Here Are the Famous People Jeffrey Epstein Was Connected to

Maxwell is a British socialite and the daughter of media tycoon Robert Maxwell.

She started dating Epstein shortly after moving to New York in 1991, Business Insider previously reported. After they broke up, court documents allege that Maxwell started recruiting underage girls for him to have sex with.

The FBI began investigating Maxwell’s relationship with Epstein in 2019 as the British heiress hid out with armed guards in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Maxwell was ultimately found in New Hampshire, where she was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and perjury on July 2, 2020.

A federal jury in December 2021 convicted the former socialite of five sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors alleged Maxwell worked with Epstein to “recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse” children.

In June 2022, a federal judge sentenced Maxwell to 20 years in prison for trafficking girls to have sex with Epstein and sexually abusing them herself. She was also fined $750,000, the judge said, and will have to remain on probation for five years following her time in prison.

Epstein became a trusted confidant of Wexner’s while Epstein managed the CEO’s fortune, Vanity Fair reported. The magazine reported that Wexner allowed Epstein to take an active role in L Brands, which owned Bath & Body Works, Express, and Victoria’s Secret at the time.

Wexner has a net worth of $9.81 billion, according to Bloomberg.

In 1989, Wexner used a trust to buy an Upper East Side townhouse that is believed to be the largest private residence in Manhattan for $13.2 million, Vanity Fair reported. Epstein moved in after Wexner and his wife, Abigail Koppel, moved to Ohio in 1996. Wexner’s trust transferred ownership of the house to Epstein in 2011 for $0, Bloomberg reported.

Wexner later fired Epstein as his money manager. “Mr. Wexner severed ties with Mr. Epstein more than a decade ago,” an L Brands spokesperson told Forbes in July 2019.

In February 2020, L Brands announced that Wexner would step down after nearly six decades as the company’s CEO. L Brands also announced that it would sell the majority stake in Victoria’s Secret to private equity firm Sycamore Partners and spin-off Bath & Body Works into a separate company.

The company had been marred in controversy following reports of the mistreatment of models and plummeting sales.

There could be more court documents related to Wexner’s and Epstein’s relationship that haven’t been unsealed yet, Insider’s Jacob Shamsian reported in January 2023.

The future president claimed in 2002 that he had a long friendship with Epstein.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump said, according to New York Magazine. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Epstein had 14 phone numbers connected to Trump in his black book of contacts, Insider reported in July 2019.

That same month, Kellyanne Conway told the Associated Press that Trump believed the crimes Epstein was charged with were “completely unconscionable and obviously criminal.”

“The president told me this morning he hasn’t talked to Epstein, he doesn’t think he’s talked to him or seen him in 10 or 15 years,” Conway added.

But Mark Epstein, the convicted pedophile’s brother, told Shamsian in March 2023 that Jeffrey stopped hanging out with Trump once he realized he was a “crook.”

Maxwell introduced Epstein and the Duke of York in the 1990s, the Guardian reported, and the two became close friends.

The Duke is the youngest son of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth. He has also been criticized for frequently taking flights on the taxpayer’s dime while serving as the country’s special representative for international trade. This earned him the nickname “Airmiles Andy,” according to the Washington Post.

Court documents reviewed by the Guardian allege that Epstein instructed Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a 15-year-old employee at Trump’s Mar-a-Largo resort, to have sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions. Buckingham Palace said in 2015 that the allegations against Prince Andrew were “false and without any foundation,” according to the Guardian.

NY Magazine’s Intelligencer reported in 2019 that a number of royals and royal connections were among Epstein’s contacts, including Prince Andrew’s then-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York; and Charles Althorp, Princess Diana’s brother. Intelligencer reported that all three were named in Epstein’s black book; Ferguson and Prince Andrew were also named in his private jet log.

In a interview with the BBC in November 2019, Prince Andrew said his relationship with Epstein brought him “opportunities,” and that his slowness in ditching Epstein as a friend was because of his tendency to be “too honorable.” The interview was widely criticized over Prince Andrew’s lack of sympathy with Epstein’s victims and his defense of his friendship with the convicted sex offender, Insider reported.

Prince Andrew resigned from public royal duties a few days later.

A statement released in July 2019 by Clinton spokesperson Angel Ureña said the former president traveled to Europe, Asia, and twice to Africa on Epstein’s private jet. Clinton’s staff and Secret Service agents also went on these trips, which were to further the work of the Clinton Foundation, according to the statement.

Court documents unsealed in July 2020 show Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre testified that Clinton also visited Epstein’s island — something the former president has denied.

Clinton told New York Magazine through a spokesperson that Epstein was “both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science.”

Ureña also said that Clinton and Epstein hadn’t spoken in “well over a decade” and that Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” Epstein was charged with.

Epstein, Clinton, Spacey, and Tucker spent a week in 2002 touring AIDS project sites in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique for the Clinton Foundation, New York Magazine reported.

