Jeffrey Edward Epstein[a] (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier, child sex offender, serial rapist, and human trafficker. He began his professional career as a teacher (hired without a degree by Donald Barr) at the Dalton School. After his dismissal from the school in 1976, he entered the banking and finance sector, working at Bear Stearns in various roles, before starting his own firm. Epstein cultivated an elite social circle and procured at least 1,000 underage girls, teens, and young women who were subjected to repeated rape and sexual violence by him and his associates. Epstein made much of his fortune by providing tax and estate services to billionaires.
In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Federal officials identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal agreed by the U.S. Department of Justice‘s Alexander Acosta, and he served almost 13 months in custody but with extensive work release.
Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. Barbara Sampson, the New York City medical examiner, controversially ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging. Forensic pathologist Michael Baden has disputed the ruling, and there has been significant public skepticism about the true cause of his death, resulting in conspiracy theories. In July 2025, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage to support the conclusion that Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell. When the Department of Justice released the footage, approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds of it was missing, and the video was found to have been modified despite the FBI’s claim that it was raw.
Since Epstein’s death precluded the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against him, a judge dismissed all criminal charges on August 29, 2019. Epstein had a decades-long association with Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited young girls for him, leading to her 2021 conviction on U.S. federal charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for helping him procure girls, including a 14-year-old, for child sexual abuse and prostitution.
A renowned social networker, whose vast network included business people, royalty, politicians, and academics, Epstein’s friendships with public figures including Donald Trump, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Bill Clinton, and Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway have attracted significant controversy. The Epstein files released by the House Democratic Caucus showed that he maintained connections with many other notable figures.
Early life
Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born on January 20, 1953, in Brooklyn,[6][7] a borough of New York City. His parents, Pauline “Paula” Stolofsky (1918–2004) and Seymour George Epstein (1916–1991), were Jewish and had married in 1952 shortly before his birth.[8] Pauline worked as a school aide and was a homemaker.[8][9][10] Seymour worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation as a groundskeeper and gardener.[8][10]
Jeffrey was the older of two siblings; he and his brother Mark grew up in the neighborhood of Sea Gate,[11] a private gated community in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Within the family, Epstein was nicknamed Bear, while Mark was called Puggie.[9] A childhood friend described Paula as “a wonderful mother and homemaker,”[12] and neighbors remembered the parents as being quiet and humble.[9]
Epstein attended local public schools, first attending Public School 188, and then Mark Twain Junior High School nearby and usually earned money by tutoring classmates. Acquaintances considered Epstein “sweet and generous”, although “quiet and nerdy”, and nicknamed him “Eppy”. “He was just an average boy, very smart in math, slightly overweight, freckles, always smiling”, a female friend later described.[9]
In 1967, Epstein attended the National Music Camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts.[13] He began playing the piano when he was five, and was regarded as a talented musician by friends.[14] He graduated in 1969 from Lafayette High School at age 16, having skipped two grades.[8][15] Later that year, he attended advanced math classes at Cooper Union until he changed colleges in 1971.[8] From September 1971, he attended the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, where he studied mathematical physiology, but left without receiving a degree in June 1974