Full Text
whose identity they could not be allowed to know. But Hoffenberg has claimed the money came from him, and Towers's financial statements for that year show a loan to Epstein of $400,000. (Epstein has said he can't remember the details and has disputed the accuracy of the Towers financial reports.) Around the same time, Nederlander and Toboroff let Epstein come in with them on a scheme to make money out of Pennwalt, a Pennsylvania chemical company. The plan was to group together with two other parties to take a substantial declared position in the stock. According to a source, Epstein was supposed to help Nederlander and Toboroff raise $15 million. He seemed to fail to find other investors, say those familiar with the deal. (Epstein has said he was merely an investor.) He invested $1 million, which he told his co-investors was his own money. But in his 1989 deposition he said that he put in only $300,000 of his own money. Where did the rest come from? Hoffenberg has said it came from him, in a loan that Nederlander and Toboroff didn't know about. Two things happened that alarmed Nederlander and Toboroff. After the group signaled a possible takeover, the Pennwalt management threatened to sue the would-be raiders. Epstein was reluctant initially to give a deposition about his share of the money, telling Toboroff there were "reasons" he didn't want to. Then, after the opportunity for new investors was closed, co-investors recall Epstein announcing that he'd found one at last: Dick Snyder, then C.E.O. of the publisher Simon & Schuster, who wanted to put up approximately $500,000. (Neither Epstein nor Snyder can now recall the investment. Yet in the 1989 deposition Epstein said that he had recruited Snyder, whom he had met socially, into the deal.) According to a source, Toboroff and Nederlander told Epstein that Snyder was too late, but, without their realizing it, Hoffenberg has claimed, Snyder wrote a check to Hoffenberg and bought out some of his investment. But then Snyder wanted out. "Nederlander started to get these irate calls from [Snyder,] who wasn't part of the deal, saying he was owed all this money," says someone close to the deal. Toboroff and Nederlander were baffled. Actually, a source close to Hoffenberg paid Snyder off. Just as Nederlander and Toboroff were growing wary of Epstein, he became increasingly involved with Leslie Wexner, whom he had met through insurance executive Robert Meister and his late wife. Epstein has told people that he met Wexner in 1986 in Palm Beach, and that he won his confidence by persuading him not to invest in the stock market, just as the 1987 crash was approaching. His story has subsequently changed. When asked if Wexner knew about his connection to Hoffenberg, Epstein said that he began working for Wexner in 1989, and that "it was certainly not the same time." Wherever and whenever it was that Epstein and Wexner actually met, there was an immediate and strong personal chemistry. Wexner says he thinks Epstein is "very smart with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards. Also, he is always a most loyal friend." Much of Epstein's work is related to cleaning up, tightening budgets, and efficiencies. One person who worked for Wexner and who saw a contract drawn up between the two men says Epstein is involved in "everything, not just a little here, a little there. Everything!" In addition, he says, "Wexner likes having a hatchet man. ... Whenever there is dirty work to be done he'd stick Jeffrey on it.... He has a reputation for being ruthless but he gets the job done." Epstein has evidently been asked to fire personal-staff members when needed. "He was that mysterious person that everyone was scared to death of," says a former employee. Meanwhile, he is also less than popular with some people outside Wexner's company with whom he now deals. "He 'inserted' himself into the construction process of Leslie Wexner's yacht.... That resulted in litigation down the road between Mr. Wexner and the shipyard that eventually built the vessel," says Lars Forsberg, a lawyer whose firm at the time, Dickerson and Rely, was hired to deal with litigation stemming from the construction of Wexner's Limitless--at 315 feet, one of the largest private yachts in the world. Evidently, Epstein stalled on paying Dickerson and Rely for its work "It's probably once or twice in my legal career that I've had to sue a client for payment of services that he'd requested and we'd performed ... without issue on the performance," says Forsberg. In the end the matter was settled, but Epstein claims he now has no recollection of it. The incident is one of a number of disputes Epstein has become embroiled in. Some are for sums so tiny as to be baffling; for instance, Epstein sued investment adviser Herbert Glass, who sold him the Palm Beach house in 1990, for $13,444--Epstein claimed this was owed him for furnishings removed by Glass. In 1998 the U.S. Attorney's Office sued Epstein for illegally subletting the former home of the deputy consul general of Iran to attorney Ivan Fisher and others. Epstein paid $15,000 a month in rent to the State Department, but he charged Fisher and his colleagues $20,000. Though the terms of the agreement are sealed, court ruled against Epstein. Wexner offers some insight into his combative style. "Many times people winning and losing..." Wexner OFFICE SPACE The "office" in Epstein's house. It has no computers, but it does have a desk that Epstein tells people once belonged to banker J. P. Morgan, and "the largest Persian rug you'll ever see in a private home." Sources say Epstein proved that he could be useful to Wexner as well, with "fresh" ideas about investments. "Wexner had a couple of bad investments, and Jeffrey cleaned those up right away," says a former associate of Epstein's. Before he signed on with Wexner, Epstein had several meetings with Harold Levin, then head of Wexner Investments, in which he enunciated ideas about currencies that Levin found incomprehensible. "In fact," says someone who used to work very closely with Wexner, "almost everyone at the Limited wondered who Epstein was: he literally came out of nowhere." "Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was," says Robert Morosky, a former vice-chairman Page1 of 151 Redacted Public Records Request No.: 17-295 DOJ-OGR-00032077