Spacey was also charged with sexual assault, but in December 2019, The New York Times reported that the case had been dropped by the plaintiff’s estate. The plaintiff, a 62-year-old massage therapist, had died that September.

When Spacey testified in another sexual assault case against him in October 2022, he confirmed flying on Epstein’s plane.

“I was now being talked about as if I knew Jeffrey Epstein, as though I was some important and powerful friend of his, and because I’d been on this airplane, I had actually flown to what was being called Pedo Island,” Spacey testified, according to Law & Crime. “And while it is true that I met Jeffrey Epstein on that trip, I never saw him again, and I have never been to any island.”

Tucker said in a 2021 interview with All Urban Central that he was on the trip with Clinton, but didn’t know they were on Epstein’s private plane.

An investigation by the Miami Herald revealed that Acosta, then a US attorney, had enough evidence against Epstein to request a life sentence. Instead, he reportedly met with one of Epstein’s lawyers, who happened to be a former colleague of Acosta’s.

In the resulting plea deal, Epstein served 13 months in a private wing of a county prison, which he was allowed to leave six days a week to work in his office.

Acosta tweeted in 2019 that he was “pleased that NY prosecutors are moving forward with a case based on new evidence.”

Acosta resigned as labor secretary on July 12, 2019.

Siegal, known for hosting events to promote films including “The Big Short,” “Argo,” and “The Revenant” to Oscar voters, invited Epstein to screenings after he was released from prison in 2010, The New York Times reported.

“I was a kind of plugged-in girl around town who knew a lot of people,” Siegal told The Times. “And I think that’s what he wanted from me, a kind of social goings-on about New York.”

Siegal also planned a dinner party for Epstein and Prince Andrew at his Upper East Side home. The event was attended by Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, and Chelsea Handler, The Times reported. “The invitation was positioned as, ‘Do you want to have dinner with Prince Andrew?'” Siegal told The Times. Many of the guests didn’t know who the host was or about his criminal history.

A spokesperson for Siegal told Insider in 2019 that her relationship with Epstein was social, not professional. Siegal told The Times that she ended her relationship with Epstein at the height of the #MeToo era in 2017.

Netflix, FX, and Annapurna Pictures severed their ties with Siegal in July 2019 after her connection to Epstein became public, Variety reported.

Epstein said MBS had visited Epstein’s Manhattan mansion many times and had a framed photo of the crown prince hanging on the wall, according to New York Times reporter James B. Stewart.

Representatives of MBS did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.

A New York Times reporter said Epstein told him that Elon Musk had sought him out to help manage the trouble he had gotten into with the SEC in 2018.

Epstein told reporter James B. Stewart that he had promised to keep his work for Tesla private because of his prior conviction. Epstein also warned that both Musk and Tesla would deny their connection to Epstein if it ever became public, the Times reported.

In a statement to Insider in August 2019, a spokesperson for Musk denied Epstein’s claims of having served as an adviser to the CEO.

Musk and Maxwell were photographed at an Oscars after-party hosted by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014, in West Hollywood. The same Musk spokesperson told Insider that “Ghislaine simply inserted herself behind him in a photo he was posing for without his knowledge.”

Musk, Epstein, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were all guests at a dinner that LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman hosted sometime after Epstein was released from jail in 2008, Vanity Fair reported in 2019.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesperson for Zuckerberg, told Insider it was the only time Zuckerberg and Epstein met. “Mark met Epstein in passing one time at a dinner honoring scientists that was not organized by Epstein,” LaBolt said in the statement. “Mark did not communicate with Epstein again following the dinner.”

Ito worked with other directors and staff at the MIT Media Lab to quietly receive large anonymous donations from Epstein after he was convicted of soliciting underage girls for prostitution, the New Yorker reported in September 2019. The article contains emails sent between Ito and Epstein.

The emails show Epstein also worked as an in-between for other wealthy donors, including Bill Gates and Leon Black, and that Epstein had a role in determining what his donations would be used for at MIT, contradicting previous statements from Ito and the university.

Ito resigned from his posts at MIT, The New York Times Company, and the MacArthur Foundation shortly after the exposé published.

Emails obtained and published by The New Yorker show former MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito wrote that Gates was “directed by” Epstein to donate $2 million to the research lab in October 2014.

Gates also met with Epstein at least once in New York in 2013 and flew on one of his private planes to Palm Beach, Insider previously reported.

“Bill attended a meeting in New York with others focused on philanthropy. While Epstein was present, he never provided services of any type to Bill,” a Gates spokesperson told Insider.

A spokesperson for Gates told Business Insider that “Epstein was introduced to Bill Gates as someone who was interested in helping grow philanthropy. Although Epstein pursued Bill Gates aggressively, any account of a business partnership or personal relationship between the two is simply not true. And any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.”

A New York Times investigation published in October 2019 found that Gates met with Epstein multiple times after Epstein’s conviction in 2011, including at least three meetings at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Following the publication of that story, a spokesperson said Gates regretted the association.

