Epstein’s money, 3/4: client, broker or investor?

On December 29, 2004, Financial Trust Company received $15 million for “merger and acquisition advice” connected to the sale of Highbridge to JPMorgan. Ten years later, two Jeffrey Epstein-related entities held $58.4 million at Highbridge. Within months, they withdrew $59.45 million. Three figures, three transactions, and one trap: adding them as though they measured the same thing.

The first number is income. The second is a balance at a point in time. The third is gross redemption proceeds. Some of the capital had been contributed before the 2004 fee; intervening withdrawals and transfers remain incomplete. The $15 million, $58.4 million and $59.45 million therefore do not produce a $132.8 million fortune or a calculable return.

The same confusion runs through Epstein’s wealth. The documents variously cast him as paid adviser, possible finder, fund client, public shareholder and member of private companies. Around Apollo, he owned shares in the publicly traded manager, but no identified interest in an Apollo-managed fund. He invested in two LLCs formed by Apollo executives, but legally separate from Apollo’s funds. At Valar, $40 million first describes commitments; the same interests were estimated at $90.44 million at the end of 2018 and roughly $172 million in 2026 testimony. Those are not three layers of wealth. They are successive states of the same investments.

After examining the documentary origins of Epstein’s wealth and what the banks could see, this third installment follows the capital itself. It relies on a deduplicated ledger: every line carries a date, legal entity, economic category, scope and source. Unsigned drafts are excluded from realized income. Whole-fund financials never replace an individual limited partner’s account. Unrealized estimates remain estimates.

Four separate ledgers

A financial number only makes sense with its accounting unit. We separated four ledgers:

• income: fees and commissions received;
• capital: subscriptions, capital calls and purchases of securities;
• ownership: share count, percentage and legal vehicle;
• value or liquidity: capital account, market price, distribution or redemption.

The same asset can move from one ledger to another over time. A $10 million contribution may become an interest valued at $30 million and later generate a $35 million redemption. Adding 10 + 30 + 35 would manufacture $75 million from one investment. Epstein’s files invite exactly that mistake: bank statements, internal reports, tax forms, emails and estimates are separated by years yet appear side by side in the public corpus.

Highbridge: the invoice that exists

The strongest starting point is a bank record. In Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands v. JPMorgan Chase, case 1:22-cv-10904-JSR, Exhibit 246 attached to Document 285-88 contains a wire screen marked “processed.” Date: December 29, 2004. Amount: $15,000,000. Destination: Bear Stearns, for further credit to Financial Trust Company. The next page is a December 28 invoice to Highbridge’s Ron Resnick for merger and acquisition advice. Its DOJ corpus identifier is EFTA02816421.

Court filings identify the payer as Dubin & Swieca Holdings and connect the fee to JPMorgan’s acquisition of Highbridge. Another filing states that Epstein received no fee from JPMorgan itself. The precise formulation is therefore: Financial Trust received $15 million in connection with the Highbridge transaction, not “JPMorgan paid Epstein $15 million.”

The payment does not establish what Financial Trust actually delivered. The invoice contains no hours, team or work product. It proves the amount and stated purpose, not the value of the service.

A $2.25 million agreement that remains a draft

After the sale, Highbridge considered a longer arrangement. A February 15, 2005 internal email, EFTA02811823, sketches a five-year deal: $100,000 a year in direct fees plus employee pricing for certain investments. At $7 billion in Highbridge assets, the author estimated the present value of that discount at about $8 million.

The same email says Epstein then had about $35 million directly with Highbridge and $200 million to $300 million mostly with D.B. Zwirn, which the author believed was largely client money. That sentence does not identify the beneficial owners. It does show that Highbridge viewed the potential relationship as combining Epstein’s capital, third-party capital and commercial access.

The revised agreement raises the direct fees to $2.25 million, in five $450,000 installments from June 1, 2005 through December 31, 2009. “Qualified Funds” could invest up to 0.85% of Highbridge Capital Corp’s assets at employee pricing.

But the released signature page is blank. We found no wire corresponding to the five installments. The $2.25 million therefore belongs in the proposed-contract ledger, not realized income. Including it would turn an offer into cash.

