Epstein claims to advise ultra‑wealthy families and recover looted assets for ex‑dictators, while lacking any institutional backing

Saturday night black tie dinners, where he’s meeting the over-the-top families of Europe. “I didn’t take it seriously,” Epstein recounts. “I was not caught up in it. | wasn’t trying to make a billion dollars. There was no ultimate goal. It was just fun to meet smart people, interesting people. But no long-range plans. Often no short-term plans either. I would head to Kennedy and, on the theory that most important events in one’s life are serendipitous, I wouldn’t decide where I was going until I got there.” At the same time, he is developing a perception, or, at least a market differentiation: the hyper wealthy had different problems than the very wealthy. Dealing with a billion dollars was different from dealing with $100 million: “Tf you had a billion dollars I would think the last thing you should be worried about was money, in truth money was what you most worried about. How to make more of it, how to give away more of it, how to protect you children from it, how to hide it from your wife or husband, how to minimize your taxes on it. The traditional wealth service structure, an accountant, and investment advisor, a personal lawyer, and an idiot brother-in-law, became hopelessly outdated as amounts exponentially increased. “You can’t spend a billion dollars, you can just reallocate it to a different investment class. And you can’t give away a billion dollars without a vast staff, in effect going into the business of giving away money, yet another business you are likely to know little about.” At just about this point in the narrative, the questions or the incredulity begins in social circles and eventually in the media. He begins to acquire the major symbols of riches but does this without position, public holdings, or obvious paper trails. How can a person have enough money to merit increasing attention, but no clear way of having gotten it? Epstein gets stuck in that tautology. He may be rich, but he is without institutional protection or bona fides. He is a questionable substrata of wealth. He’s a freelancer. That’s the rub: he doesn’t work for anyone. Without institutional credentials he’s... well, nobody knows what. For a period, one part of his activities he says is recovering monies for countries looted by exiled dictators or military strongmen. If early in his career he might seem like a sort of George Peppard (there’s a physical resemblance) in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a charming hustler, later he’s George Peppard in Banacek, a smart and astute operator. Then, in his telling, he’s representing a series of vastly wealthy people and families. He’s not just doing their bidding or their investing, he’s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_022757