Gates said at a conference in November 2019 that he believed “billions of dollars” would come from his meetings with Jeffrey Epstein. “I made a mistake in judgment in thinking those discussions would go to global health,” Gates said. “That money never appeared.”

“I gave him the benefit of my association,” Gates said.

Hoffman hosted the dinner that Epstein, Zuckerberg, and Musk attended to honor an MIT neuroscientist, Vanity Fair reported.

Hoffman also got into hot water over Epstein’s donations to the MIT Media Lab. As pressure mounted on Media Lab director Joi Ito to resign, Hoffman defended Ito to author and fellow MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award jury member Anand Giridharadas in a private email, Giridharadas tweeted in now-deleted posts.

Hoffman sat on the Disobedience Award’s jury and funded it personally, according to the Media Lab’s website. In 2017, MIT awarded Epstein and other donors “orbs” to thank them for their support, The Boston Globe reported. The orb looks similar to the trophy given to winners of the Disobedience Award.

Hoffman also visited Epstein’s Little St. James Island in the Caribbean in 2014 with Ito, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“It gnaws at me that, by lending my association, I helped his reputation, and thus delayed justice for his survivors,” Hoffman told the Journal. “While I relied on MIT’s endorsement, ultimately I made the mistake, and I am sorry for my personal misjudgment.”

Gov. John P. de Jongh’s wife Cecile de Jongh served on the board of Epstein’s Financial Trust Co. for most of her husband’s time in office, Insider’s Becky Peterson and John Cook reported. She held the titles of secretary and vice president in her decade-long tenure with the company, even staying on board after Epstein was first charged with sexual assault in 2007.

Prosecutors in the US Virgin Islands alleged in a 2020 lawsuit that Epstein was trafficking women and children through the US territory during that same time. The lawsuit describes one 15-year-old victim who was “forced into sexual acts with Epstein and others and then attempted to escape by swimming off the Little St. James island.”

In a statement, a lawyer representing Epstein’s estate told Insider that some of the allegations in the lawsuit were inaccurate — particularly that the estate to this day engages in “a course of conduct aimed at concealing the criminal activities of the Epstein Enterprise.”

“The Estate is being administered in accordance with the laws of the US Virgin Islands and under the supervision of the Superior Court of the US Virgin Islands,” the statement said.

Staley had a “professional relationship” with Epstein that dated back to “early in his career,” Barclays said in a 2020 statement. 

“In the summer of 2019, in light of the renewed media interest in the relationship, Mr. Staley volunteered and gave to certain executives, and the Chairman, an explanation of his relationship with Mr. Epstein,” Barclays said. “Mr. Staley also confirmed to the Board that he has had no contact whatsoever with Mr. Epstein at any time since taking up his role as Barclays Group CEO in December 2015.”

The relationship is the subject of an investigation by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, according to the bank.

In August 2019, Black said that he had only consulted Epstein on financial matters “from time to time” and that his relationship with the convicted sex offender was “limited,” Insider previously reported.

But Black had engaged Epstein as an advisor and paid him at least $50 million, The New York Times reported in October 2020. Two of the Times’ sources said the total may actually be closer to $75 million.

The two financiers also regularly dined together at Epstein’s New York mansion, per the Times report.

A spokesperson for Black confirmed that between 2012 and 2017, Black had received “personal trusts and estates planning advice as well as family office philanthropy and investment services from several financial and legal advisors” including Epstein. A spokesperson for Black also told the Times that the relationship ended after a “fee dispute” in 2018.

Black “continues to be appalled by the conduct that led to the criminal charges” against Epstein, the spokesperson said, adding that Black “deeply regrets having any involvement” with Epstein.

Magician David Copperfield was named in court documents related to Epstein’s sex ring unsealed on January 3, 2024.

In a 2016 deposition, Johanna Sjoberg, a victim of Epstein, said she met Copperfield at Epstein’s house, where he performed tricks during a dinner.

The magician seemed to be a friend of Epstein, Sjoberg said, and asked her if she “was aware that girls were getting paid to find other girls.”

She added that Sarah Kellen, who worked for Epstein and Maxwell, and another girl were also present.

“She seemed young to me,” Sjoberg said about the other girl. “I thought she could be younger than college age, but I had to assume for my own sanity that she was a daughter of one of his friends.”

The documents unsealed on January 3, 2024, shed new light on Epstein’s relationship with celebrity hairstylist and entrepreneur Frédéric Fekkai.

Epstein accuser Sjoberg said in a 2016 deposition that, while massaging Epstein, she heard Epstein “call someone, and say, Fekkai is in Hawaii. Can we find some girls for him?”

Fekkai was previously known to have a relationship with Epstein, who paid for his assistants to have appointments with the stylist. In 2019, The Daily Beast reported that Fekkai stylists would make house calls to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and that Fekkai had flown on Epstein’s private plane with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Editor’s note, June 15, 2023: This story has been updated to include the correct year in which Epstein died. A previous version erroneously said he died in August 2020. 

Editor’s note, January 3, 2024: This story was published in June 2022. It was updated to reflect a newly unsealed case.