The Highbridge capital came before the fee

A June 9, 2014 email from Richard Kahn to Epstein provides the best bridge between old contributions and later balances. It says:

• Haze Trust invested $10,041,666 on April 20, 1999 and had withdrawn nothing by June 2014;
• Financial Trust invested $25,044,521 on January 11, 2001 and withdrew $25 million on February 28, 2006;
• at May 31, 2014, Southern Financial held $20,472,425 and Haze Trust $37,903,950, totaling $58,376,375.

Both documented contributions predate the 2004 invoice. That forecloses a simple account in which the $15 million fee created the entire Highbridge portfolio. Some fee proceeds may have been reinvested, but the available documents do not isolate them.

A separate September 30, 2006 statement, EFTA01592294, also identifies a “Highbridge – Financial Trust Co.” managed account with a $12.21 million functional portfolio value. It cannot automatically be combined with the Haze and Southern fund interests. The manager’s name is the same; the product and scope may not be.

The redemption notices document the exit. At October 31, 2014, Haze received $38,485,360 and Southern Financial $20,785,189. Final payments in February 2015 added $113,297 and $62,943. Total: $59,446,789 in gross proceeds.

That amount is not profit. The 2006 withdrawal, possible additional subscriptions, entity transfers, earlier distributions and fees make a full return calculation impossible.

Valar: $40 million is not a valuation

At Valar, private-fund terminology changes what the numbers mean. Southern Trust Company subscribed to two commitments: $15 million in Valar Global Fund II, L.P. and $25 million in Valar Global Fund III, L.P. The $40 million is capital Southern promised to supply if called. It says neither how much had been funded nor what the interests were worth.

The June 30, 2018 limited-partner statements separate those measures. For Fund II, $14.55 million was paid in, $450,000 remained, and ending partner capital was $21,000,471. For Fund III, $21 million was paid in, $4 million remained, and ending partner capital was $33,345,270.

At that date:

• commitments: $40 million;
• capital actually paid in: $35.55 million;
• combined LP capital-account value: $54,345,741.

Those figures describe the same commitments at different stages. They do not add to $129.9 million.

The Valar wire missing from the chart

The Fund III reconstruction illustrates the difference between a lawyers’ list and a ledger. EFTA00080250 is an August 13, 2019 legal email with charts of selected transactions. Its authors refer to transactions they “highlighted”; the chart is not described as exhaustive.

Its Fund III wires total $22.5 million, $2.5 million short of the commitment. Bank wire report EFTA01299550 supplies the missing item: on April 4, 2017, Southern Trust wired $2.5 million to Valar Global Fund III, L.P.

Restoring that wire makes the sequence match the statements exactly: $21 million funded by June 30, 2018; another $2.5 million in January 2019; and $1.5 million in April. Total: $25 million. This is not a new cash flow layered onto the corpus. It is an omitted cash flow that closes the gap.

Fund II remains less granular. The records track $6.3 million in 2015, followed by a sixth call of $2.25 million, bringing the balance to $8.55 million in April 2016. The individual amounts for calls seven and eight are not available in the OCR reviewed; their implied aggregate is $3.6 million. After $1.5 million in February 2017, $600,000 in October and $300,000 in the first half of 2018, the LP statement reaches $14.55 million. The ledger preserves the aggregate rather than inventing two precise amounts.

From $54 million to $90 million to $172 million

Three months after the June statements, the communicated values were nearly unchanged: $21,166,482 for Fund II and $33,165,591 for Fund III, or $54,332,073 at September 30, 2018.

Then the step-up became dramatic. February 2019 emails, including EFTA01029015, conveyed unaudited December 31, 2018 estimates: $40.75 million for Fund II and $49.69 million for Fund III. Total: $90.44 million.

The manager had already communicated high gross performance figures: 3.7x and a 44.6% IRR for Fund II; 2.6x and a 63.6% IRR for Fund III. Those indicators are not cash distributions. They depend on underlying company valuations and on the use of a gross metric.

One discrepancy remains open. The Fund II LP statement records $14.55 million paid in, while later internal reports use a $14.25 million cost basis. The $300,000 gap may reflect an accounting definition or an update lag; no identified document resolves it. Both bases must remain visible.

The final number comes from testimony, not a statement. In a March 19, 2026 deposition released by the House Oversight Committee, co-executor Darren Indyke gave a rough value of about $170 million for the two Valar interests, then specified $172 million. He also cautioned that those values were not meaningful until realization and that fund terms could be extended.

