Separately, a New York Times investigation spent months following the money from Epstein to the country's leading bank, J.P. Morgan Chase. The article concludes that the bank enabled his crimes even as evidence against him piled up.
SHAPIRO: How valuable were Jeffrey Epstein's accounts with J.P. Morgan?
GOLDSTEIN: You know, they're valuable in the sense - obviously, he had a lot of money there. At the peak, he had about $300 million in his accounts. But you have to view him more than just the dollars. There were lots of transactions he was doing, obviously, to run his sex trafficking operation for so many years. And he was also valuable in helping to bring business to the bank because his stock and trade was connecting people. You know, it's always unclear exactly how much he did in terms of bringing new business into the bank, but clearly he was very important in making introductions to some people at the bank.
SHAPIRO: You write that he seemed to know everyone. Can you give us a couple examples?
GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, it's been well-known that Leslie Wexner, who was the head of The Limited, Victoria Secret, was his No. 1 client. They had also already been a client of J.P. Morgan, but that obviously further cemented the relationship. Later on, he had connections with Sergey Brin from Google, Bill Gates, who never became a client but they were working on a potential deal for Bill Gates and his foundation. Leon Black, obviously, was a big, important client to Epstein and was a client of the bank. There's some debate over how much he introduced Benjamin Netanyahu to the bank, and Ehud Barak was also a person that he knew.
SHAPIRO: Leaders of Israel. Yeah.
GOLDSTEIN: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: You say that even before investigations into Epstein became public, warning lights should have been flashing inside J.P. Morgan. Explain why.
GOLDSTEIN: Yeah. So, you know, he really becomes essentially what they call a private bank client in 1998. And that's, like, a special kind of - it's not like you or me going to a bank and having a checking account or, like, having to call 1-800 number on our credit card if we have a problem. And by 2003, they're already seeing a lot of big cash transactions being pulled out - huge ones, as much as 175,000, 1.7 million altogether by 2004. And this was money that was going to, largely, to make payments to women and people in his social circle. And the bank had an awareness of this, of where the money was going, and that should have raised more flags internally.
