Jeffrey Epstein: The glamorous financier with a dark side

The more you delve into the past of billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein - the man who tarnished Prince Andrew's reputation – the more mysterious it becomes.

When I was assigned to write a profile of a "mysterious Gatsby-esque" financier, Jeffrey Epstein, for Vanity Fair in 2002, I anticipated "a gossipy piece about a shadowy, slightly sinister, but essentially harmless man who lived very large, had wealthy important friends, hung out with models and shied away from the press", writes Vicky Ward in The Daily Beast."If only it had ended there."

Epstein's biography could be divided into two themes. One was "the hidden source of his wealth": he claimed he financed his jet-setting lifestyle by managing the money of billionaires "a story no one I spoke to believed". The second mystery was his "unorthodox" private life.

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