Indyke separately put the estate’s current accounting at just over $100 million and said it already included a value for Valar. The $172 million therefore cannot be added to the $100 million. The precise overlap is not public.

Apollo: documented ownership at company level

“Apollo” covers at least four distinct scopes. The first is Apollo Global Management, LLC, the company listed in 2011. The second consists of private funds managed by Apollo. The third includes LLCs formed by individual executives for opportunities the funds declined. The fourth is made up of outside companies in which those executives, Epstein or Leon Black may have invested.

The Dechert report Apollo filed with the SEC in January 2021 says it found no evidence that Apollo retained Epstein or that Epstein invested in an Apollo-managed fund. That conclusion came from an investigation commissioned by Apollo’s conflicts committee, not from a regulator. It is nonetheless consistent with the financial records reviewed here.

Financial Trust did purchase publicly traded Apollo shares in the IPO directed share program. The prospectus set the price at $19. Internal report EFTA00811897 shows 263,157 shares at a cost of $4,999,983, exactly 263,157 × $19. At September 30, 2018, the position was worth $9,092,074, for an unrealized gain of $4,092,091.

Dechert, however, writes 263,257 shares. Bank statement EFTA01510763 provides a second control: on November 30, 2012, Financial Trust received $105,262.80 at $0.40 a share. The quotient is 263,157. Dechert’s figure is likely a 100-share typo, submitted to Apollo for confirmation.

According to Dechert, the shares were transferred to Southern Financial in 2013 and remained held through at least September 2019. They were an interest in the listed manager. They conveyed no direct economic rights in Apollo’s fund portfolios.

AP SHL and AP Technology: vehicles that blur the map

The records also identify AP SHL Investors LLC and AP Technology Partners LLC. Draft agreements collected in EFTA00586106 assign Financial Trust a 40% interest in AP SHL and 5.834262% in AP Technology. John Hannan is named as AP SHL’s managing member; Andrew Africk, Hannan, Mark Rowan and Michael Weiner as AP Technology managers.

The Dechert report says Apollo executives formed the vehicles for opportunities declined by Apollo funds. The “AP” prefix, executive involvement and proximity to Apollo deal flow create ambiguity. Legally and financially, that does not turn the LLCs into Apollo funds.

An AP SHL 2012 K-1, EFTA00593329, shows ending capital of $40,864 after a $13,867 current loss. A tax capital figure is not necessarily fair market value. Again, the category controls the meaning.

ESW: the payment is certain, the final contract is missing

The ESW case, often called ESWW in the records, shows what an EDGAR reconstruction can establish and what it leaves open.

Financial Trust’s Schedule 13G filed July 20, 2011 reports 13,350,205 shares, or 6.1% of the company. Financial Trust had sole voting and dispositive power. Inventory EFTA00299927 lists a $1 million 9% convertible funded in March 2010 and several certificates composing the block.

In November 2012, drafts set out a package sale of ESW stock and the AP SHL and AP Technology interests. The November 2 draft still prices the package at $18 million, with an indicative allocation among the three assets. November 26 drafts name Black Family Partners, L.P. as buyer and cut the aggregate price to $5.5 million. But the released signature pages are blank; one page even bears the impossible date November 31, 2012.

Two draft transfer instructions cover 13,198,711 and 151,494 ESW shares. Together they equal the precise 13,350,205 shares in the 13G. Yet transfer and signature fields remain incomplete.

The bank statement then settles one central point. On November 30, 2012, Financial Trust received a $5,500,030 CHIPS credit from Black Family Partners LP. That payment is consistent with the latest draft’s $5.5 million price. The extra $30 is unexplained; the record does not support calling it a fee.

We can therefore report that Black Family Partners paid $5.50003 million to Financial Trust and that consistent drafts describe an ESW/AP SHL/AP Technology package. We cannot treat the $18 million draft allocation as final or claim to have located the executed agreement.

EDGAR leaves two gaps open

ESW’s 2012 10-K, filed in March 2013, still identifies Financial Trust as holding 13,350,205 shares, or 5.85%. That post-payment disclosure may rely on an earlier record date, an unupdated register or an incomplete transfer. Without the shareholder register or signed agreement, selecting one explanation would be speculation.

