask, Epstein was either unceremoniously fired at that point
or quit in a blaze of glory. The authors continue.
Either way, it left the unabashed social climber in a
very undesirable position. No longer a Wall Street wonder kind.
Epstein was jobless, homeless, and running out of funds. He
had to get creative. Yeah, well, we all know how
he got creative, don't we. That creativity was to lead
Epstein to take on controversial black market clients like Saudi
Arabian businessman ad Non Koshogi four, whom he helped broker
global armament deals, including the sale of major weaponry like
the a Wax Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft. So
here your ties with Jeffrey Epstein and Saudi Arabia. Remember
we were talking about the Saudi Arabian passport. Well, when
you're helping guys like Kashogi out ad Non Koshogi, not
Jamal Kashogi, the one who was killed by the Saudis
in the Turkish embassy, but ad Non Koshoki, the famed
arms dealer, Well you know that you're gonna have some
ties to the Saudi royal family, and Epstein obviously parlayed
those ties into getting himself that fake passport and lord
knows what else. In nineteen eighty seven, Epstein's business affairs
had become increasingly shady, and it all came to a
head when he met Steve Hoffenberg of Tower Financial Corporation,
a leading debt collection and corporate rating agency at the time.
So right off the bat, the second you tell me
you're a debt collector, I gotta roll my eyes. Debt collector?
The hell does that even mean? In an exclusive interview,
Hoffenberg tells the authors of Epstein Dead Men Tell No
Tales what attracted him to the financier pedophile. I was
very impressed with the unbelievable personality and unbelievable ability of
Jeffrey Epstein to become a friend, and the uncanny ability
that he had as a mastermind criminal on Wall Street.
He says, Jeffrey Epstein was brilliant, was a brilliant, brilliant
Wall Street mastermind in criminality for securities fraud. I was
greatly impressed with his demeanor, his ability to understand complex securities,
underwritings and sales to investors, so that shorthand for Hoffenberg
saying he recognized someone who would be an important cog
in his upcoming schemes because of Epstein's scumbaggery. He was
so unusual as an executive and had so much ability.
It was just very surprising how gifted he was. His
ability to sell you securities when you weren't looking to
acquire securities was remarkable. He would end up convincing you
to buy securities in Towers Financial. You weren't even considering
that he had that gift and that ability. So basically
he's a bullshit artist, snake oil salesman, Carnival Barker, kind
of like a lot of these people out here putting
out these stupid articles we see all the time. But
once again Epstein could not resist the shortcut, even if
it was illegal. Quickly they set the setup at Towers
Financial evolved into a huge Ponzi scheme. As explained by Hoffenberg,
you raise money from one investor to pay another investor.
That's the simple definition of ponzi. Jeffrey Epstein participated full
time and was a mastermind in that part of the
Tower Financial crimes. Towers Financial got into an awful lot
of legal problems and litigations and ended up going into bankruptcy. Now,
normal people who get caught up in this, they go
to jail man, they go to prison. After the authorities
were alerted to the illegal scheme, trustees were appointed to
operate the company, and once again Epstein showed his talent
for manipulation. Jeffrey Epstein had a very strong relationship with
the lawyers that the trustees hired. Hoffenberg tells the authors.
Actually the trustee in bankruptcy at Towers Financial, a man
named Alan Cohen, hired one of Jeffrey Epstein's best friends
and lawyers in Dyke and Khan to investigate Jeffrey Epstein
at Towers Financial, which is remarkable. Jeffrey Epstein manipulated that
occurrence without question. So there's another little golden nugget for you.
When I talk about in Dike and Khn and how
crucial they were, you see it here on the ground level.
Jeffrey Epstein manipulated the situation so that these guys in
Dike and Cohn were the ones performing the investigation on Epstein,
his best friends. Basically, Nah, no nepotism out over here.
There's no you know, two level to playing field. No
two tier justice system, give me a break. The outcome
was even more jaw dropping. In nineteen ninety five, Hoffenberg
was sentenced to twenty years in prison, a one million
dollar fine, and four one hundred and sixty three million
dollars in restitution, while Epstein he dodged all charges. I
wonder why. So this is the in in my mind anyway,
this is where Epstein was really locked in as an informant.
The way we talked about Whitey Bulger, how he was
working with the government and they were willing to look
the other way. Same thing with Epstein. Epstein was not
punished in the crimes at Towers financial Hoffenberg continues, Jeffrey
Epstein's ability as a master criminal got him out of
the penalty box for all of that. That's what happened
continuously in his other criminal charges as well, and we
have seen a pattern of that. Right, normal people don't
get off on things like this. Hell, normal people don't
get off on anything. But somehow Epstein, somehow found a
way what could and almost certainly should have been a
lengthy prison stretch and financial ruin was instead a mere
footnote in Epstein's life story. And as Howard Cronin and
Robertson reveal. Hoffenberg believes the pedophile may even have used
the scheme to fund his future crimes. Oh, I don't
doubt that. I guarantee that Epstein was not only stealing
from the clients, but stealing from Hoffenberg. This dude was
using that money, setting up offshore accounts, the whole fucking thing. Man,
have no doubt about that. Epstein didn't just escape justice,
they right. Hoffenberg claimed he moved on to new adventures.
With millions in his pocket. Epstein was able to fund
his criminal enterprise financial Trust Company and Jeffrey Epstein in company.
Hoffenberg alleged there was another I believe it was International
Asset Collections. He was able to fund it with the
assets and money from the Tower's financial crimes. And we
all know that should never happen. If you get caught
up in something like this, you should do time, you
should be indicted, you should have your assets seized. But
none of that ever happened for Epstein. None of it.
And when we go back and we look at stories
like this, it just shows you. It shines a spotlight
on how egregious it all was, how the government failed
at every level to stop this man. How many chances
did they have and how many times did they fail
to stop them? If you'd like to contact me, you
can do that at Bobby Kapuchi at ProtonMail dot com.
That's b O B B Y c A p U
c c I at ProtonMail dot com. You can also
find me on Twitter at b O B B y
underscore c A p U c c I. The link
that we discussed can be found in the description box.