The billionaires who bankrolled Epstein | BBC News

We know that he was a con man at heart, right? And that was not just within the world of sex trafficking, right? He wasn't just conning victims, but he was conning people

in the financial world as well. Jeffrey Epstein flew his victims around the world and abused them at his luxury properties. Most of the money that he used to fund his sex trafficking operation came from two billionaires.

The first was Leslie Waxner, owner of some of America's biggest retail brands. The first time I've heard anything about Jeffrey Epstein. Less tells me he's got a guy in New York. Wants less to invest some money with him.

I think it was 50 million 50 million. So Les tells me to fly to New York and meet with him and which I did. I didn't see a computer in his office. I'm not sure there was very much anything there.

Yeah, I left the office. his office. I got found the pay phone. I called Russ. I said, "Stay away from him." I I I said,

"He's he doesn't know anything." I said, "Les, I wouldn't walk away from the guy. I'd run my hell away from the guy." And I said, "I I think he's, you know, dishonest and a fraud.

Then I hear Epstein's coming to town. Epstein had got himself recommended to Leslie Wexner by powerful friends. He quickly won his new client's trust. Within two years, Wexner gave him a power of attorney,

legal control of his vast private wealth. >> One of the things in his power of attorney is he can make payments on Wexner's behalf. He has wide latitude to do just about anything with his fortune.

We can't tell where Wexner's money ends and Epstein's begins. And I think what he did was he co-mingled a lot of the accounts. What I did was I tried to link up Epstein selling stock for Wexner and Epstein acquiring things, planes, property.

One of the very first things he does is he buys a an aircraft. He buys a Hawker Sidley 125 and starts flying and starts leasing Wexner's East 71st Street mansion. Around 1998, he buys the island, he buys the helicopter.

Um, and then in 2002 there's a huge there's like almost a billion of stock sales just in a very short period of time and then that's when Epste gets the apartments in France. Uh, the 727 which is also a Wexner corporate jet

from Wexner's company. Epstein buys that. Um, and that's basically the infrastructure of his sex trafficking venture. >> Do you believe Epstein stole money from Wexner?

>> Oh, absolutely. I mean, he was a typical scam artist from New York. In my opinion, >> for almost two decades, Leslie Wexner's money funded Epstein's lifestyle and his criminality.

He told Congress he had given a power of attorney to trusted employees before and said he fired Epstein in 2007 because he'd stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. So, so several hundred million is a large but not precise figure.

To the best of your knowledge, how much exactly did Epstein steal? >> I don't know. I don't think I'll ever know. >> Did you ever witness Mr.

Epstein sexually abuse young women or girls? >> Absolutely not. >> In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for sex and put on the sex offender registry. But that didn't stop another billionaire from taking him on.