On May 24, 2013, ESW executed a one-for-2,000 reverse split. Financial Trust’s block mechanically yields 6,675 whole shares plus a fractional remainder. A February 2014 S-1/A attributes 6,671 direct shares to Black Family Partners, plus 4,706 shares received as interest payments. The proximity of 6,671 to the theoretical 6,675 corroborates the economic transfer; the four-share gap remains unexplained.

In 2015, the 10-K assigns 14,389 shares, or 10.63%, to Black Family Partners. ESW’s April 1, 2015 Form 15 then terminated public reporting. The documentary trail ends.

The picture after the third ledger

Highbridge is the only set examined here in which a large advisory payment is established by an exact bank transaction: $15 million. But the Highbridge investments began before that payment. The story is not a single commission turned into a portfolio. It is a relationship in which fees, Epstein’s own capital, money attributed to clients and contemplated preferential terms could coexist.

Valar marks a different phase. Southern Trust no longer appears to provide a service; it behaves as a private-fund investor, subject to capital calls, long holding periods and illiquid valuations. The apparent rise from $35.55 million funded to roughly $172 million estimated would be substantial if realized. The public record does not show that realization.

Apollo and ESW finally demonstrate why names make poor accounting boundaries. “Apollo” can mean a listed share, a fund, an LLC formed by executives or simply a network of people. “Black” can mean Leon Black as a personal client, Black Family Partners as an asset buyer or family members involved with ESW. A financial investigation must follow the legal entity before following the reputation of the name.

Nothing in these transactions, standing alone, proves criminal origin of the invested funds. Nor can an appraisal be converted into available liquidity. What the records establish is narrower: Epstein had durable access to sophisticated managers, invested through multiple entities, obtained or contemplated special terms, and left behind private assets whose value remains partly locked inside fund structures.

The fourth and final installment will follow those assets after his death: the estate inventory, victim compensation, taxes, legal fees, asset sales and residual value. The same rule will apply: a Valar estimate already carried in the estate’s accounts cannot be added a second time.

Method and unresolved discrepancies

This investigation cross-checks DOJ releases, exhibits in the U.S. Virgin Islands litigation against JPMorgan, SEC EDGAR filings and testimony released by the House. EFTA identifiers are preserved even when a direct DOJ PDF URL is intermittent. Lawyers’ transaction charts are treated as selected lists unless shown to be exhaustive; unsigned drafts do not establish execution.

The control ledger retains four unresolved discrepancies: 263,157 Apollo shares in the statements versus 263,257 in Dechert; $14.55 million Fund II paid-in capital versus a $14.25 million internal cost basis; 6,675 theoretical ESW shares after the reverse split versus 6,671 disclosed; and ESW still listing Financial Trust in March 2013 despite the November 2012 payment.

Read the French original.

Sources

• USVI v. JPMorgan: public docket, No. 1:22-cv-10904-JSR, including Document 285-88, Exhibit 246, EFTA02816421.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA00589969, draft Highbridge consulting agreement.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA00640876, 2014 Highbridge balances and contribution history.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA01118143, principal Highbridge redemptions.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA00590651, final Highbridge redemption payments.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA00811791, Valar Fund II LP statement.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA00811797, Valar Fund III LP statement.
• DOJ Dataset 10: EFTA01299550, April 4, 2017 Fund III wire.
• DOJ Dataset 9: EFTA01029015, December 2018 Valar estimates.
• House Oversight Committee: Richard Kahn and Darren Indyke deposition videos, March 2026.
• SEC: Apollo prospectus, 2011 and Dechert report, 2021.
• DOJ Dataset 10: EFTA01510763, Apollo distribution and Black Family Partners credit.
• SEC: Financial Trust Schedule 13G for ESW, ESW 2012 Form 10-K, 2014 Form S-1/A and 2015 Form 15.

Limitations

The Highbridge $15 million payment is established by a bank record and invoice filed as a court exhibit; the public copy does not supply the underlying work product. Dechert’s report is a company-commissioned investigation, not a regulatory finding. EFTA emails and internal reports are contemporaneous records but may use accounting definitions that are not stated. The 2018 Valar year-end figures are expressly unaudited, and the 2026 figure is oral testimony about an unrealized value. ESW’s released purchase agreements and transfer instructions are drafts; the bank statement establishes payment but not the final price allocation or every transfer mechanic.

No figure in this article is presented as criminal proceeds. Values at different dates and fund-level figures are not added. Corpus current to August 7, 2026.